The new visa bulletin has been released and it is almost an exact copy of the previous two visa bulletins, with the exception of an increase for Algeria (in the AF “except” section).

Now. I know this is going to fuel all sorts of questions, panic and rumor. Let me just say that mostly, the rumors will be incorrect, the panic unnecessary. So let me make some points.

1. As I mentioned this past weekend on my live, I expected to see no change in at least 3 regions. Why? because the numbers that we saw in the first bulletin were obviously very high. They gave several months numbers in the first VB for some reason – and not increasing those numbers should not be a shock.
2. This is not because of the government shutdown.
3. This is not because Trump said he wanted to cancel the DV lottery back in 2017.
4. This is not because aliens from another planet have invaded.

I did hope to see some movement in AF and EU regions, but no “damage” is being done because those numbers are still high enough to allow embassies to schedule cases below those numbers as DS260 processing continues.

Now, hopefully you will stay calm and realize all is well.

The other BIG news from this VB is that we have the selectee numbers finally. And the big news there is that the corrections needed because of my lawsuit have been made. Cuba has “no selectees” (which is correct, but will have an impact in South America and UK has 1.3k selectees. Now – that UK selectee number for the UK is about 4 to 5 times higher than it should be, so it is confirmation of what I have already explained, that UK high case numbers are there because the government have, almost unbelievably, made another mistake in this process with these numbers. This is real Keystone cops stuff.

From a total selectee point of view they have selected 129,516 which is too high, and again what I “expected” as I mentioned this last weekend. I think this will need some explanation, so look for a video on this topic today.

Those that are current, and have forms processed early enough, can normally expect their 2NL in the next 2 to 3 weeks from now. This is supposed to be the same every month. VB from the 8th to the 15th of each month, and 2NLs in the second half of the month. For the last few months there have been 2NLs in daily batches, but we seem to be moving to a more normal procedure where almost all the 2NLs are sent before the end of the month, with just a handful being sent earlier this month. I would normally expect all the interview 2NLs to have all been sent by the end of this month, but we can see recently they are exceeding that to try and get as many interviews in as possible. They can be sent right up until the last day of the month, and even the first few days of the following month during exceptional times. One quick point, the 2NLs tend to come out in an approximate alphabetical order, based on the city name of the embassy. So, Addis and Accra tend to be early, and an embassy such as Yaounde would be later. As ever, just be patient…

To those new to looking at VBs, let me explain what the “except” XXX country means – and you can also read this post on how to read the visa bulletin.