Ok well its not that straight forward.
Firstly lets look at the numbers, then it will all become clear, The DV is not totally chance there is a lot we can learn from the statistics.
DV-2007 according the August bulletin, when you total up the winners for Africa you get about 44000. That means last year during the course of DV-2007 44000 people from Africa were sent NL’s.
During the Allocation of the NL’s the law states that:
“A qualified entry submitted electronically directly by an applicant has an equal chance of being selected by the computer at the Kentucky Consular Center” and “Every entry received during the lottery registration period will have an equal random chance of being selected within its region”.
see: http://travel.state.gov/pdf/DV_2008_Final.pdf Page 6.
So the KCC computer goes of and randomly selected 44000 people from the list of applicants. Although “randomness” is very hard to replicate in a computer system, (don’t forget I am a software engineer!) but that is another debate
So think about it logically person one is from country A, person two from country B person 3 from country C and so on.
Now the laws of probability state that if from a pool of 2 million applicants there is half a million applicants from one country (this is a typical amount that apply from Nigeria every year), And there is an equal chance of any one person being selected, then there is a higher chance of someone from that country ending up being selected.
Think about it like this if there were 20 people in a room, 10 people from Ireland, 2 from Austria, 2 from Poland, 2 from Hungary, 2 from Belgium and 2 from Bulgaria.
Now I get all the people to mix them self up into a random order, I blindfold you and get you to pick out 5 people. All things being equal you are going to select mostly Irish people as the pool that you are picking from has 10 Irish people in it. Make sense??
So that concludes my probability tutorial!
That is basically how the regional selection works. This year the top three countries that got NL’s in Africa were:
NIGERIA 9,849
EGYPT 7,229
ETHIOPIA 6,871
This was directly due to the number of qualified applicants in the selection pool. These total nearly 24000.
Now Remember that the NL’s for Africa ran from 2007AF00000001
All the way to 2007AF00044000. but the order in which people from each country was allocated NL’s was totally random (see above) that means that in this range 9,849 people from Nigeria were selected, 7,229 were selected from Egypt and 6,871 from Ethiopia were selected. Now comes the tricky part, why is Nigera now capped at 18,000 and what is the over all effect of this?
This means that the US is most likely nearing the 3500 (7%) GC cap for these countries. That unfortunately possibly puts people, that have high number at risk of never having there number become current.
Its unfortunate, but remember the DV system is designed first most to be fair, and give every one a chance. If too many people from any one country apply then rather then have the whole DV issuing GC’s to that country, they end up getting capped at 7%.
That means that there will end up being thousands of people who may never have a current number.
The absolute maximum number of GC’s that can be issued to these three countries is 10500, and in reality it will be a good few thousand less, going by past GC’s issued.
This in effect will leave up to 13500 people high and dry. So People in the queue with numbers above AF2007AF00018000 for now are out of the system.
And there could be as many as 7500 of them for Nigeria alone.
That means in order for the US to meet the 50,000 quota they have to race through the AF numbers to get people from other African nations that only have a small amount of NL’s with numbers above this.
That is how people with seemingly high numbers in AF still manage to become current and get there GC’s. Simply because so many thousands of people are stuck frozen in the DV process because so many people from there country are in getting their GC’s processed.
So I hope that all makes sense to people and goes some way to dispel the illusion that the DV is some magical thing, its not, its all statistics and probability and a small bit of luck for those involved.
No what is means that the US is getting close to the Ukraine’s and Ethiopia’s 7% fair share of the GC’s. So they cant really process any more cases, so they cap the countries. as they cant by law give more then 7% they have to slow down the interviewing for these countries, they just cant continue giving them GC’s and it just so happens that this point arrived when the cut off numbers were at 13000.
They move because the CG’s stats change month to month and they have to move the interviews to match. Don’t forget that the US are obliged under the law to issue the DV GC’s they have to meet there 50000 target as best they can.
This is a puzzler I don’t know what to make of this???
Never boring, as I said I studied statistics while I was doing my computer science degree and I love analysing numbers. I refuse to believe that this DV process is only down to luck, and in fact its not.
Once there are too many people from a country who have got NL’s then the chances of getting a GC is much lower as your number gets higher. That is the way the DV is designed, its unfair to people in those countries, but at the same time its unfair to small countries to lose out just because too many people from another country applied. It’s a debate alright, the system is good and bad, I guess it just depends what country you are in.
Questions???
Firstly lets look at the numbers, then it will all become clear, The DV is not totally chance there is a lot we can learn from the statistics.
DV-2007 according the August bulletin, when you total up the winners for Africa you get about 44000. That means last year during the course of DV-2007 44000 people from Africa were sent NL’s.
During the Allocation of the NL’s the law states that:
“A qualified entry submitted electronically directly by an applicant has an equal chance of being selected by the computer at the Kentucky Consular Center” and “Every entry received during the lottery registration period will have an equal random chance of being selected within its region”.
see: http://travel.state.gov/pdf/DV_2008_Final.pdf Page 6.
So the KCC computer goes of and randomly selected 44000 people from the list of applicants. Although “randomness” is very hard to replicate in a computer system, (don’t forget I am a software engineer!) but that is another debate
So think about it logically person one is from country A, person two from country B person 3 from country C and so on.
Now the laws of probability state that if from a pool of 2 million applicants there is half a million applicants from one country (this is a typical amount that apply from Nigeria every year), And there is an equal chance of any one person being selected, then there is a higher chance of someone from that country ending up being selected.
Think about it like this if there were 20 people in a room, 10 people from Ireland, 2 from Austria, 2 from Poland, 2 from Hungary, 2 from Belgium and 2 from Bulgaria.
Now I get all the people to mix them self up into a random order, I blindfold you and get you to pick out 5 people. All things being equal you are going to select mostly Irish people as the pool that you are picking from has 10 Irish people in it. Make sense??
So that concludes my probability tutorial!
That is basically how the regional selection works. This year the top three countries that got NL’s in Africa were:
NIGERIA 9,849
EGYPT 7,229
ETHIOPIA 6,871
This was directly due to the number of qualified applicants in the selection pool. These total nearly 24000.
Now Remember that the NL’s for Africa ran from 2007AF00000001
All the way to 2007AF00044000. but the order in which people from each country was allocated NL’s was totally random (see above) that means that in this range 9,849 people from Nigeria were selected, 7,229 were selected from Egypt and 6,871 from Ethiopia were selected. Now comes the tricky part, why is Nigera now capped at 18,000 and what is the over all effect of this?
This means that the US is most likely nearing the 3500 (7%) GC cap for these countries. That unfortunately possibly puts people, that have high number at risk of never having there number become current.
Its unfortunate, but remember the DV system is designed first most to be fair, and give every one a chance. If too many people from any one country apply then rather then have the whole DV issuing GC’s to that country, they end up getting capped at 7%.
That means that there will end up being thousands of people who may never have a current number.
The absolute maximum number of GC’s that can be issued to these three countries is 10500, and in reality it will be a good few thousand less, going by past GC’s issued.
This in effect will leave up to 13500 people high and dry. So People in the queue with numbers above AF2007AF00018000 for now are out of the system.
And there could be as many as 7500 of them for Nigeria alone.
That means in order for the US to meet the 50,000 quota they have to race through the AF numbers to get people from other African nations that only have a small amount of NL’s with numbers above this.
That is how people with seemingly high numbers in AF still manage to become current and get there GC’s. Simply because so many thousands of people are stuck frozen in the DV process because so many people from there country are in getting their GC’s processed.
So I hope that all makes sense to people and goes some way to dispel the illusion that the DV is some magical thing, its not, its all statistics and probability and a small bit of luck for those involved.
No what is means that the US is getting close to the Ukraine’s and Ethiopia’s 7% fair share of the GC’s. So they cant really process any more cases, so they cap the countries. as they cant by law give more then 7% they have to slow down the interviewing for these countries, they just cant continue giving them GC’s and it just so happens that this point arrived when the cut off numbers were at 13000.
They move because the CG’s stats change month to month and they have to move the interviews to match. Don’t forget that the US are obliged under the law to issue the DV GC’s they have to meet there 50000 target as best they can.
This is a puzzler I don’t know what to make of this???
I hope these questions are not boring to you
Never boring, as I said I studied statistics while I was doing my computer science degree and I love analysing numbers. I refuse to believe that this DV process is only down to luck, and in fact its not.
Once there are too many people from a country who have got NL’s then the chances of getting a GC is much lower as your number gets higher. That is the way the DV is designed, its unfair to people in those countries, but at the same time its unfair to small countries to lose out just because too many people from another country applied. It’s a debate alright, the system is good and bad, I guess it just depends what country you are in.
Questions???