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I’ve written before on this blog about how the Diversity Visa process actually works in detail — steps, documents, the interview, all of it. I won’t repeat all the mechanics here, but it’s worth a quick reminder of the framework, because this post is more about how the past year actually went for us, not a how-to.
Quick refresher on how it works
Every year, the US government draws up to 55,000 immigrant visas through this program, split across world regions (USCIS). Getting selected doesn’t automatically mean you get the visa — more people are usually selected than there are visas available, precisely because a lot of selectees don’t end up meeting the requirements or drop out along the way. You get a “case number,” and every month the State Department publishes a Visa Bulletin saying which case numbers become eligible for an embassy interview the following month.
That number doesn’t mean the same thing from one year to the next. Two people with the same case number, in two different years, can have completely different odds, because the density of cases per range differs — and because plenty of selected cases get disqualified along the way (wrong photo, insufficient education, multiple entries, and so on), so between case number 1 and case number 100, say, there aren’t necessarily 100 valid people.
Our case
We were selected for fiscal year 2025 (the one that already ended, on September 30, 2025), with a case number around 29,000 — a bit over that, to be precise. Right from the start, a fairly high number, with fairly small odds.
That year turned out to be dense in terms of selections, but at the same time not all available visas were issued. The change of administration that happened along the way threw a wrench into things — processing stalled repeatedly, without there being an actual need for that — and that’s what kept us from ever reaching our turn for an interview. A bunch of available visas were essentially lost, never issued. A sad year, in that sense.
And then came fiscal year 2026, which is even worse
This fiscal year (2026), which also ends on September 30 — this month — is much worse. Even though case numbers reached high levels and became eligible, interviews were put on hold, and the current administration, which is broadly anti-immigration, doesn’t like this program.
What was just my impression from the recording turned out to be confirmed in the news too: the State Department at one point suspended immigrant visa interview scheduling worldwide, and in December 2025 it went further and suspended the actual issuance of DV visas, pending a “security review” (Fragomen). On August 25, 2026, a federal judge (Richard Leon) ruled these suspensions unlawful — calling them “arbitrary and capricious” — and called September 30 an “unforgiving deadline” for DV2026 selectees (Vision Times, Prokerala). The ruling ordered authorities to resume standard processing, but for now it applies in a limited way, and the deadline itself hasn’t moved. So exactly what I was saying: judges order interviews to resume, but the administration drags its feet, and the fiscal year doesn’t wait for anyone.
My part of the story
Being a programmer by trade, and someone who likes statistics, I checked almost every day how many visas had been issued, what case number things had reached, especially for the Bucharest embassy. I built a program that scraped all the available data — it took about an hour to run and pull everything up to date.
For me, it was one continuous stress. When you’re in that kind of uncertainty, not knowing whether you’ll eventually get a shot at an interview or not, it’s really hard. From May 2024, when we found out we’d been selected, until September 30, 2025, when the fiscal year ended, I was pretty much always stressed. Until the very last Visa Bulletin was published, we didn’t know whether our number would come up or not, whether we’d have a shot at an interview or not.
I wouldn’t recommend the stress I went through — and indirectly, my wife Catalina too — to anyone. You don’t know anything, at any point. You don’t know if you’ll make it to your turn, you don’t know if you’ll get a shot at an interview. Only if you have a low case number can you sit relatively calm, in a normal year. But this fiscal year, 2026, even low numbers weren’t spared the stress — and even now, at the end of August, it’s not clear whether everyone eligible will actually get their visa before September 30.
The program is more complicated than it needs to be, because it depends enormously on which administration happens to be in power at the time — it can prioritize it, it can not prioritize it, it can put it almost entirely on hold, even though that’s largely illegal, as we’ve just seen with the judge’s ruling.
How it ended for us
When we found out, from the last Visa Bulletin, that the number hadn’t moved up enough and we wouldn’t make it to an interview, it was disappointing — but at the same time it was also a relief, simply because it was over. We knew we had no more chances left, there was no point checking every day what was happening. It was a double-edged sword: we found out we wouldn’t get an immigrant visa, but the long stress of over a year, in which you never knew anything for sure, was also over.
Think about it: you don’t know whether to make investments here, in the country you’re living in. You don’t know whether to build something onto the house, renovate something, or put everything on hold because you might actually be leaving. For us, every time some home investment came up, we’d say “let’s leave it, let’s see first if we get the visa, and then we’ll make decisions on that front.” A hard year, which ended with a disappointment, but also with a kind of peace — because, finally, we had the final answer. A year and a bit in which everything was a question mark had reached its end.
And even though it was disappointing, we got through it reasonably okay. But if you ever win the visa lottery — if this program keeps running — know that an emotional rollercoaster is waiting for you.
If you still have questions about the Diversity Visa program, or the “visa lottery” as it’s known back home, feel free to ask me. But what I can tell you upfront is that if you win it, you should expect a lot of emotions over the course of the fiscal year you won in.
Sources for the legal/current-events context:
- Green Card Through the Diversity Immigrant Visa Program – USCIS
- Update on Diversity Visa (DV) Program 2025 – travel.state.gov
- USCIS Suspends Approvals of Pending Diversity Visa Adjustment Applications – Fragomen
- US visa pause raises stakes for green card lottery winners facing Sept. 30 deadline – Vision Times
- US judge lifts Diversity Visa suspensions – Prokerala
The conversation continues here.