EU region.
This one needed to be left to the end. Of the three large regions it is the simplest in one sense (no limited countries), BUT things are VERY different this year to a normal year. As I have explained before – we have normally seen just two countries (Uzbekistan and Ukraine) that have been limited during the selection process. This happens when a country has a large amount of entries in the lottery. This year – three more countries achieve the maximum number of selectees – Russia, Turkey and Albania. This was a Sudden increase from one year to the next. In the case of Albania, there must have been at least 500k people participating in the lottery (as entrants or derivatives). That might not sound like a lot – but when you consider the population of the country is less than 3 million people, it is a HUGE NUMBER. This is clearly agent driven, so – that is bound to have an effect – but we won’t know exactly what effect until the year is over. For now we can only guess.
Now thanks to those people who are helping with the scraper, we do have some data to work with – so let’s explore that data.
According to the CEAC data, EU has had 8274 visas issued as of March 12. In addition there are 915 people on AP, and 5810 cases marked as ready.
Some (most in fact) of the AP cases will be approved later. AP processing seems slower this year than previous years, and additional security checks and measures are likely the reason for that.
Of the ready cases, they fall into three groups.
No shows. These are cases that were scheduled, but the selectee did not show up for their interview. Some of those will reschedule – but many (most) won’t. So – if a case shows ready and it is under the number that could have been interviewed last month, it is most likely a no show. Of the 5810 ready cases, about 1800 to 2000 could be that scenario. However, that number seems high – so I don’t totally trust the number.
Late updates. These cases have been interviewed, but the embassy have not updated the outcome yet.
Future scheduled cases. Since cases are marked as ready a head of time we always have a large number of ready cases that are scheduled in the remainder of this month or next month. In addition, each month there are late submissions. These are people that did not submit their DS260 early, so they get scheduled in a month later than their “current” month.
So – it is not accurate to assume that all 5800+ ready cases will become issued – but we could easily assume that 3000 to 4000 of those people will get visas – leaving 6000 to 7000 visas for the final five months of processing. The May interviews are now being set, and as we know, the increase from 15950 to 18050 was low. In fact – that increase only made 1200 new cases current – nearly half of which will be non response cases. So – there has been a noticeable slowdown in scheduled interviews this month and last month (for April and May interviews). I don’t know the reason for that slowdown.
However, looking at the data I think it is looking increasingly likely that EU will have a cutoff lower than I previously hoped. I mentioned before that the risk zone starts as low as 33XXX – and that is still true – but as time goes on, unless pace increases we could see a number even lower than that – because the embassies cannot handle all the activity in the final month or two.
The other thing that is troubling to me is the low number of resolved cases in Uzbekistan. Given that all their cases are concentrated under 10700 – all were entitled to interviews by February. Uzebekistan gets a high success rate (selectee to visas issued) – so by now I would expect to see 2500 to 3000 visas issued in Uzbekistan. However, the actual number is about half that expected range – so – I am not sure why that number is low.
There is a lot of data, and it is hard/impossible to predict the progress over the coming months. I have been saying we need to wait and see. That is sensible advice. This year is going to be hard to predict. So really – although everyone is sick of hearing these words, the wisest decision is to WAIT and SEE!