Data and method

Where the figures come from

Every value is transcribed from the Visa Bulletin published by U.S. Department of State, Bureau of Consular Affairs. Each issue on this site records the URL it was read from, and every table links back to it. Nothing is taken from a mirror, an aggregator, or from memory, and the build rejects any source that is not a travel.state.gov address.

What the build refuses to publish

• An issue missing any category or any chargeability area, on either chart.
• A gap in the monthly series, which would make a movement chart overstate the pace.
• A cell whose state and date disagree, such as a current cell carrying a date.
• Data whose newest issue is more than 75 days old.

Retrogressions are reported as warnings rather than errors. They are real events, but they are rare enough that flagging them catches a transcription slip before it is published as news.

How movement is calculated

Movement is the difference between two published cut-offs, in days, shown in months at one decimal place. Pace divides that by the number of months between the two issues. A pace below one means the cut-off advanced less than a month for each month that passed, so the queue lengthened in real terms.

A category that is current or unavailable has no cut-off, so it has no movement. Those months are shown as state changes instead of being silently treated as zero.

What is deliberately absent

There is no forecast anywhere on this site. Past pace records what happened; it is not a schedule, and the factors that move a cut-off are not visible in the bulletin. A confident prediction would be the most harmful thing this site could publish, so it publishes none.