Hurry&Wait

We also received ours automatically about 4 weeks after sending in documents. And 2 months before the original expired.

This happened to my wife, who was my fiance at the time. She is from Vietnam. I attended the first two interviews and she was paced in AP for 9.5 months. Then, they showed up at her home, were welcomed in and the Vietnamese employee grabbed her phone. Then, she "asked her to unlock it". They were there about an hour The officer played good cop and the Vietnamese employee accepted the bad cop role. We each received notification that she was approved within 2 days and the visa was hand delivered in 7 days (after she took her passport in). Funny thing is that they showed up 2 days after I left. I traveled there at least one every 7 weeks or so back then and usually stayed for 2 weeks at a time. I had just bought new furniture, appliances, etc as our child was about to be born. Luckily, our child was born here as I immediately returned and brought her back. Now, my in-laws have appliances and western-style furniture:) We had been hoping they would show up for months and kept asking neighbors and family if anyone had ever stopped by to ask about our relationship. The answer was alway no, until then.

I agree with this suggestion. My wife and I were extremely stressed through the process before she was finally approved, moved here and were married. She was originally denied and there was so much uncertainty. Then, we are from different cultures, so communication can deteriorate under stress. Luckily, I was able to travel often and spent about 30% of my time in her country. I remember a few trips that lasted a week or less but traveled as she was under immense stress. Many do not have the luxury of this amount of travel, especially during COVID. Please don't withdraw until you are 100% uncertain. I do not know your situation and each relationship is different. You may want to consider postponing the interview. Please do not take an altruistic or utilitarian view about slowing the process for others. If you postpone, your appointment should be available for another applicant. This is how we moved up our original interview. There are likely some proactive applicants checking daily for openings.