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DV 2017 AOS Only

Britsimon said:
Unless your case is a DV2018 case (case number starting 2018XX0000XXX), then the officer you saw doesn't know what the heck he is talking about. You shouldn't have left the infopass until you had spoken to a supervisor. However, the point is probably moot as visas appear to have run out and AOS cases are being told there are no visas for them.
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I confirm I have a case number DV2017. I would have preferred he told me it's over then leave me hanging. I have another infopass on the 29th. Is it even worth going to?
 
LateToTheParty2017 said:
I confirm I have a case number DV2017. I would have preferred he told me it's over then leave me hanging. I have another infopass on the 29th. Is it even worth going to?
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He left you hanging because he is clueless. It wasn't deliberate, just ignorance.

That's up to you. Maybe something will change t make visas available AND you will meet a more experienced officer who realizes that you need to be interviewed and adjudicated on the spot. But if I were a betting man I would say the chances of that combination of events are extremely slim.
 
Britsimon said:
He left you hanging because he is clueless. It wasn't deliberate, just ignorance.

That's up to you. Maybe something will change t make visas available AND you will meet a more experienced officer who realizes that you need to be interviewed and adjudicated on the spot. But if I were a betting man I would say the chances of that combination of events are extremely slim.
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Yes, I agree. If there was any chances other AoSers would`t receive denials and IO would wait until the last day of fiscal year.. So sad:(
 
Britsimon said:
He left you hanging because he is clueless. It wasn't deliberate, just ignorance.

That's up to you. Maybe something will change t make visas available AND you will meet a more experienced officer who realizes that you need to be interviewed and adjudicated on the spot. But if I were a betting man I would say the chances of that combination of events are extremely slim.
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Thank you for your help. You probably have already said it but how is it possible that visas run out? When 50k visas are available for a given fiscal year, does that mean there are more than 50k winners at the lottery? I don't understand this part.
Anyway, all in all this was clearly my mistake, I am pissed at myself and sad that uscis wasn't here to pick up the ball and save my case
 
LateToTheParty2017 said:
Thank you for your help. You probably have already said it but how is it possible that visas run out? When 50k visas are available for a given fiscal year, does that mean there are more than 50k winners at the lottery? I don't understand this part.
Anyway, all in all this was clearly my mistake, I am pissed at myself and sad that uscis wasn't here to pick up the ball and save my case
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Your "you have been selected" letter mentions they had selected more people than the available visa spaces, and tells you to act fast for that reason. They actually selected over 90000 people. Many don't proceed, some get refused, but still they can max out the 50k limit as they say they have done this year.
 
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LateToTheParty2017 said:
Thank you for your help. You probably have already said it but how is it possible that visas run out? When 50k visas are available for a given fiscal year, does that mean there are more than 50k winners at the lottery? I don't understand this part.
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Britsimon said:
Your "you have been selected" letter mentions they had selected more people than the available visa spaces, and tells you to act fast for that reason. They actually selected over 90000 people. Many don't proceed, some get refused, but still they can max out the 50k limit as they say they have done this year.
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The instructions also note that more than 50000 people are selected and that the program will end once 50k visas have been issued, as well as the selection letter. Then the pages you are linked to from the selection letter also mention this.
 
If I may ask how it happened that they issued thousands more visas over 50,000 in certain years, i.e. 2010 - 51,312; 2011 - 51,118, 2013- 52,571, 2014- 52,342?
 
costacosta said:
If I may ask how it happened that they issued thousands more visas over 50,000 in certain years, i.e. 2010 - 51,312; 2011 - 51,118, 2013- 52,571, 2014- 52,342?
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Mom already explained that to you before.

"...We've talked extensively about the additional 5,000 NACARA visas set apart that sometimes gets allocated to DV cases. Of course we don't yet know if those are all used up, (I don't think they are), but for some reasons unknown to us, USCIS has been instructed to stop approving 2017 DV based AOS cases."
 
costacosta said:
If I may ask how it happened that they issued thousands more visas over 50,000 in certain years, i.e. 2010 - 51,312; 2011 - 51,118, 2013- 52,571, 2014- 52,342?
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As above, it's been explained many times. The hard limit is 55k but 5k were set aside for Nacara years ago, leaving 50k aside for normal DV. If that 5k are not all used for Nacara then some of those COULD be made available for DV. COULD, not MUST. As you will be aware every single official mention of DV, from the entry instructions to the selection letter to the instructions for selectees, talks about 50000 visas. There should be no expectation of entitlement to anything above 50k, even if they have gone over that number on occasion in the past.
 
Hi Mom/Simon,

Just in case they make available few visas this week which I know is a chance of 0.00001 %, do they consider the applicants who got denial letters only due to the fact that visas being exhausted?
 
Ruw02 said:
Hi Mom/Simon,

Just in case they make available few visas this week which I know is a chance of 0.00001 %, do they consider the applicants who got denial letters only due to the fact that visas being exhausted?
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This has not happened before as far as we know - so we have no way to know how they would handle that...
 
Hi all,

So we went to our Infopass today. Although they did not have visa numbers available for us, our visit turned out to be a nicer experience than we had anticipated. We were lucky and got a chance to speak to the same nice lady that (we believe) helped us back in August to get our interview letter. She told us that she is a supervisor there, and to our surprise she knew many of the details of our situation. From what she told us, it seems like the letter we sent to the district director might have brought our case into their attention. Although like many people here in the past couple of weeks, we were really frustrated and mad about the way our FO handled our cases, we now at least know that they are aware of what happened and that they understand that it was not a good choice for them to wait with the interview until such a late stage. We asked her how they are notified regarding any extra visa numbers, and she said in such a scenario they will be notified by USCIS in the same way they were notified regarding the visa exhaustion on September 8th (which in the case of our FO it was around 4am on September 11). She also told us that in case visa numbers will suddenly become available to us they will immediately contact us (via phone), and will most likely act on that even before contacting us. We asked if that would be a waste of time to come over again for an Infopass on Friday, she told us it will not hurt and that we can ask to speak with her when we arrive.
In the end, we are still left without a visa, so nothing has changed, but at least we gained confidence that several people in our FO (specifically, from our conversation today, the supervisor we spoke to, the officer that "interviewed" us, and the district director) are on top of things in case something pops up last minute.

Still hoping for a miracle for all of us!
 
santassaf said:
Hi all,

So we went to our Infopass today. Although they did not have visa numbers available for us, our visit turned out to be a nicer experience than we had anticipated. We were lucky and got a chance to speak to the same nice lady that (we believe) helped us back in August to get our interview letter. She told us that she is a supervisor there, and to our surprise she knew many of the details of our situation. From what she told us, it seems like the letter we sent to the district director might have brought our case into their attention. Although like many people here in the past couple of weeks, we were really frustrated and mad about the way our FO handled our cases, we now at least know that they are aware of what happened and that they understand that it was not a good choice for them to wait with the interview until such a late stage. We asked her how they are notified regarding any extra visa numbers, and she said in such a scenario they will be notified by USCIS in the same way they were notified regarding the visa exhaustion on September 8th (which in the case of our FO it was around 4am on September 11). She also told us that in case visa numbers will suddenly become available to us they will immediately contact us (via phone), and will most likely act on that even before contacting us. We asked if that would be a waste of time to come over again for an Infopass on Friday, she told us it will not hurt and that we can ask to speak with her when we arrive.
In the end, we are still left without a visa, so nothing has changed, but at least we gained confidence that several people in our FO (specifically, from our conversation today, the supervisor we spoke to, the officer that "interviewed" us, and the district director) are on top of things in case something pops up last minute.

Still hoping for a miracle for all of us!
Click to expand...

Thanks for that feedback. It is good that they treated you with empathy and respect and also acknowledged their part in what happened. For as long as we have been doing this (Mom, Susie and I), we have not seen this happen - so their normal mo of leaving the interviews until a batch at the last minute has not caused problems before. I hope they will learn the lesson and not impact future AoSers. Cold comfort for you obviously, but a good change anyway.

Fingers crossed for the miracle.
 
santassaf said:
Hi all,

So we went to our Infopass today. Although they did not have visa numbers available for us, our visit turned out to be a nicer experience than we had anticipated. We were lucky and got a chance to speak to the same nice lady that (we believe) helped us back in August to get our interview letter. She told us that she is a supervisor there, and to our surprise she knew many of the details of our situation. From what she told us, it seems like the letter we sent to the district director might have brought our case into their attention. Although like many people here in the past couple of weeks, we were really frustrated and mad about the way our FO handled our cases, we now at least know that they are aware of what happened and that they understand that it was not a good choice for them to wait with the interview until such a late stage. We asked her how they are notified regarding any extra visa numbers, and she said in such a scenario they will be notified by USCIS in the same way they were notified regarding the visa exhaustion on September 8th (which in the case of our FO it was around 4am on September 11). She also told us that in case visa numbers will suddenly become available to us they will immediately contact us (via phone), and will most likely act on that even before contacting us. We asked if that would be a waste of time to come over again for an Infopass on Friday, she told us it will not hurt and that we can ask to speak with her when we arrive.
In the end, we are still left without a visa, so nothing has changed, but at least we gained confidence that several people in our FO (specifically, from our conversation today, the supervisor we spoke to, the officer that "interviewed" us, and the district director) are on top of things in case something pops up last minute.

Still hoping for a miracle for all of us!
Click to expand...

Did you by any chance got a reply for your letter to District Director? I also sent a letter to the person who was listed as district director on the website and it was delivered on 9/20/2017 , but my denial letter was issued on 9/19/2019 after the infopass I had with them (That was when they opened FO after one week of closure due to hurricane irma). However, it has another name signed on it as the district director so probably the right person did not get my letter.

I feel sorry and sad for all of us, who are waiting for a miracle till the last moment. May be my chances are zero, since they probably might have closed my case with the denial letter. Only if somebody hears our prayers !
 
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Britsimon said:
Thanks for that feedback. It is good that they treated you with empathy and respect and also acknowledged their part in what happened. For as long as we have been doing this (Mom, Susie and I), we have not seen this happen - so their normal mo of leaving the interviews until a batch at the last minute has not caused problems before. I hope they will learn the lesson and not impact future AoSers. Cold comfort for you obviously, but a good change anyway.

Fingers crossed for the miracle.
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Thanks Brit. Yes, it was a pleasant surprise to learn that some people at the FO indeed care and understand what it means for us to throw it all away and start from scratch. I feel that there is a good chance that at least our FO has learned from this year's events and will approach DV-based cases differently in the future. I will keep everyone posted again following our next (and final) Infopass visit this Friday.
 
Ruw02 said:
Did you by any chance got a reply for your letter to District Director? I also sent a letter to the person who was listed as district director on the website and it was delivered on 9/20/2017 , but my denial letter was issued on 9/19/2019 after the infopass I had with them (That was when they opened FO after one week of closure due to hurricane irma). However, it has another name signed on it as the district director so probably the right person did not get my letter.

I feel sorry and sad for all of us, who are waiting for a miracle till the last moment. May be my chances are zero, since they probably might have closed my case with the denial letter. Only if somebody hears our prayers !
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I did not receive any reply to my letter yet. I was expecting to receive something by now as I sent it on September 12. If visas become available anytime soon, I really hope there is still a chance for people in your situation that got those denial letters.

Good luck to us all! =)
 
I`ve never in my entire life have experienced so awful and brutal time span. That was really nightmare... I`m really sorry for all of you guys too. I believe times come and USCIS certain officers will have to pay for this unprecedented ruthless attitude to all of AoSers. Wish all of you good luck.
 
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