
Originally Posted by
Spectator
I’m not sure what you mean by “all other countries "current" even after they reach their 7% limit for this year”
There isn’t a 7% limit for the category “All Chargeability Areas Except Those Listed” (sometimes called ROW).
ROW refers to over 200 individual Countries, each of which has their own 7% limit.
If one (or more) of those Countries reaches their 7% limit, then they will be shown separately in the VB with their own Cut Off Dates.
ROW will retrogress in a category when the overall demand is more than overall visas available for that category in the FY.
If overall demand for ROW is less than the number of visas available to them, then horizontal spillover will occur.
As someone else has mentioned, the 7% allocation does not necessarily mean exact prorated numbers in each category.
The 7% figure is calculated based on the total EB & FB allocations
e.g. (271,500 + 226,000) * 7% = 34,825.
Lower use elsewhere can allow more use in a category, so long as total use across all categories (both EB & FB) does not exceed the total 7% figure.
You can't make the blanket statement of "those countries should get capped off at 7% ( ~5K visas) for this year" because it doesn't quite work like that.
Only a handful of Countries even approach 7% overall use.