The Department of State’s National Visa Center (NVC) saw a decrease in the immigrant visa (IV) backlog, from 408,456 pending cases last month to 388,908 cases in March — a 4.8% decrease.
The number of green card applicants whose cases were documentarily complete and ready to be scheduled for an interview decreased slightly this month, from 444,828 to 439,131 (a decrease of only about 6,000 cases). A case that is considered “documentarily complete” is a case in which all the required forms and documents have been submitted and accepted by the NVC, and therefore the case is ready for interview scheduling.
Despite the minimal decrease in case counts, the number of people scheduled for green card interviews saw a significant jump. The NVC scheduled 50,223 interviews in March, compared to 36,372 interviews in February.