Fact Pattern

We’ve Integrated Enhanced Visa Bulletin Into Consular Intelligence

jd@factpattern.io (J.D. Hollis) — Tue, 10 Feb 2026 00:00:00 -0600

We’ve integrated Enhanced Visa Bulletin into Consular Intelligence, and, as of today, we’ve sunset Enhanced Visa Bulletin as an independent product.

In the process, we’ve dropped support for tracking individual priority dates. While priority date tracking is useful, most of our customers were not taking advantage of it because of the extra data entry required. Ideally, we’d eliminate that with integration into existing case management or CRM software in the future.

Downloadable Visa Bulletin Forecast

jd@factpattern.io (J.D. Hollis) — Sun, 01 Jun 2025 00:00:00 -0500

Have a forecasting process that goes beyond tracking individual priority dates?

With an Enhanced Visa Bulletin Pro account, you can now download the month’s forecast in CSV and use it in Excel or your preferred forecasting tool.

Subscribe to Enhanced Visa Bulletin here.

– J.D.

IV Scheduling Status

jd@factpattern.io (J.D. Hollis) — Sun, 25 May 2025 00:00:00 -0500

The State Department has started publishing IV scheduling data. It’s not clear how often they’re refreshing the data, but we expect it will updated monthly.

We’ve integrated this data into individual post pages. Once we’ve gathered enough data, we hope to be able to start identifying actionable trends as well.

Subscribe to Consular Intelligence here.

– J.D.

NIV Appointment Wait Times

jd@factpattern.io (J.D. Hollis) — Sun, 25 May 2025 00:00:00 -0500

The State Department stopped updating the data feed we’ve been using for tracking NIV appointment wait times and interview waiver processing times for each post.

It seems interview waivers are mostly going away, but we have integrated the new appointment wait time data that State is publishing monthly.

The new data lacks the granularity we previously had, and it will take a while before we build up enough data to be able to identify trends.

Latest Officer Changes

jd@factpattern.io (J.D. Hollis) — Sun, 18 May 2025 00:00:00 -0500

We’ve started publishing a list of post leadership changes by date.

While it’s helpful to know who to contact when you have an issue at a post, we think it’s also helpful to keep track of who’s moving where (especially when you may already have their contact info). And if you’re frequently processing through particular posts, you’ll want to know when someone new has taken over so you don’t waste precious time contacting the prior occupant.

Priority Date Forecasts for the Next 12 Months

jd@factpattern.io (J.D. Hollis) — Mon, 13 Jan 2025 00:00:00 -0600

With the latest visa bulletin release today, we’ve extended our priority date forecasts from 3 months to 12 months.

Now you will have a better view of how your clients’ priority dates are going to move (or not move)—

Since the last visa bulletin, we’ve also added the prior month’s prediction to the forecast tables for comparison and polished up the change summaries to be a bit pithier.

Subscribe here.

– J.D.

Enhanced Visa Bulletin

jd@factpattern.io (J.D. Hollis) — Sun, 03 Nov 2024 00:00:00 -0500

Last night, we launched our Enhanced Visa Bulletin.

Keeping track of your clients’ priority dates can be a chore.

Every month, you start receiving questions about when they can expect to file. And every month, you have to flip between multiple visa bulletins to see how things moved (if they moved).

Even if you have a sense of how dates are trending, it’s difficult to predict too far out. And depending on how dates are moving, you may be caught flat-footed and have to scramble to get filings together.

Post Leadership Tracking

jd@factpattern.io (J.D. Hollis) — Wed, 03 Jan 2024 00:00:00 -0600

In consular advocacy, it’s important to pursue every avenue to get results for your client.

Sometimes that means raising your client’s issues to leadership at a post. You can raise prior processing concerns, resolve tricky issues, and get expedited appointments.

But how do you get in contact with post leadership?

The first step is learning who to contact.

We have added Consul General (CG) and Consular Section Chief (CON) tracking for each post. These are the people in post leadership most likely to have an impact on processing for your clients.

Consular Update

jd@factpattern.io (J.D. Hollis) — Fri, 15 Dec 2023 00:00:00 -0600

Coming out of our recent introduction of Latest Processing & Wait Time Changes into Consular Intelligence, we’ve created a free newsletter—

CONSULAR UPDATE

You’ll get a weekly update on processing and wait time changes as well as commentary from James on any processing issues of note.

Subscribe here.

– J.D.

Latest Processing & Wait Time Changes

jd@factpattern.io (J.D. Hollis) — Mon, 11 Dec 2023 00:00:00 -0600

To keep you better aware of how long posts are expecting processing to take, we’ve created a list of the latest processing and wait time changes, updated daily—

Non-immigrant visa processing and wait times provide a signal on the overall state of a post. When you see a significant increase or decrease that could reflect application load or availability of staff.

AIS Portal Links

jd@factpattern.io (J.D. Hollis) — Sat, 07 Oct 2023 00:00:00 -0500

We’ve added links to the AIS portals for each post in those countries.

The less time you need to spend searching for the links, the more time you can spend addressing your client’s needs.

Subscribe now and save yourself time.

– J.D.

Change Tracking for Interview Waiver Processing & Appointment Wait Times

jd@factpattern.io (J.D. Hollis) — Tue, 26 Sep 2023 00:00:00 -0500

Ever wonder how often a particular post actually updates it’s processing and wait time estimates?

Wonder no more. We’ve added a “last changed” date to go along with the sparkline history in Consular Intelligence—

Again, the data is self-reported by each post, but this should give you an idea of how fresh the estimates are and whether the post is even bothering to update their estimates on a regular basis.

Interview Waiver Processing & Appointment Wait Time History

jd@factpattern.io (J.D. Hollis) — Wed, 16 Aug 2023 00:00:00 -0500

One of our goals in creating Consular Intelligence was to provide insights you can’t get just by looking at the data the State Department provides (especially given how they often present it).

While we are starting off focusing on the basics that will be most likely to save you time, we believe we can provide you with better situational awareness and richer understanding as we aggregate more data about each post.

NIV Unit Email Addresses

jd@factpattern.io (J.D. Hollis) — Mon, 07 Aug 2023 00:00:00 -0500

NIV unit email addresses do not seem to be consistently published for any posts anywhere that we can find on State Department web sites.

So, we’ve integrated James’s personal database of NIV unit emails for 145 posts into Consular Intelligence.

The collection of this information is very manual, and the addresses themselves can be ephemeral. However, we think these addresses will be valuable to you (for as long as they continue to work).