The VB was late again, but I think this was more to do with other categories than DV. And interestingly, the official published date shown of this VB is the eigth – this exact pattern has been the case for three months running – late VB, normal official release date.

Good jump in AF, OC and SA regions. “OK” in EU and AS. KCC switched to sending out documents emails to many cases, so to some extent they have pulled back the speed of the VB in countries like in EU where people respond faster than AF region. OC and SA regions are so “hole dominated” that their continued bigger jumps is completely understandable.


Region		All DV Chargeability Areas Except
Those Listed Separately		 
AFRICA19,000Except:  Egypt  10,000
ASIA8,200Except:  Iran     5,100
               Nepal  6,500
EUROPE10,300 
NORTH AMERICA (BAHAMAS) 8 
OCEANIA1,200 
SOUTH AMERICA,
and the CARIBBEAN		1,075 

This is only the FOURTH VB so there are EIGHT more to go, so no one should be worried about the numbers – everything is going just fine right now. Really.

Those that are current, and have forms processed early enough, they can expect their 2NL in about 1 to 2  weeks from now. This is 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 sent in two main batches, some early (around the 15th to 20th) and then some in the later part of the month. I would expect the 2NLs to have all been sent by the end of this month. The end of the month really means THE END OF THE MONTH. Please don’t waste my time later this month asking about 2NLs. Please. They can be sent right up until the last day of the month.

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.

Processing is spread out over the full year. You can see the progress of the two previous years in this post about basic questions.  However, some countries have a high number of selectees and those selectees are concentrated in the lower case numbers. For various reasons, mainly to do with embassy capacity, KCC slow down certain countries as compared to the region. So – in Africa, any case with a case number shown as under the new number can be interviewed but for cases from Egypt, that number is lower. That isn’t a big problem, it just “slows down” those countries a little more than the rest of the region. Since selectees from those countries all have lower case numbers, this slowing down does not present any risk. It does not (at this point) mean they won’t allow all selectees an interview from those countries.

To understand why some countries get lower case numbers, read this article about the lottery draw process.