DV-2023

This is a fair question. To make informed decisions, we want all to have accurate facts. Please see them below.

Following Judge Mehta’s prioritization of our Mohammed and Fonjong plaintiffs in his September 4, 2020, most of those clients (about 300) entered the US and already have green cards. A couple who chose military service are already US citizens. Most of our DV-2020 clients who were not issued visas are Kennedy plaintiffs who did not hire us until 2 weeks before the fiscal year was over. They understood then our goal was reserving visas for them for issuance after the end of the fiscal year, and on September 30, 2020, Judge Mehta issued the order that preserved their journeys. Although we subsequently won summary judgment, the Biden administration has appealed that order and we are awaiting the outcome of that appeal.

For DV-2020 selectees whose journeys still continue, that is only due to the lawsuits.

There are over 1,000 families (3,000 issued DVs) who were our Jacob v Biden, Rai v Biden, or Goodluck v Biden plaintiffs who were issued visas in FY-2021 and entered the US and issued green cards. 

However, most of our DV-2021 clients are Rai v Biden or Goodluck v Biden plaintiffs (about 10,000 families/20k DV applicants) whose journey continues because we won court orders in the last weeks of September 2021 from Judge Chutkan and Judge Mehta. However, the Biden administration appealed those orders, and we are awaiting the outcome of those appeals. For DV-2021 selectees whose journeys still continue, that is only due to the lawsuits.

Our DV-2022 litigation, which included 4 group lawsuits and nearly 50 individual mandamus lawsuits, led to the State Department issuing more Diversity Visas than any year in history, even exceeding the number of visas allotted by Congress. I understand this is of little satisfaction to the minority of our DV2022 who were not issued visas. But let’s look at numbers. 

• For our flagship DV-2022 group case, UAO v Biden, 52% of our plaintiffs were issued visas.
• Our smaller DV-2022 group cases, Hamed v Blinken and Tesfaye v Blinken, were effective in changing the interview transfer policy for Iraqis, and improving pace of interviews at Khartoum and Addis Ababa. 
• A smaller DV-2022 group case, filed later in fiscal year on August 25, 2022 for Iranians awaiting interviews at Abu Dhabi, was not that effective, although even a few plaintiffs in that case were likely issued visas to impress the judge in the process.

For the about 50 individual mandamus lawsuits MU filed in FY-2022, we had mixed results. 

• In the courts, the State Department decided to fight us with all they had, but to impress the many judges (we had cases before 12-13 different judges), they made a dramatic push to schedule interviews and issue visas in September to prevent judges from ordering that they reserve visas for the future. 
• That strategy worked, and no judges reserved unused visas, in part because there weren’t any. So, indirectly, many of our DV-2022 clients benefited from that push by the State Department, even when the judges did not sympathize with their lawsuits.

Our big takeaway from DV-2022 individual mandamus lawsuits, however, is the only ones that have a good chance of getting the desired outcome (issued visas), are the ones filed in July or before for applicants who are stuck in post-interview AP.  

• Thus, for FY-2023, we are only accepting DV-2023 selectees for mandamus lawsuits if they have attended interview and are stuck in post-interview AP. 
• Also, because we need time to work and we already have a 4-week backlog of mandamus cases to file, Morrison Urena will not be accepting DV-2023 clients after Thursday, June 29, 2023. So if you are considering this option, understand that is only available now and not a week from now.