Hi, I'm hoping for some input.
I am a US citizen, and my wife is currently an LPR. My wife's mom is currently here with us in the US on a B1/B2 visitor visa.
She entered the US on July 1st 2021, and her visa expires I believe December 31st 2021. We put in an extension request on Oct 4th 2021, and she had her biometrics appointment on November 3rd 2021.
We are trying to extend her visa because she is from New Zealand, and we're worried she won't be able to get back into her country in time. This is because you can't just book a flight and return to NZ. You have to first have a spot secured in a government managed isolation hotel, but in order to secure a spot you are put through a lottery system. This means that there is literally no way of knowing if she can get back to her home country in time, if at all.
So far from what I can tell, extension requests are useless. They either are denied or they take way too long to come through. So, my question is, do we abandon that plan entirely and try and instead plan to get her to another country entirely when her US visa expires? Are there any other options at our disposal that we can try? Has anyone else been in a similar situation?
This whole process is so frustrating, because there's no way of making anyone care that there are things out of our control. My mother-in-law can't just hop between countries while she hopes to be let back into her own country!