Department Of State Provides Immigrant Visa Allocation Information
September 24th, 2009 by Brian D. Zuccaro
In connection with the notification that all employment-based visas had been allocated for FY2009, Charles Oppenheim, Chief, Immigrant Control and Reporting Division Visa Services Office, provided the following background explaining how the Department of State allocates visas through its Immigrant Visa Allocation Management System (IVAMS):
USCIS submits requests for visa authorizations if all required case processing has been completed (e.g., interview [if required], all clearances received, etc.). Therefore, once the authorization has been granted the case would be adjusted immediately, and could be forwarded to the “green card” processing facility. If the case is not within the established cut-off date the request goes into our “pending” demand file, which also contains the demand which has been received from our overseas posts. That demand is then used as the basis for the establishment of future cut-off dates.
When a USCIS authorization is made from the “pending” demand file an e-mail message is sent to a single address which each CIS Office has provided to the Immigrant Control and Reporting Division. The first page(s) of the message provides a summary listing of the A-numbers which have been authorized, and the following pages contain an individual authorization page for each A-number. That listing would be the same type as received if the case had been authorized when the USCIS Officer had originally submitted the request. Such authorizations are assumed to have been processed to conclusion during the month of authorization. If not, USCIS must notify VO that the case was not processed, the case record would then be deleted, and the case would be resubmitted to VO once the reasons for the deletion have been resolved.
If the Officer believes that a case should have been authorized, but has not received such notification, the program which is used to submit requests has a feature for checking on the status of individual A-numbers.
The authorizations from the “pending” demand file are sent to a central address to ensure that they are seen by someone should the officer who originally requested the case not be there (e.g., reassigned, on leave, etc.). If authorization is immediately available at the time of request the response would be send to the requesting officer, not the central address.
See AILA InfoNet Doc. No. 09240920
