here2help

I have lurked on this site for years but made an account just to respond to this thread because I think I can help. My (now husband, then fiance) is from the Dominican Republic. We applied for the K1 visa in April of 2018. He did his medical exam in November of 2018 and admitted during the exam to smoking marijuana 6 months prior. When he went for the interview at the embassy he was denied on the same grounds, inadmissible due to drug addiction. We had no idea what to do! It was the same as you, they did not schedule any drug tests, they didn't say we should pay for our own, nothing. So we decided to have him take his own drug tests every 3 months and keep the results to show the embassy after the one year. At the end of the 1 year ban, I contacted the embassy and asked for next steps. They told us he had to do another medical exam and come in for another interview. When he went for the medical exam, he brought the drug test results with him. The doctor said the results weren't necessary, and didn't even look at them. We had to fill out another DS-160 and we were able to schedule an interview for February 2020. When we went to the interview, the interview itself was good but they said they couldn't provide an answer to us because the medical results had not arrived yet from the clinic. During the interview, the CO gave us an email address to the embassy. I wrote them constantly asking if the results had arrived (I'd write every few days). After a few weeks of emailing, we started to call the clinic itself to ask when the results would be sent! They always said the results weren't ready. Then, COVID happened and everything shut down. We waited until things opened back up (I don't remember when this was. Like late 2020??) and began to call again! Both the clinic and the embassy continued to give us the same answers: results were not ready and they weren't processing visas anyway (wrong). So finally in March of 2021 I wrote to my senator. I received a canned response back saying there was nothing they could do because of COVID blah blah blah. HOWEVER, my fiance got a call from the clinic asking him to come in. He went in and they gave him a drug test. Once that happened, I started emailing the embassy again for updates. They would take like a week to respond and once they responded, they would say they were still processing his case. But then the clinic would call my fiance again and have him come in for a drug test. They did that 3 times over the next few months then asked him to come in for another final medical exam. He did that and then went in again for another interview. But I had to CONTINUALLY email the embassy and call the clinic to get things moving. I think they would have forgotten about us if I wasn't so annoying lol. I even reached out to my senator once more when people started ignoring me again. When he finally got his interview in July 2021, the embassy requested I write a letter stating that we still wanted to get married, I guess since so much time had passed. They even called me after his interview to confirm I still wanted to marry him haha. I SAID YES OF COURSE. Anyway, he got the visa the day of the interview and he arrived in August 2021!! We got married almost immediately and he just got his green card last week with absolutely no issues. I actually came across this post while searching VJ for any examples of people who got the green card after being found inadmissible for drugs. I found nothing like that so that's another reason why I wanted to respond! So everything will be fine if you continue to stay on top of the embassy and the clinic. Thankfully you probably won't have to deal with something like COVID being thrown in there so hopefully it'll just be another medical exam in one year, some random tests, another interview, and an approval! TLDR Write the embassy exactly one year after the ban is up. Ensure you know EXACTLY what they want you to do in order to proceed with your case (another medical, another interview, etc). Contact the embassy and/or clinic on a regular basis. Write your senators if things slow down.