""The China Hack Job"" just how bad is it?

[raven52 233]

Marine 1,

Thank you for your service!

And WHO, and what administration, is allowing all of this to happen to this country?

To my knowledge, this is un-presidented, as to what is happening to this country. Has it ever happened before? Does anybody other than us common people care?

May God help us common people, get through this nightmare called USCIS, and never have to deal with it again.

I feel so bad for those people, just approaching their interviews, which they have been waiting so long for at long suffering TSC..,.,.,.and how they must feel, knowing this is going on!

[SantyAndAllie 155]

I do think there is a distinct possibility that in their haste to catch up, mistakes may occur. I surely do hope that is not the case, but we shall see.

I was already frustrated with my now month long wait on my K1 visa, but now add this on top of that, jeez. I'm honestly at a loss for words at how badly lady luck is standing me up on this date.

A month long for what? NOA2? Bad luck??? You were lucky! Can't see your timeline (you should fill that out so the data can help others), but if you were at CSC, you didn't have bad luck! A lot of us had to wait at 6+ months being at TSC just for a NOA2. Still others who are at 8 months with no NOA2. How we'd love to have gotten it within a month! We're at 8+ months now and have our interview Monday, but with this, who knows when we'll actually get our visa?! So yeah, we got the crappiest luck of the draw here!

[malenliam 18]

two months in AP..still counting.

so sad....

[diane79 14]

my interview is tomorrow.... waiting all these months and now this..

[shadowflex 8]

I had interview on 11th june. I was approved but no date to pick up visa yet owing to their system problem

[tarzan31 27]

I do think there is a distinct possibility that in their haste to catch up, mistakes may occur. I surely do hope that is not the case, but we shall see.

I was already frustrated with my now month long wait on my K1 visa, but now add this on top of that, jeez. I'm honestly at a loss for words at how badly lady luck is standing me up on this date.

Wow Trenz, Month Long ! I applied on July 28,2014.........Was stuck in the TSC backlog.....My case wasn't approved through Texas for 222 days, Now this!! Interview on June 5, 2015. Was told AP would be till Tuesday and Visa issued on Wednesday. Glitch happens on Monday !! And if you do an internet search, you will see that this glitch happens at least every other year , if it is a glitch. I have seen that people are saying it is a hack, however, historical data would suggest a glitch in the system. With the number of passports and visa being issued worldwide on foreign soil, I am surprised it doesn't happen more often. Just torture for we who wait. I am right about at 11 months. Deployments are starting to have felt easier to deal with than this process.....

[Darnell 8,478]

I would say yes, even if all your paperwork has been reviewed and your visa is ready to be issued, the embassy is unable to print a visa until this issue is resolved.

I concur.

The timetick that's important here,

is

'Date of Visa Printing'

which may be

--same day of approval, with status flipping to 'issued' in CEAC or

--any day after 'Issued', as 'Issued' never means 'print the Visa Foil and attach it to the passport'

So, although she got everything IN to the IV Unit,

there's still several internal queues where stuff has to get into the casefile,

then a human review it,

then a human (usually a ConOff, a Vice-Consul in the IV Unit) 'approves the approval'

then the casefile moves on to another queue for further casefile processing.

Close to the end of this process, the visa foil stamp is printed and glued into the passport,

then the casefile is moved to another desk. time passes, the casefile is prepared into that 'do not open' envelope, then it sits on the loading dock awaiting the 2Go courier.

When the visa foil stamp is printed, the visa application was approved, prior, and the casefile status at CEAC should be 'Issued'.

HTH !

[Marine 1 4]

raven52

It is my understanding that USCIS (translated in english means extremely slow) falls under the authority of the "Department of Homeland Security" or DHS for short.

In other words, nobody is watching out for us, DHS is too busy listening to all of our private phone calls and emails that it leaves no time to manage their departments.

Don't get me wrong here, I am all about secure borders and a secure country. But here is the reality, most of the people that come here to do us harm are not applying for visas !!!

Similar to gun control laws, criminals don't apply for gun licenses, typically only honest hard working Americans do. This is a generalization but i'm sure you get the point.

Lets be honest here, is it no wonder that we have 26 million illegals in the country, 90% of them being hard working good people that need to feed a family and can't wait

three months to a year for approval. If the system were more efficient and user friendly I would bet cash dollars that the number of illegals would drop dramatically here in the US.

I am totally disgusted with the USCIS and their slower than turtle speed for processing our petitions. Not to mention being penalized based on where you live. I mean my documents went to Texas also.

And now this new breach of our information, everything about us is out there to be had by scumbags that prey on innocent peoples information to use as they wish !!

I hope it all turns out good for us in the long run, and those in limbo for visas again, more waiting. This is BS at it's finest.

God Bless us All, bring our fiancee's to us so we can pursue the American dream of happiness and liberty as our Founding fathers intended.

Semper-Fi

[Trenz 52]

A month long for what? NOA2? Bad luck??? You were lucky! Can't see your timeline (you should fill that out so the data can help others), but if you were at CSC, you didn't have bad luck! A lot of us had to wait at 6+ months being at TSC just for a NOA2. Still others who are at 8 months with no NOA2. How we'd love to have gotten it within a month! We're at 8+ months now and have our interview Monday, but with this, who knows when we'll actually get our visa?! So yeah, we got the crappiest luck of the draw here!

Hey there,

I think you may be confused as to what I am talking about. Today marks the one month point since my interview, not one month in total since the start of my application. I had my application handled through CSC where the process actually did move along at quite a quick pace, but that is not what I was referring to.

In total I am at around the 6+ month mark (yes, I know this is not longer than others), and have spent 1 month of that waiting for my visa post-interview.

I see you are posting from Ecuador; keep in mind I am applying as a Canadian. I am unsure of what the typical wait times are from applicants from your country, but I claim I have "bad luck" as there are people who interviewed after me that have already received their visas weeks ago. How it is I interviewed in Montreal with a flawless interview all the way back on May 14th, yet someone who interviewed May 22nd received their visa June 3 while I only went into AP June 3? And no, there were not any extenuating circumstances with my application or theirs, both only having resided in Canada, never a national of another country, etc. I think you get the point here. There is quite honestly no reason why my application has taken so long. Couple that with the fact there will now be a 'delay' with this database breach, it is only going to add to my post-interview wait.

I say bad luck from a purely relative perspective in comparison to my fellow Canadians, not in comparison to those from other countries.

[tarzan31 27]

The OFFICIAL statement from travel.state.gov

It lists June 9 as the official date, but if you were in AP as of June 9, regardless of your original dates, this relates to you as well

http://travel.state.gov/content/travel/english/news/technological-systems-issue.html

[SantyAndAllie 155]

Hey there,

I think you may be confused as to what I am talking about. Today marks the one month point since my interview, not one month in total since the start of my application. I had my application handled through CSC where the process actually did move along at quite a quick pace, but that is not what I was referring to.

In total I am at around the 6+ month mark (yes, I know this is not longer than others), and have spent 1 month of that waiting for my visa post-interview.

I see you are posting from Ecuador; keep in mind I am applying as a Canadian. I am unsure of what the typical wait times are from applicants from your country, but I claim I have "bad luck" as there are people who interviewed after me that have already received their visas weeks ago. How it is I interviewed in Montreal with a flawless interview all the way back on May 14th, yet someone who interviewed May 22nd received their visa June 3 while I only went into AP June 3? And no, there were not any extenuating circumstances with my application or theirs, both only having resided in Canada, never a national of another country, etc. I think you get the point here. There is quite honestly no reason why my application has taken so long. Couple that with the fact there will now be a 'delay' with this database breach, it is only going to add to my post-interview wait.

I say bad luck from a purely relative perspective in comparison to my fellow Canadians, not in comparison to those from other countries.

Ahh, gotcha. Could you please fill our your timeline then? No one could possibly know your process when you post if you have no timeline. Plus your data helps other users here.

Regardless, being at CSC was luck in itself, LOL. But yeah, in comparison to other countries, Ecuador's wait is not bad. We got our interview scheduled within a month, and it even got there from NVC within a day, so it's been fairly quick post- noa2. But It's this part now that sucks. Ugh!

A few weeks to fix wouldn't bother me too much after waiting 6+.. if we didn't have so many plans that this is ruining....

[SantyAndAllie 155]

So.. They aren't printing ANY visas at this time? I keep reading the statement and just want to know what exactly they're doing. It says the clearances came to a halt, so at this point they can't clear anyone to be able to have visas printed?

And that would mean that when they do have these clearances, won't they be so backed up that it'll take even more time to receive the visa?!?!

Oh.. Yup. "As a result, there is a backlog of visas waiting to be processed. We are working as quickly as possible to resolve the issue and to clear the backlog."

That's just the word I want to hear again: backlog.

Edited June 14, 2015 by SantyAndAllie

[Trenz 52]

Ahh, gotcha. Could you please fill our your timeline then? No one could possibly know your process when you post if you have no timeline. Plus your data helps other users here.

Alas, I did not keep specific dates of some of the events having only found this website nearing the end of my K1 application, thus, I think it would be somewhat irresponsible to estimate these dates and potentially skew the data and/or give others a false sense of hope for timing.

So.. They aren't printing ANY visas at this time?

Correct. To the best of my understanding this essentially puts a halt to any visas being processed/printed at this juncture. It will not be until this issue is fixed that visas will start being printed again.

The part I am unclear on is this: For someone such as myself who is stuck in AP for my K1 visa, will they continue to do the administrative side of things to the best of their ability (E.g. look further into whatever the previous issues were) while this issue is ongoing, or essentially is every point of the process at a standstill (E.g. One may go to their interview and submit their documents/have an interview but it will go no further than that)? I certainly hope it is the former as there are numerous people stuck in my position that cannot afford to have one issue compound on another when they could be working on at least one of them.

[lala64 93]

Alas, I did not keep specific dates of some of the events having only found this website nearing the end of my K1 application, thus, I think it would be somewhat irresponsible to estimate these dates and potentially skew the data and/or give others a false sense of hope for timing.

Correct. To the best of my understanding this essentially puts a halt to any visas being processed/printed at this juncture. It will not be until this issue is fixed that visas will start being printed again.

The part I am unclear on is this: For someone such as myself who is stuck in AP for my K1 visa, will they continue to do the administrative side of things to the best of their ability (E.g. look further into whatever the previous issues were) while this issue is ongoing, or essentially is every point of the process at a standstill (E.g. One may go to their interview and submit their documents/have an interview but it will go no further than that)? I certainly hope it is the former as there are numerous people stuck in my position that cannot afford to have one issue compound on another when they could be working on at least one of them.

From what I understand from the news feeds and our VJ counterparts is the process up until the issuance of the Visa is still on going. Interviews etc.. So I would hope that the other administrative processing would continue and then be halted at the visa print point until it is resolved. But they are still conducting interviews etc.. I have a couple I know going for interview Friday. I am anxious to see what they say to them

Alas, I did not keep specific dates of some of the events having only found this website nearing the end of my K1 application, thus, I think it would be somewhat irresponsible to estimate these dates and potentially skew the data and/or give others a false sense of hope for timing.

Correct. To the best of my understanding this essentially puts a halt to any visas being processed/printed at this juncture. It will not be until this issue is fixed that visas will start being printed again.

The part I am unclear on is this: For someone such as myself who is stuck in AP for my K1 visa, will they continue to do the administrative side of things to the best of their ability (E.g. look further into whatever the previous issues were) while this issue is ongoing, or essentially is every point of the process at a standstill (E.g. One may go to their interview and submit their documents/have an interview but it will go no further than that)? I certainly hope it is the former as there are numerous people stuck in my position that cannot afford to have one issue compound on another when they could be working on at least one of them.

From what I understand from the news feeds and our VJ counterparts is the process up until the issuance of the Visa is still on going. Interviews etc.. So I would hope that the other administrative processing would continue and then be halted at the visa print point until it is resolved. But they are still conducting interviews etc.. I have a couple I know going for interview Friday. I am anxious to see what they say to them

[SantyAndAllie 155]

Alas, I did not keep specific dates of some of the events having only found this website nearing the end of my K1 application, thus, I think it would be somewhat irresponsible to estimate these dates and potentially skew the data and/or give others a false sense of hope for timing.

Correct. To the best of my understanding this essentially puts a halt to any visas being processed/printed at this juncture. It will not be until this issue is fixed that visas will start being printed again.

The part I am unclear on is this: For someone such as myself who is stuck in AP for my K1 visa, will they continue to do the administrative side of things to the best of their ability (E.g. look further into whatever the previous issues were) while this issue is ongoing, or essentially is every point of the process at a standstill (E.g. One may go to their interview and submit their documents/have an interview but it will go no further than that)? I certainly hope it is the former as there are numerous people stuck in my position that cannot afford to have one issue compound on another when they could be working on at least one of them.

You didn't keep specific dates? Lol. Like.. Your noa1 &noa2 are really the important ones pre-interview. Then you deleted the emails, threw out NVC letters, etc? At least estimates would be helpful. Essentially you posting about your timeline is confusing because no one knows your timeline!

Besides that, it looks like it's the clearances & visa printing post-interview that's the issue here.