The day the “Visa bulletin” no longer mattered

For the past few years, visits to the  US Department of State Visa Bulletin Website were a monthly ritual:

http://travel.state.gov/visa/bulletin/bulletin_1360.html

Through this site, the US government announced the cut-off dates for the visa and residency applications that would be processed the following month. These bulletins were posted on either the 7th or 15th, so on those days the first thing I did when I woke up was pickup my smartphone, and visit these sites. There were many disappointing mornings.

What you hoped to see was a “C”, short for “current”, beside your application category. That meant that there was no delay in processing and you could gauge your wait based on established timelines for your type of application. For the past four years, however, instead of a letter, I saw a date. The date represents the last application that would be handled. If the date was earlier than yours, that meant that your papers were still in a folder or shelf or somewhere . . . untouched. Better luck next month.

There was no discernible pattern for advancement of that date. I had a friend at work who was a math major, who was also waiting on his own papers, and actually tried to work out the trends, but to no avail. Months would go by with no change. On other times, the site visit felt like a bad Twilight Zone episode because the processing date would actually move backwards . . . sometimes several years backwards. Officially, the practice was called “retrogression”, and was supposedly part of how the US government managed immigration quotas. I just called it an out-of-body-experience.

All that changed on the 19th of June,  2011 when this came in the mail. Total wait time: 2,100 days . . . 5.75 years . . . over half a decade.

The package actually arrived on the 18th, but we were camping that day so didn’t see the package till we came back the day after.

To those still in visa bulletin hell, hang in there.