Can you interview at any U.S. embassy for K-1?

[Manda16 10]

Bottom Line: Does someone have to interview at the consulate in the country of their citizenship?

The Situation:

• My fiance is an Egyptian citizen, but has been living in Europe for the last 4 years. He currently has a work permit in Portugal, but not permanent residency (disclaimer - I don't totally understand their system, so this might not be quite right or might be oversimplified). He has not lived in Egypt since 2012.
• The embassy in Paris now handles all immigrant visas for persons living in Portugal, so he was planning to do the medical in Portugal and interview for the K-1 in Paris (normal protocol for Portuguese K-1 applicants). But he recently contacted the embassy in Paris to make sure, and they said they don't think he can interview there since he is not a permanent resident of either Portugal or France. They said he can only interview at the embassy in Egypt for the K-1.
• To make it all more confusing, we wrote Portugal on our I-129F as the closest consulate (our bad) rather than Paris - not sure if this matters.
• Our petition is between USCIS and the NVC right now after receiving NOA2 on Nov 3rd, and neither agency was able to answer these questions when I called today - seems I need to wait for it to get to the NVC and then work with them on it.

Questions:

1. Can the beneficiary only interview at a U.S. embassy in their country of citizenship, or can they interview elsewhere?

2. Does he actually need to be a permanent resident of Portugal to interview at the embassy in Paris?

3. Will the NVC automatically send our petition to Paris, even though we wrote Lisbon on the I-129F? Or should we expect delays with it being sent to Lisbon and then Paris?

Apologies if these questions have been asked somewhere else - I didn't see that they had with a brief search of topics. Thanks in advance for any and all insight!

[EM_Vandaveer 2,408]

Normally if you are legally in another country you can interview there. Plenty of Filipinas working in the Gulf states interview for their K1s there. I'm pretty sure they are not permanent residents either, only there on a work visa.