The Law
The Data
We first define two classes of regions having low and high admission to the U.S. in the past five years, respectively, and calculate the split of visa numbers between the two. The necessary data is found in Table 10 of the Yearbooks 2012-2016 (2017 is not yet published).
After the high-low-split is determined, we will allocate visa numbers within a class using population data for its regions, excluding all ineligible countries. You find a list of those in the DV instructions.
The Flow of Lawful Permanent Residents
Looking up Table 10 one can see different visa categories and the flow of LPRs broken down to country of birth. It's tempting to use the summary listed for the various "regions of birth," but that's not working because the Yearbook has an entirely different understanding of what constitutes a region (e.g., Mexico lies in North America).
Of all the visa categories available 203(c) takes the "family-sponsored" and "employment-based" preferences into account, as well as "immediate relatives of U.S. citizens." Scraping the data from the website (or downloading the excel files) will produce the table excerpt on the left. On the right is the cleaned version ("-" represents zero; undisclosed data "D" is also replaced by zero) with a carefully added column for the item's assigned region.
Grouping by region and aggregating the numbers we get the fy16 column of the following table. The other columns are the aggregates for 2012-2015, and lpr5year is the total flow in these years grouped by region.
The total flow is approx 4.2M, that is an average of 700k per region. Therefore, Asia and South America are "high-admission regions," and North America, Oceania, Europe, and Africa are deemed "low-admission regions."
The high-low-split is 81.253%:18.747%. The DV program now swaps this ratio: low-admission regions AF, EU, OC, and NA will be allotted 81.253% of the globally available visa numbers, AS and SA share the rest.
The Distribution Within the Two Classes
Using the links above for the world and Northern Ireland population, we add the region and an eligibility marker.
After removing ineligible countries and grouping by region, we can aggregate (I added the earlier high-low-split table for convenience).
We now have everything ready to calculate the quotas.
Europe lies in the class "Low," to which 81.253% of all visa numbers are allotted (split is swapped). Since Europe accounts for 44.358% of the population in the class, the Visa Office will apportion 44.358%*81.253% = 36.042% of the globally available visa numbers to Europe. The calculations for the other regions are similar.
AS 83.801%*18.747% = 15.710%
SA 16.199%*18.747% = 3.037%
AF 53.694%*81.253% = 43.628%
OC 1.931%*81.253% = 1.569%
NA 0.017%*81.253% = 0.014%
From Quota to Issuance
The regional quotas do not calculate how many visas will be issued in a region. They tell the Visa Office (VO) how many visa numbers they can feed into the region w/o redistribution from other regions, and how such a redistribution has to be done. The quotas are internals, not intended to be published, but all data to calculate them is out there.
Not all numbers allotted to a region will end up as issued visas. There is some "loss":
The losses have to be treated on a regional basis. To get a grip on them, I looked at over selected years (no redistribution) and compared issued visas and quotas (AOS cases don't actually get a "visa" but still burn visa numbers).
DV-2014 (52,342 visas, DS-230)
EU 18904/0.35057 = 53,924
AF 22703/0.44930 = 50,530
AS 8500/0.15781 = 53,862
OC 761/0.01458 = 52,195
SA. 1472/0.02761 = 53,314
DV-2015 (49,377 visas, DS-260)
EU 19811/0.37795 = 52,417
AF 19686/0.41763 = 47,137
AS 7570/0.16033 = 47,215
OC 844/0.01586 = 53,216
SA. 1459/0.02809 = 51,940
EU, SA, and OC operate with little or moderate loss. For AF and AS, the introduction of DS-260 had a devastating effect. That's the no-show problem in Africa. For Asia I can only surmise that DS-260 led to an increased last-minute submission demand from Iran, grabbing all remaining visa numbers w/o a chance of AP clearance by 9/30. But I have no clue, to be honest.
DV-2014 was a spectacular year for Europe. We witnessed how a region crashed into its quota cap, stopping in August with a trickling of cleared APs in September. The region was operating on 54/55 = 98%, that's a loss of 2% (NACARA, ...). That's as good as it gets. Topping this mark will be difficult. DV-2015 was peculiar, with a last-minute submission wave in NL2s for September (presumably from Uzbekistan) and mass deletion of cases in CEAC in September itself. Since 2016 DoS have noticeably improved their fraud detection, dramatically reducing the amount of "holes" in CEAC for EU region. That could further cut losses in Europe.
The Upshot
I have no hesitation in applying a "virtual" global quota of 53.5k (loss of 2.75%) in Europe and Oceania. In SA region 52.5k. But for Africa, I'd instead use 47.5k or 48k. Not sure about Asia -- with Iran practically banned anyway.
For DV-2018, I expect the regions to be able to get approximately the following numbers of visas without any redistribution:
AF 20,466
AS ??????
EU 19,568
OC 844
SA 1591
The Data
- Yearbook of Immigration Statistics (flow of lawful permanent residents, Table 10)
- CIA World Factbook (world population)
- Population of Northern Ireland
We first define two classes of regions having low and high admission to the U.S. in the past five years, respectively, and calculate the split of visa numbers between the two. The necessary data is found in Table 10 of the Yearbooks 2012-2016 (2017 is not yet published).
After the high-low-split is determined, we will allocate visa numbers within a class using population data for its regions, excluding all ineligible countries. You find a list of those in the DV instructions.
The Flow of Lawful Permanent Residents
Looking up Table 10 one can see different visa categories and the flow of LPRs broken down to country of birth. It's tempting to use the summary listed for the various "regions of birth," but that's not working because the Yearbook has an entirely different understanding of what constitutes a region (e.g., Mexico lies in North America).
Of all the visa categories available 203(c) takes the "family-sponsored" and "employment-based" preferences into account, as well as "immediate relatives of U.S. citizens." Scraping the data from the website (or downloading the excel files) will produce the table excerpt on the left. On the right is the cleaned version ("-" represents zero; undisclosed data "D" is also replaced by zero) with a carefully added column for the item's assigned region.
Grouping by region and aggregating the numbers we get the fy16 column of the following table. The other columns are the aggregates for 2012-2015, and lpr5year is the total flow in these years grouped by region.
The total flow is approx 4.2M, that is an average of 700k per region. Therefore, Asia and South America are "high-admission regions," and North America, Oceania, Europe, and Africa are deemed "low-admission regions."
The high-low-split is 81.253%:18.747%. The DV program now swaps this ratio: low-admission regions AF, EU, OC, and NA will be allotted 81.253% of the globally available visa numbers, AS and SA share the rest.
The Distribution Within the Two Classes
Using the links above for the world and Northern Ireland population, we add the region and an eligibility marker.
After removing ineligible countries and grouping by region, we can aggregate (I added the earlier high-low-split table for convenience).
We now have everything ready to calculate the quotas.
Europe lies in the class "Low," to which 81.253% of all visa numbers are allotted (split is swapped). Since Europe accounts for 44.358% of the population in the class, the Visa Office will apportion 44.358%*81.253% = 36.042% of the globally available visa numbers to Europe. The calculations for the other regions are similar.
AS 83.801%*18.747% = 15.710%
SA 16.199%*18.747% = 3.037%
AF 53.694%*81.253% = 43.628%
OC 1.931%*81.253% = 1.569%
NA 0.017%*81.253% = 0.014%
From Quota to Issuance
The regional quotas do not calculate how many visas will be issued in a region. They tell the Visa Office (VO) how many visa numbers they can feed into the region w/o redistribution from other regions, and how such a redistribution has to be done. The quotas are internals, not intended to be published, but all data to calculate them is out there.
Not all numbers allotted to a region will end up as issued visas. There is some "loss":
- (Prioritized) NACARA cases can reclaim "up to 5000" visa numbers. Statistics show that there are a few hundred such cases at best (DV is not alone sustaining NACARA).
- Other visa numbers will be lost due to no-shows, refusals or uncleared AP cases in September (maybe even July and August).
The losses have to be treated on a regional basis. To get a grip on them, I looked at over selected years (no redistribution) and compared issued visas and quotas (AOS cases don't actually get a "visa" but still burn visa numbers).
DV-2014 (52,342 visas, DS-230)
EU 18904/0.35057 = 53,924
AF 22703/0.44930 = 50,530
AS 8500/0.15781 = 53,862
OC 761/0.01458 = 52,195
SA. 1472/0.02761 = 53,314
DV-2015 (49,377 visas, DS-260)
EU 19811/0.37795 = 52,417
AF 19686/0.41763 = 47,137
AS 7570/0.16033 = 47,215
OC 844/0.01586 = 53,216
SA. 1459/0.02809 = 51,940
EU, SA, and OC operate with little or moderate loss. For AF and AS, the introduction of DS-260 had a devastating effect. That's the no-show problem in Africa. For Asia I can only surmise that DS-260 led to an increased last-minute submission demand from Iran, grabbing all remaining visa numbers w/o a chance of AP clearance by 9/30. But I have no clue, to be honest.
DV-2014 was a spectacular year for Europe. We witnessed how a region crashed into its quota cap, stopping in August with a trickling of cleared APs in September. The region was operating on 54/55 = 98%, that's a loss of 2% (NACARA, ...). That's as good as it gets. Topping this mark will be difficult. DV-2015 was peculiar, with a last-minute submission wave in NL2s for September (presumably from Uzbekistan) and mass deletion of cases in CEAC in September itself. Since 2016 DoS have noticeably improved their fraud detection, dramatically reducing the amount of "holes" in CEAC for EU region. That could further cut losses in Europe.
The Upshot
I have no hesitation in applying a "virtual" global quota of 53.5k (loss of 2.75%) in Europe and Oceania. In SA region 52.5k. But for Africa, I'd instead use 47.5k or 48k. Not sure about Asia -- with Iran practically banned anyway.
For DV-2018, I expect the regions to be able to get approximately the following numbers of visas without any redistribution:
AF 20,466
AS ??????
EU 19,568
OC 844
SA 1591
