Oh how they love to play with our emotions…

The new VB has been released, but it is identical to the last VB – no increases at all. I’m sure there will be much speculation about what that means, but I personally don’t have any good information, so I won’t speculate.

Of course, it should be understood that even if no numbers are added, there are cases that will be scheduled that were already current, but their DS260s were not previously processed. So – if that includes your case, you can hope to get scheduled for February interviews.

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.

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.