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I often lurk around the forums reading threads from spouses/children/parents etc of US citizens, and feel slightly guilty that my (employment based) immigrant visa application has taken so much less time than theirs. I'm struggling to understand the logic of why I can apply and get approval within 8 days, but somebody married to a US citizen has to wait a year or potentially even longer for that decision. Anybody know why? Just intrigued really as to how the applications are treated so differently, and I almost feel it should be the other way around. I'm sure there is some brilliantly logical explanation that I'm missing, but I've no idea what it could be. Apologies if this is the wrong place mods, please feel free to move…...😊

All good. Lots of waiting around but the actual interview was only 2 questions! Had the interview last Monday and passport delivered back on Thursday so super quick. We leave on Saturday. 😁

Yes, of course. Processing takes much longer for many people, some consulates have 2 years + wait just for an interview so even if their category was current they wouldn’t have got a visa before it retrogressed. As for why, it tells you that in the VB - "In the April 2023 Visa Bulletin, it was necessary to establish a final action date in the F2A category and Item D of the July 2023 Visa Bulletin warned of the strong possibility of retrogression as early as August. Number use has remained steady, and it has become necessary to retrogress the final action date to keep number use within the FY-2023 annual limit." Hopefully it will move in October, good luck.

Possibly - I've no idea as I'm an EB1 applicant. But you didn't say you were specifically referring to the IR1/CRI procedure in your first post, so was just clarifying for anybody reading. I'm not sure the procedure or any change in it would really make much of a difference anyway tbh. It's about number of applicants, Covid backlogs and how they've been dealt with more than anything. Some consulates still have a 2+ year wait for an interview because of the backlogs.

Sorry, I misread your post, I thought you were DQ’ed before him and wondering why he’d jumped ahead. But same answer really. It takes so long because it’s not linear, Lagos normally only processes a handful of FB1’s each month and prioritises other visa classes i.e. spouses. So it will move forward really slowly. Here’s last months visa issuance stats for info - https://travel.state.gov/content/dam/visas/Statistics/Immigrant-Statistics/MonthlyIVIssuances/JUNE 2023 - IV Issuances by Post and Visa Class.pdf

With regard to 2, that’s still the process for many. All EB applicants have to mail their documents and cannot upload them via CEAC.

No way of knowing unfortunately, it may go back to the date that was in July’s bulletin when October rolls around. But unlike other categories (EB-1) the August bulletin doesn’t specifically say it expects that to happen in Oct.