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Will NACARA be tapped?

DV4ROGER

Active Member
There was a heated discussion on Simon's blog about regional quotas, density, embassy capacity – and everything cutoff, of course.
My 2¢ on this for CP in EU region, but no predictions:

Regional Quotas are Percentages

The law is clear about how to calculate the quotas. Less obvious is which of two possible five-year periods are used to harvest the necessary data. Trying both options shows that the difference is usually less than 1%, not worth bothering.
More important, the quotas are percentages. The number 18,300 doesn't make sense unless you add ”if the global target is 50k." The cap is a hot topic. Depending on who you ask, it's either 50k or 55k. My take as of today: it is 55k. That means VO work with a cap quota of 20,130 visa numbers for Europe in DV-2018, not 18,300.
The quotas are used by the Visa Office (VO) to guide the monthly assignment of visa numbers to cases and thereby determining the cutoffs in the visa bulletin. At the time when you see your case becoming current in the VB (and KCC had completed the processing of DS260 before), VO assigns to all members of the case their own visa number. Your case blocks these numbers for three months, and they count against the quota: There will never be more visa numbers in circulation then capped by the regional quota (if all regions are over selected).
The visa numbers will eventually become issued visas, or not (AP, refusal, no show). The consequence of your blocking the numbers before they turn into visas or can be reassigned is that the number of issued visas in EU will be noticeably lower than the theoretical regional quota. So don't expect to see 20,000 in the final tally.

The Myth of Capacity Issues

People spend a lot of time analyzing the workload of embassies to explain a purportedly slow progression of the monthly visa bulletin. It's a waste of time. If an embassy were to have a capacity issue, there is, as far as I know, a set procedure. The embassy has to cable a detailed report to VO. If accepted, VO will establish a special cutoff for the responsible foreign state of chargeability. If there is no special cutoff, there is no issue. So what holds the VB back?
It's the regional quota in conjunction with statutory regulations which try to spread the workload over the year. It's further the number of unused visa numbers returning to the pool. According to VO these returns fluctuate without a recognizable pattern and make for a difficult prediction of future visa number supply – I don't even mention VB number predictions.
Basically, VO look on the 8th of the month how many visa numbers they have (new + reusable) and assign almost all to cases on their list (reported by KCC), starting with the lowest case number on the list and cutting off when "all" visa numbers are assigned. If they have more visa numbers for the month than demand on the list, they publish a "current" in the bulletin. They keep a tiny fraction of these monthly numbers, presumably for AOS cases, for which VO know little about the real demand, I guess.

The above-mentioned regulations stipulate, for instance, that no more visa numbers than 54% of the global cap (55k) are made available during the first half of the year. Let's check.
CEAC 02/05/2018 should have counts (12963) of all numbers up to March interviews in EU. To detect reused counts (approx 500) you can track the status date for refused, ready and AP cases. There are more than 12k visa numbers in circulation. If the 54% rule were carried over to the region, there should be no more than 0.54*20130 = 10870! This is not slow, instead, VO push very hard on Europe.
The world itself seems to be at 55% (sic!) but I don't claim that the status date approach is perfect. The visa office states that they go as close as possible to the admissible maximum. CEAC confirms this superbly.
The rules apply to Q1, Q2, and Q3, not Q4. I expect an uptick in the next VB.

Density has Changed

DV-2018 is essentially a replay of DV-2017 with a moderate increase in density (+3.2%). That's enough to seriously jeopardize cases above 30k.
The more spectacular increases happened in 2016 (+9.8%) and 2017 (+7.0%). They flew under my radar since up until today I simply considered DV-2016 and DV-2017 big SNAFUs on VO's part (or DHS') and I didn't bother analyzing the data. That was a mistake. Sincere apologies to VO.
The increases, instead, are in my opinion testimonies to improved detection of fraudulent entries (particularly the first one). Very good news, if so. Adjusting the number of selectees under still developing conditions seems to be difficult. They under selected several regions in both years, even with a "second draw" in 2017 – and then increased the numbers by too much for DV-2018.
Even so, the seemingly botched DV-2017 now looks pretty well managed by VO. Accounts of AOS folks facing refusals for lack of visa numbers are outrageous but I somewhat doubt that that was VO's fault (see above).

The Global Cap is 55,000

DV-2017 shows more or less bluntly that VO is willing to tap deep into NACARA. There's a huge number of AP cases (1354, +800) in Asia, while the number of issued Iranian visas plummeted by almost the same amount. Since VO made the region current in March (for May) the majority of these assigned visa numbers for Iran are genuinely new and not simply reused. My reading: VO was willing to hand out approximately 8500 visas to AS region, that's 7% above quota if you assume a 50k cap. The percentages for EU region (+11%) and SA (+30%) are even more impressive, but remember that these include transfers from OC, and possibly AF. Only OC took a hit due to the lack of "documentarily qualified" cases (DV-2017 was slightly under selected), and AF shows the usual, annoying no-show problem, losing several thousands of issuances (but assigned visa numbers could be according to quota).
Here is little doubt that the global quota is not 50,000.

Tips for Number Crunchers

It's always good to have limited countries in the region. They make the calculations easier.
  • U2 will eventually get some 5300 visas. If you're the pessimistic type, work with 5500.
  • Stop analyzing case numbers below 18k, we have already accounted for U2. Stay focused on cases between 19k and 35k (non-U2) instead. The final cutoff will obviously fall in this range.
  • Count the real cases in this range and use it to determine the constant non-U2 density for case numbers from 0k through 35k.
  • Use CEAC 2017 between 18k and 30k or CEAC 2016 between 16k and 24k to get an idea of the typical non-U2 demand per real case.
  • Apply your findings to 2018. You can add an additional growth factor if you are pessimistic.
  • Make a table showing CP demand up to case number #####.
  • EU will have approx 3% approved AOS, burning some 600 visa numbers. Use 19,500 as a CP cap for EU.
  • Make some assumption about the dead visa numbers as of 9/30 COB.
  • Read your guesstimate for the September cutoff from the table.
  • Remember: it's a guess.
Eventually, one has to think about Iran's ban, and what happens with unused Asian visa numbers. The law would redistribute these among the other regions according to relative quota, 43.4% for Europe. That could be a boon of several hundred visas to EU in September.

Lastly, thanks to the folks who make ceac files available, and sorry for the unduly long post.
 
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I haven’t seen the discussion on the blog.
I’ve tended to work on the assumption of a 55k cap, until recently, when (I know there isn’t agreement with some of you guys on this) i’m thinking that as part the current administration’s crackdown all the soft bits have been cut away from immigration and that 50k is the number to work with (it’s not just DV, see recent article in nyt on kids from abused backgrounds).

Also, as far as I can make out and admittedly only looking from DV2007, the only years that DV issuance has exceeded 50k are DVs 10, 11, 13 and 14 (all of those being a little over 51k so still nowhere near 55k). This makes me reluctant to place too much faith in 55k as a target.
 
.... except that they are controlling the VB numbers as if they don't want to exceed 18300. They slammed the brakes on for April interviews, and have continued with that same slow pace. April seemed like an anomaly, May repeated and gave me concerns , so once the June interviews were also slow, I published my concern. So - no - I tend not to believe the a global quota over 50k.
 
More Gloom Than Glee:

uc


Sources:
CEAC 18000-23000 (DV-2017)
CEAC 19000-20300 (DV-2018)


 
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