Visa Interview Question about passport

[hannibal329 0]

My wife and I are scheduled for our interview on the 30th of November. We have all of our documents ready and are just waiting for the interview. I want to know if the immigration officer will keep her passport after the interview and whether or not this can be bypassed? My wife is a flight attendant and cannot go without her passport for a few days as she needs to work. She's not scheduled for any time off until February but that doesn't work for my schedule. I never thought, until now, that they would keep her passport cause I've been issued visas here in Korea and in Hong Kong and neither place kept my passport. Does anyone know how long they would hold it for if they did in fact, have to keep her passport?

[mallafri76 1,012]

They keep it for printing the immigration visa, so how long they keep it depends on how fast/slow the embassy is. I think the average time is about two weeks.

[Ryan H 3,790]

Moved from IR-1/CR-1 Process & Procedures to US Embassy & Consulate Discussion.

[Ryan H 3,790]

***Hijack post removed along with posts quoting. Content that addresses the OP restored below. If you have your own question, you need to start your own thread.***

Generally if you're approved on the spot, they keep your passport. You'll get it back once they've stamped in the visa and gone through all of the regular processing. Usually the turn around time is a couple of weeks.

The only time you get your passport back is if they request more documents, they want to do further check ups on you, or you're denied.

Well, if they intend to keep her passport for that long, we simply can never do it. She doesn't get a couple of weeks off. At best, she gets 10 business days once a year, but trying to time that with an interview is a logistical nightmare. She can transfer to a base in LA or NY once she has the visa, but if we can't get her passport in a shorter time frame, I guess we'll just stay abroad.