Maddy R.

Your more apt to find an answer to your question in the subforum for your country/region. Go to the blue ribbion at the top of the page, select "forums" and scroll down 3/4 of the page till arrive and find the locater links for your region. Good luck with your journey.

We took the passport back, and the consular said we wouldn't have to fill out additional forms if we travel while in AP.  They also said that after the interview you are not required to turn in your passport and you can hold onto it until your visa is ready, but almost everyone in Afghanistan turns in their passport after the interview.  If you don't turn the passport in or take it back, it will delay the process when it comes time to place the visa in the passport because you will have to go back to the embassy and drop the passport.   A lot of people on this site were very negative when I asked about taking the passport back, but I had my friend who works at the Kabul embassy ask the deputy consular and they both said the same thing that the consular told us when we requested the passport back.

We took the passport back, and the consular said we wouldn't have to fill out additional forms if we travel while in AP.  They also said that after the interview you are not required to turn in your passport and you can hold onto it until your visa is ready, but almost everyone in Afghanistan turns in their passport after the interview.  If you don't turn the passport in or take it back, it will delay the process when it comes time to place the visa in the passport because you will have to go back to the embassy and drop the passport.   A lot of people on this site were very negative when I asked about taking the passport back, but I had my friend who works at the Kabul embassy ask the deputy consular and they both said the same thing that the consular told us when we requested the passport back.

So you interviewed in February and had to submit the ds5535
the answer is ,  yes asking for passport back to travel will further delay the case
even travel to Europe means they will check all as you can fly anywhere from there (it does not have to be your final destination)
they now check the last 15 years of travel
they would need to check any future travel on top of what is happening now
this form and the AP for the form are taking a year and in some cases 2/   immigration and the embassy really don't want the immigrant to travel and hold up the process for further security checking over and beyond what they already have to do
your choice
either you travel and vacation or
you go this long and heartbreaking process to come to the USA
and i do know the BS you think you are going thru
we applied K1 2009 and finally got our IR1 visa in 2015 / no ds 5535 at that time but i did have to submit to a 4 page RFE with a 25 pound package of evidence

Congrats!!!  How long were you in AP before it got issued?

It was super easy getting the visas for all the mentioned countries.

NVC received my case on 28 November 2018 and the same day I got an email from the Kabul embassy for an appointment on 4 December. I informed the embassy that we needed to get the Afghan birth certificate and asked to reschedule.  They told us if we cancel we won't get an appointment until 2019.  They canceled the appointment and told us to email them when we had all the documents. 10 December we emailed them back and on 11 December we were notified we were in the queue. 19 January we were informed that we were rescheduled for 24 February.