KESA

My husband's interview was also June 5th (maybe we saw you guys in line outside the consulate 😂) his visa was issued June 7th. Have you tried emailing them to check in? @AnaBanana12345 they didn't ask for our AOS documents - my husband brought an updated version to the interview (we applied to the NVC ages ago - so we had updated financial information by now, so our lawyers recommended we fill out a new AOS document and bring it just in case). But they never asked for a copy of the original or the new one we had filled out. We brought copies of both just in case though. For our interview: His appointment was 8am, we arrived in line at 7:20am and were 4th in line The windows opened at I think 7:45am and if you were applying for an immigrant visa, you were instructed to go to window #2 At this window they looked at the print out of his confirmation page from the embassy (the sheet that says if you elected to have the visa delivered vs. to pick it up) and his passport After that you move to the side and wait for the doors to open at 8am Once the doors open: they won't let you in until your phone is off and they won't let you in with any bag larger than an 'A4' size - so anyone with backpacks got asked to leave their bags outside the embassy (my husband gave his to me, the guy in front of us was alone - so he went across street where I think there was a storage facility or something -- it meant he was further back in line though so delayed him a bit) There was a lady with a tote bag that was let through, they just did a quick search but she was allowed to take it inside cameras, laptops or any larger electronic devices are also not allowed With all that, my husband was through the doors at 8:05am He handed his phone to security, who gave him a ticket to pick it back up when he left He then went to a counter where they gave him a ticket with his number/place in line to be interviewed That same person at that counter called his number and did his preliminary interview. For him, he says he only waited about 10 minutes between getting his ticket and getting called back up (he says people that came later had to wait longer since there were more people / a longer line by then) He handed her his passport She asked the following questions: name of his sponsor, is this your first or second marriage, do you have any kids, how many times have you entered the US, what was the duration of the longest stay, have you committed a crime She asked for the following (original) documents: marriage license, birth certificate, police clearance certificates, 1 photo The entire exchange lasted 5 minutes (some people that weren't prepared with all the correct documents took as long as 20 minutes for this interview) After that he went to sit back down and wait to be called for his secondary interview - this was the longest part. They didn't open the interview window until 9:30am, so he ended up waiting for about an 1hr-1:15hr to be called for this interview Once he was called for the second interview - this took about 5 minutes Very friendly - handed back all documents that the first interviewing officer had taken (the marriage license, birth certificate, etc.), excluding the police clearances, which she kept Questions: how did we meet, when did we get married, where did we get married, what do you do (career-wise), what is your wife's job / position She also asked to see my updated W2s (we had applied through the NVC back in early 2021, so we had two years of updated W2s that she wanted to see Because of the updated W2s - we showed her the physical copies, but she said they also needed to be uploaded to the CEAC portal before she could issue the visa. We uploaded immediately after the interview, when there had been no case status change by the following morning - we sent an email to support-poland@ustraveldocs.com asking if they had received the documents and checking on the status of our case. We did not receive a reply, but by the following morning (about 24 hours after we had sent the email, and 48 after the interview had taken place / we had uploaded the W2s) when we checked our CEAC case status it had changed to 'issued'. My husband received an email a few hours later saying that his documents had been 'collected from the US embassy' and when we double checked on the embassy portal website it said the passport was ready for pickup. We checked our case status at the following links: CEAC status link: https://ceac.state.gov/CEACStatTracker/Status.aspx?App=NIV Embassy Website: https://portal.ustraveldocs.com/SiteLogin?country=Poland&language=en_US

Hi All! For everyone that's had their interview: how far in advance did you guys schedule your medical / how quickly were your results ready? (@aerodnight @MCGH @IvanRi)

We got our interview letter today as well! Timeline below: DQ: March 17, 2022 Requested Embassy Transfer (from Nairobi to Warsaw): March 24, 2023 Embassy Transfer Approved / new Warsaw Case Number issued: March 27, 2023 IL Received: April 21, 2023 Interview: June 5, 2023 (We were both living / working in Kenya when we started our process so we initially applied through that embassy - the backlogs at the Nairobi embassy are so crazy, we waited for our interview letter from them for over 12 months before we gave up and requested an embassy transfer to Warsaw. Got the IL from the Warsaw embassy less than a month after requesting the transfer! 🤯)

No 😒 It was a pretty disappointing event. They really focused on USAID / security updates and then briefly touched on visas for like 60 seconds - they basically said 'immigrant visa processing increased x% in 2022, for those of you still waiting we appreciate your patience as we continue to work through the backlog' and then moved on. Super unhelpful, especially considering the statistic they cited was referring to all immigrant visas, which is up due to the increase in processing of DV and E3 visas. Meanwhile all IR and family based visa processing was actually down 4% in 2022 (I'm pulling the numbers from the monthly immigrant visa issuance statistics reports) - so they kind of dodged all of our questions, obviously a group of US Citizens asking about visas are asking about the visa categories related to them, not the DVs / employment visas 🙄

I registered yesterday! I'm asking if they have a plan to reduce the backlog for IR visas (my question below): "Hello - Can you please speak to the embassy's plan to reduce the backlog for Immediate Relatives of US Citizen visa interviews? Current wait times are well over a year. In January (the last month this data is available as of today) there were over 500 E3 visas processed, but only 49 IR visas processed (a 27% decrease from last month, and a 66% YoY decrease). The backlog and wait times for Immediate Relatives has been growing, while processing numbers for this visa class continues to decline. Is there a plan to process 1000+ Immediate Relative applications, like the embassy did for DV applicants back in September?" It's going to be at 4:30am US east coast time lol so should be an early morning. If anyone else wants to submit a question, it might increase the odds they actually address one of our questions if there's a few submissions on this topic!

I think when they put E3 they must mean all the employment third preference categories (E31, E32, etc.)? I thought they meant Australians at first too but that would just be so random 😂 But I still have no idea why they would process so many in that category last month? We were so pissed when we saw this yesterday. It's really hard to wait this long, but it's even worse to watch as they continue to prioritize other categories (that are LOWER priority categories than us!) and not care that the backlog for us just continues to grow... it's so infuriating.

Yes, exactly. Our two year anniversary was Dec'22 and our 'visa class' status on the CEAC page just auto-updated from CR1 to IR1 without us doing anything.

Good luck! We never tried the expedition request - so definitely curious to hear if that works 🤞 My plan is to just tweet them daily (either as comments to tweets on their page or just by tagging them in any relevant tweets/replies). I had an old account I hadn't used since 2016, so I just deleted any old posts and repurposed as an immigration account lol. It probably won't do anything, but I figure it can't hurt to at least leave a paper trail calling attention to how terrible slow they're moving. Also: I did see one tweet saying that the latest interview conducted were people DQ'ed Jan 4-6th 2022. If that's accurate, that would suggest the current backlog is ~13.5 months... I guess we'll see. If that's right, then @Eduh should be hearing within the next month?

let me know if you guys end up doing something! I've just started tweeting at the US Embassy in Nairobi and the US Ambassador to Kenya, hoping I can annoy and/or public shame them into picking up the pace lol (their handles are @USEmbassyKenya @USAmbKenya if anyone's interested in doing the same) ,

I think the DVs have a certain quota they can issue each year, but that quota expires / resets in October - so if they haven't processed all the applications by then, those slots are just lost. So they were so far behind that I think they started getting a lot of heat for it, so did a mad rush to process a bunch of applications before the quota reset in October. (This is what I've heard - I haven't really researched DV's very much so I'm not 100% 😂) But agreed - it's super frustrating to be 'top priority' in the visa class, yet watch other categories get prioritized over us. Especially since now that they've returned to 'normal' we're still seeing relatively low numbers in the 20s-30s, which doesn't exactly suggest that they feel the same urgency around this backlog as they did around the DVs... so depressing It's also so frustrating that there's no communication around their progress through the backlog - for example if I had known that the wait for this interview was going to be over 12 months, we would have started considering other options (for example, me looking for a job outside the US so we could live together). Being in limbo for 2+ years while we wait for this process to hopefully conclude sometime soon, is really hard. I always heard about how bad the US visa process was, but I guess I always assumed that was for more complicated cases or something. The fact that it's this hard to get your spouse a visa / legally in the country is really crazy

They processed 2 CR1s and 26 IR1s - so technically 28 spousal visas (I'm guessing with the size of the backlog the 2 CR1s they processed probably had reasons to expedite their cases and that's why they still qualify as the married for under 2-years CR1 category, while the rest of us have automatically converted to IR1 cases since it's been over 2 years since we started the process now lol). But considering the size of this backlog, it's still frustrating to see. Back in September when they were prioritizing diversity visas - they processed 1,034 DVs (and only 1 IR1, 0 CR1). So clearly they have the ability to prioritize a visa class and process high quantities. It'd be nice to see them do this for the family-based visa categories so they can at least make a dent in the backlog... the COVID closures were so long ago they can't keep blaming that for the fact that interview wait times are over a year. At this point, if they still can't handle the workload, shouldn't they just be hiring more staff to conduct interviews? It's all very frustrating.

This is really disheartening to hear. I had prepared myself for a worst case scenario wait of 12 months - but if you still haven't heard, that means the wait is definitely over 12 months... it's been 11 months for us, and I'm starting to lose hope. I wish they would provide some kind of communication around backlog / timeline so people could at least adjust their expectations accordingly.

Same here - we were DQ'ed March 17, 2022. Haven't heard anything yet 😕

March 17th

No, still haven't heard anything 😕

Okay, good to know. I got DQ'ed 1 month earlier (March 17th) so hopefully I'll hear back in February then? I'll let you know if I get any updates!

Thanks for sharing these statistics! I hadn't seen these before and it's nice to have some insight into what's going out at the embassy lol Looks like you were right and the DV's dropped significantly in October and the IR1's picked back up to 15 (no CR1s that month though). Hopefully that's a sign that they're ramping back up and November and December will get back to the 40-50+ levels they were at before they started prioritizing the DV applications... Agreed - hopefully now that we're IRs that means we're towards the end of our waiting period🤞 although my guess is the only reason they don't process many CR1s is because there's so much backlog and this stupid process takes so long that unless you have a very good reason to expedite that gets approved, it must take almost everyone over 2 years to get to the interview stage, so by the time everyone's interviewing they've automatically converted to an IR1 😂

Not yet... It's been about 8.5 months since we were DQ'ed. Based off the limited information I've seen around timeline from DQ to interview for people applying at the Nairobi consulate - it seems like 10-12 months is the general wait to get an interview scheduled at the Nairobi embassy. So I'm hopeful we'll hear back by January or February - but we'll see. Apparently the Nairobi embassy will alert the NVC to how many slots they have for interviews a month, and the NVC will forward that number of applications, in order of the those that were approved first / are at the front of queue. It's an especially frustrating system because every inquiry we've sent, we just get a canned/useless response back where the embassy always replies that they don't have our case yet and the NVC always replies that they're waiting on the embassy lol

We still haven't heard anything... starting to seem like maybe they haven't worked through the covid backlog very much at all? Not sure why else it would be taking this long. One member on these boards said it took him 12 months to get scheduled during the pandemic, so I'm assuming it wouldn't take longer than 12 months to hear back / get scheduled (which for us would mean March 2023). I can't believe it's taking this long though... I'm really hoping we hear back soon. The wait has bene really disheartening and frustrating to be honest. Only silver lining I can think of is that originally we were assuming we would get the visa in under two years, so would get a CR1 - but seems like it's definitely going to be 2+ years since we got married / applied, so now we will be getting the IR1 lol

Nothing yet 😕 we reached out to the NVC and received confirmation that we're still in the queue. It's been almost 6 months now since we were DQ'd, so I'm hoping we hear back soon. It sounds like from these message boards that the COVID closures caused delays of up to a year, but they should be way further through that backlog by now so I'm hoping we'll hear back by 8 months (November/early December) at the latest!

We were DQ'ed March 17th 2022. It's been ~99 days as of today and our case hasn't been sent from the NVC to the Nairobi embassy yet. I'm hoping that we'll get a notification soon, but the NVC is so backed up I don't know I emailed the Nairobi embassy and they responded very quickly that the case hadn't been sent to them so they can't provide any information. So I think the backlog is the NVC, not the Nairobi consulate..

Okay, thanks - thanks for responding so quickly and congrats on finally getting it scheduled! Trying to navigate the US immigration process on top of all the COVID delays has been pretty terrible

Hi - has your interview been scheduled yet? We just got DQ'ed a little over a month ago and are trying to get a sense for how long we should expect to wait for the interview to get scheduled.

Hi - we had a similar situation happen. We got DQ'ed but received a 'message' from the case reviewer that we did not meet the requirement and that the interviewer would make the final decision. I had been working overseas (I'm the American sponsor) and did not have a W2/1099 for the last fiscal year, I did have a new offer letter from a job in the US that puts me above the threshold as well as enough assets in the US to definitively qualify us; however, not having the W2/1099 still resulted in them giving us that same message: This case does not meet the minimum income requirement to sponsor the intending immigrants. To avoid delays, an additional Affidavit of Support Form I-864 from a joint sponsor may be submitted. For more information visit https://nvc.state.gov/aos. The consular officer will make a decision regarding this requirement at the time of the interview. For more information, please visit https://www.uscis.gov/i-86 4p. We haven't had the interview yet (still waiting for it to be scheduled) but our lawyers assured us that a joint sponsor is not necessary in our case and to just organize our financial evidence (bank statements for the last twelve months, pay stubs, etc.) demonstrating that we meet the minimum requirement and to bring those documents to the interview. Again, we haven't had the interview yet so I can't yet confirm anything with certainty - but from the sounds of it, the NVC reviewer looks for a W2/1099 to prove employment in the US that meets the minimum requirement and if that is not available, you'll receive the message letting you know that a joint sponsor may be necessary and the interviewer will make the final decision. It sounds like your US assets are enough so you should be fine as long as you have all the paperwork demonstrating that your last twelve months average balances are 3x+ the minimum poverty guidelines for your household size. One additional thought: apparently the US immigration officers don't like to count foreign earned income since they don't view it as an income source that will continue when you & your partner are living in the US. So, if it's a situation where it's a remote friendly job and the income stream will continue once you and your husband both live in the US, it would be helpful to get a letter from your employer stating this. If not, you can still bring pay stubs to demonstrate your salary but they will carry less weight with the interviewer, so it will be more important to have paperwork that proves the average balance of all your assets/accounts for the last 12 months has been more than 3x the minimum poverty guideline for your household.

Does anyone know how long the Nairobi Embassy is currently taking to schedule interviews? We were approved by the NVC in April and are trying to get a sense for how long the wait is going to be (we originally submitted our I-130 back in Feb 2021, so this whole process has taken almost 1.5 years so far!). We're applying for a CR1 visa -- I'm the sponsor (US citizen), he's from South Africa but living in Kenya / applying through that consulate.