RR159

In February DR received 595 out of 1198 F2B’s(49.7%) In March DR received 310 out of 864 F2B’s (35.9%) Certainly the trend is in the right direction!!

#2 is the obvious threat, has happened before, although they tried to blame it on Covid. But #1 is the long term threat, since they are not enforcing the per country limits in place. So either DR today or some other country in future will continue to dominate and take majority of visas and rest of the world can do nothing about it.

Please feel free to chime in below….. Which one is a bigger threat? 1. Majority of the recent advances in priority date will be captured by Dominican Republic and they will resume getting roughly half of the available F2B’s. 2. The annual limit of 26,266 F2B visas will not be fulfilled this year and all the unused F2B’s along with other unused family categories will be handed over to employment categories at the end of the year.

It actually supports the concerns about DR. Page 5 of the same document says: (The per country limit in INA 202 sets an annual maximum on the amount of Family preference visas which may be issued to applicants from any one country; the FY 2024 per country limit will be 15,820.) In the first 5 months of FY 2024, DR already received 13,870. At this rate it’s hard to imagine the limit will not be exceeded by the end of the year.

One way DoS can clear up any doubts and resentment among RoW is to publish a countrywide breakdown of F2B candidates waiting for their PD to become current. That list will clearly show if DR indeed has about half of the candidates in the waiting pool.

On a more serious note, F2B people will be lucky if the priority date moves by one week in the visa bulletin for May 2024. https://travel.state.gov/content/dam/visas/Statistics/Immigrant-Statistics/MonthlyIVIssuances/FEBRUARY%202024%20-%20IV%20Issuances%20by%20FSC%20or%20Place%20of%20Birth%20and%20Visa%20Class.pdf With five months of statistics available in the 2024 cycle, a total of 8,880 F2B visas are issued out of an average expected 10,944 (=26,266x5/12). So not much wiggle room for a large movement. And it will continue to stay that way for the foreseeable future. At least for the rest of the world other than Dominican Republic. DR continues to grab about half of available F2B’s. 8 people sat down to share a large pizza, cut into 8 equal slices. One of them immediately grabs 4 slices and leaves. The other 7 looks at each other, trying to understand what happened. After a while they are forced to eat about half slices each, happy that they at least got half a slice. The person who was supposed to supervise them keeps quiet, avoiding any eye contact with them

In the Jan ‘24 visa bulletin priority date for F2B Mexico moved by an astonishing amount of 539 days!! Was it: 1) A mistake by dept of state? 2) Or was it because the beneficiaries moved on, got married, became parents, settled down, became grandparents… Does it mean that F2B RoW will now start to move by 100’s days at a time?

Pointing out the exact misunderstood numbers would be helpful. There are no mysteries in those numbers, they are openly available from 2023 annual reports: 1) https://travel.state.gov/content/dam/visas/Statistics/AnnualReports/FY2023AnnualReport/FY2023_AR_TableIII.pdf 2) https://travel.state.gov/content/dam/visas/Statistics/AnnualReports/FY2023AnnualReport/FY2023_AR_TableV_Part4.pdf 3) https://travel.state.gov/content/dam/visas/Statistics/AnnualReports/FY2023AnnualReport/FY2023_AR_TableV_Part1.pdf Summary of countries exceeding the limit at various levels: F2B: DR-13.7k, Phil-3k, Mex-2.6k, Viet-2.3k, out of a total 28.7k issued Family (preference): DR-41.4k, Mex-29.7k, Viet-19k, Cuba-16.3k, Ind-14.7k, out of a total 205k issued Family +Emploment (preference): Ind-41.9k, DR-41.8k, Mex-38.4k, CHN-28.4k, Phil-28.4k, out of a total 399k Immediate relatives are NOT considered preference categories so should not be included for limits, which The Immigration Forum article seems to have done. The reason why nobody is doing anything about this uneven distribution is that lawyers are busy making money off of helping to move family visa quotas over to the employment visas. (21k moved last October) DoS is not doing anything new to fix it because it’s too much work! They can easily apply separate cut off dates for ALL countries exceeding the limits (DR for example). At this digital age this should not be an issue.