If you’ve applied for an immigration benefit – a green card, naturalization, and many more – you already know the Coronavirus pandemic has slowed down your application. Will the U.S. government ever catch up? We fear the answer is not any time soon. Our clients deal mostly with 2 agencies – USCIS (U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services) and the Department of State. USCIS decides applications and petitions filed in the U.S. such as the I-129F for fiancé visas, I-130 marriage visas, and I-485 Adjustment of Status (green cards). Some applications are handled completely by USCIS in the United States, but others follow a 2-step process: initially you apply to USCIS, then if your petition or application is approved, the case moves on to the National Visa Center (NVC) which is part of the Department of State, and then to the foreign embassy or consulate.
USCIS is backlogged but not nearly as badly as the Department of State. The previous Trump administration deliberately added new policies and procedures to slow down immigration and make it difficult to be approved. The Biden administration has already eliminated some of these roadblocks – for example they have changed the “public charge rule” back to the 1999 version to enable more immigrants of modest means to be approved (see our previous post for more details on the public charge rule). But USCIS offices were closed for some time in 2020 and continue to experience delays.
The Department of State’s backlogs at foreign embassies continue to be much worse. Many countries are experiencing high levels of Coronavirus infections; this has greatly slowed down work at the U.S. embassies and consulates there. The backlog of immigrant cases at the NVC ready to be scheduled for an interview has ballooned because appointments are not available. We handle many fiancé visa applications, including many in Manila, Philippines. Normally USCIS approves the petition and sends it to the NVC who immediately sends it onto the consulate for all processing.
That’s not the situation now. We recently received this email from the NVC:
Due to COVID-19 concerns, the U.S. Embassy or Consulate General in Manila suspended routine visa services. Where local conditions and restrictions allow, some embassies and consulates have resumed processing a limited visa workload, including K-1 nonimmigrant visa applications. For embassies and consulates that were unable to resume processing their visa workload, NVC is holding your approved Form I-129F. We cannot predict when routine visa services will resume, and we cannot guarantee or predict when your case will be sent to the U.S. Embassy or Consulate General in Manila. When NVC does forward your case, you will receive another notification.
So it’s taking years rather than months to get through all of the steps. The Department of State announced a prioritization scheme in September 2021. Immigrant visas (green cards) have priority over nonimmigrant visas such as visitors. They’ve set up 4 tiers the consulates are to use to prioritize cases. You can see full details on the DOS site.
When will it end? The answer is certainly dependent on the course of the pandemic – the sooner embassies can operate at full capacity the better. But some observers have suggested changes that could speed up operations before then, for instance by having video interviews rather than in-person in some cases. In the meantime keep following up on your case, and try to have patience. Ours is certainly wearing thin.
