Interview scheduling?

[Skyman 327]

A friend of mine is trying to get his wife a B-2. She's a former GC holder so shouldn't be a problem but when he tries to schedule the interview he either gets "no appointments available" or a first available in May or June of 2023. Is there some kind of trick to getting one? He paid for the visa at RCBC and that payment is only good for a year.

[top_secret 2,447]

The embassy will automatically extend the validity of the payment.  No problem there.  As for getting an interview date I'm not so sure. The embassy went over a year and  half doing virtually no B1/B2 interviews.   Only in the last couple of months have they resumed doing significant numbers of B1/B2 interviews and still not up to the the numbers they processed monthly in the past.   So there is surely an epic backlog.  Maybe someone might get lucky and see a slot open up on the calendar at random sometime soon but I wouldn't count on it.   May or June 2023 might just be what the backlog really is.

[Skyman 327]

Guess it was a real blessing my wife got in to get her B-2 renewed the 27th of February 2020. Even if we then weren't able to leave until September,  at least the visa was already there.