The visa bulletin has been released showing a 5k incrtease for AF, which is pretty much as expected. AS got a small increase, but at least it is an increase. However Europe has been held at 16K with only Uzbekistan being increased. This is a replay of what happened to AS region last month, and I’m sure will lead to all the same questions. It’s disappointing for EU because there does not appear to be much of a backlog, so May will be a fairly quiet month of interviews, which is a waste of that capacity.

OC and SA had small increases. That is understandable as both those regions are ahead of other regions in terms of issuances, and had relatively high VB numbers compared to the target (according to my predictions).

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.