Hi Simon, can you elaborate the "backlog" thing more? Overall, is it a good sign that KCC started requiring documents earlier than usual or it basically means nothing? I think we can't make assumptions about holes solely with those dates right? I'm from EU region and last year they start asking for documents at end of the july, afaik.
Also thank you and other people/moderators for helping people here.
It's very common for people to try to read signs from various things in DV world. In general that is an exercise in frustration. Over recent weeks we have had people convinced of processing clues based on email conformations and outputs etc, and invariably that leads to someone else being confused because someone else's experience doesn't fit the model.
Backlogs are kind of the key to that - and its a big and somewhat confusing topic.
KCC, like any organization, has some ways to organize their work, but those methods change when the backlogs are reduced, and the backlogs can very quickly grow. So their behavior two weeks ago may not be the same as today - and that causes confusion.
So what do I mean about backlogs. Many people rushed to submit their DS260s very soon after results day, partly because the email makes it sound like speed is important to hold your spot (which is untrue), or people get an impression that they can get ahead of the queue by moving fast (also untrue). But, that would have created some backlog of DS260 processing, so when there is a backlog KCC would generally revert to a case number ordering. But without backlogs they could be running an "as submitted" method. Couple that with a reality that not all DS260s take the same time to process (based on travel history, country of residence etc), and you'll get some pretty confusing results. So one person will get very gfast DS260 processing, someone else could wait.
Then KCC have some discretion about asking for documents. They actually started using an old email DS260 confirmation email recently which I pointed out to them was incorrect. The confirmation said the applicant did NOT need to send any documents to KCC - which is obviously untrue, and it was simply because they mistakenly reverted to an old email format. Hopefully that is corrected now, but I only informed them late last week I think - and it was news to them.
Now - they are sending Document request emails. They could easily cause a backlog by sending too many of those too fast. They did that in October/November 2019 and that caused backlog AND appears to have created many "lost" document scenarios. Those were hard to track because of the two department thing, and quite frankly that whole mess will end up costing some people their Green Cards. But from a selectee point of view it certainly led to a confusing experience in terms of how KCC prioritize the document processing.
But again - they can choose how to send out the document emails, so they can to some extent control the backlog, but of course the responses are also varying based on things like the ban, how that makes people behave, how COVID closures affect the obtaining of documents and so on. We could easily see backlogs grow when COVID closures generally end in authorities such as those providing police certs and so on.
You can only figure these things out at a macro level - if you only get focused on your case, or cases in your country, you will almost always be confused. Of course KCC don't tell us when these backlogs are occurring, and to some extent they don't seem to even know (again partly because of the two department scenario).
I realize that might be more confusing than clear - and I do try and correct people sometimes, but honestly I just get tired of correcting people that don't want to listen or believe they know better based on their 5 minutes of experience. So, hopefully you can pick something out of that to improve your understanding - but this is "wait and see" becomes the most valuable approach, because ultimately the answers are not always black and white.
