Concerned Coronavirus may cause issues (merged)

[Dobbie 6]

I am hoping they begin interviews next month. They've kept accepting new applicants to boot...really need to get going so there's no backlog.

 

My interview was cancelled. Please give people in a similar boat priority...

[Skaur0609 145]

8 hours ago, Dobbie said:

I am hoping they begin interviews next month. They've kept accepting new applicants to boot...really need to get going so there's no backlog.

 

My interview was cancelled. Please give people in a similar boat priority...

I hope they restart the interview process soon. Montreal is reopened non essential business. Hopefully, they will start interviewing in July. 

[bojek 15]

Others have said that the process was stopped at every level a little while back. Did they just restart processing applications again?

 

If so I assume interviews would follow because I agree, they'll just get a huge bottleneck of people at the interview stage otherwise and people who were already scheduled might lose their priority. I hope we'll be the priority for rescheduling since they have records of us having previous cancelled interviews and most probably have paid the online fee as well. 

 

When were you guys scheduled? Mine was April 23rd. 

 

New-Brunswick had no cases for 2 weeks and some healthcare worker brought it back by going back to work at the hospital in the Campbelltown region. Love that for us. 🙃 I hope the two people over 90 he infected will make it...no deaths in NB so far. My thoughts are with them. I'm not sure how that will affect provincial travel since I live in NB but was going to take a bus to NS, fly from Halifax and then back to NS and bus back. Don't have a car so yeah. 

 

Be well everyone. 

Edited May 29, 2020 by bojek

[jackanddeona 310]

Do you mean every level of the embassy or nvc and uscis because no uscis and nvc have both been continuing their processes this whole time.

Edited May 29, 2020 by jackanddeona

[bojek 15]

 

29 minutes ago, jackanddeona said:

Do you mean every level of the embassy or nvc and uscis because no uscis and nvc have both been continuing their processes this whole time.

Not sure, I think maybe they meant just the embassies? It was the discussion on page 11 of this thread. I might have misunderstood though and I'm not sure if what we were talking about was official or speculation. 

[jackanddeona 310]

5 minutes ago, bojek said:

 

Not sure, I think maybe they meant just the embassies? It was the discussion on page 11 of this thread. I might have misunderstood though and I'm not sure if what we were talking about was official or speculation. 

I was just dq'd this week so even if they were mentioning that its false. But ya the consulates are basically shut down other than usc services and emergency visas. I was not given any information on when that might change when I recieved my email so who knows. Every theory or opinion on this forum in regards to it happening is just that until we get some kind of official announcement.

[DGF 730]

7 minutes ago, bojek said:

Not sure, I think maybe they meant just the embassies? It was the discussion on page 11 of this thread. I might have misunderstood though and I'm not sure if what we were talking about was official or speculation. 

With the exception of reviewing your application prior to your interview so they know what they want to ask you about, there is no processing that is done by the embassy before an interview. I think what was being referred to on the last page is the processing that takes place after an interview which is done in order to issue a visa or to handle the submission of documents that were missing at the interview. That processing has definitely been stopped this whole time, but it won't lead to much of a backlog at all since the majority of those waiting haven't had their interviews yet. 

[jackanddeona 310]

13 minutes ago, DGF said:

With the exception of reviewing your application prior to your interview so they know what they want to ask you about, there is no processing that is done by the embassy before an interview. I think what was being referred to on the last page is the processing that takes place after an interview which is done in order to issue a visa or to handle the submission of documents that were missing at the interview. That processing has definitely been stopped this whole time, but it won't lead to much of a backlog at all since the majority of those waiting haven't had their interviews yet. 

I mean even if there is not much work to be done before an interview there is a backlog of interviews and that keeps building. I have no idea how many people are waiting but based on them shutting down for a several months and how much longer that made the interview wait time I would think that a serious backlog is forming. Regardless of how or why if it takes me 8 months to get an interview it doesn't really matter what work is causing the delay.

[DGF 730]

2 minutes ago, jackanddeona said:

I mean even if there is not much work to be done before an interview there is a backlog of interviews and that keeps building. I have no idea how many people are waiting but based on them shutting down for a several months and how much longer that made the interview wait time I would think that a serious backlog is forming. Regardless of how or why if it takes me 8 months to get an interview it doesn't really matter what work is causing the delay.

Oh yeah, the backlog after this is going to be terrible considering that it was already a 5 month backlog before the current shutdown. All I'm saying is that the embassy not processing documents isn't going to make that backlog worse since they don't do any processing until after the interview. Once they restart interviews, I think they'll either continue at a normal pace or a slower one to accommodate social distancing requirements, so I don't seem them having to deal with a huge wave of documents to process on top of the ones that they stopped processing during this shutdown, so no additional backlog should result from them not currently processing documents. 

[jackanddeona 310]

3 minutes ago, DGF said:

Oh yeah, the backlog after this is going to be terrible considering that it was already a 5 month backlog before the current shutdown. All I'm saying is that the embassy not processing documents isn't going to make that backlog worse since they don't do any processing until after the interview. Once they restart interviews, I think they'll either continue at a normal pace or a slower one to accommodate social distancing requirements, so I don't seem them having to deal with a huge wave of documents to process on top of the ones that they stopped processing during this shutdown, so no additional backlog should result from them not currently processing documents. 

Fair enough. If corona hadn't happened I probably would have had my interview in the summer. I'm thinking right now ill be lucky if it's completed this year. But who knows.

[DGF 730]

40 minutes ago, jackanddeona said:

Fair enough. If corona hadn't happened I probably would have had my interview in the summer. I'm thinking right now ill be lucky if it's completed this year. But who knows.

Yep, ours would have been this month so I feel you. Now it feels like it's going to be a really long wait. I wish they'd give us something, like which phase in the reopening plan we need to get to, or even "it won't be until at least _____" so we're not just completely in the dark trying to get some sense out of nothing. 

[BunyanP 89]

Tell me about it. I should be happy with my DQ last week, but I can’t stop thinking about  how bad the backlog will be. My plan was to work until the end of the year while my wife and kids will be in the states as of next month. Unfortunately I might have to move down and visit for months on end if this is too long. Just sucks that I won’t be working until I get my interview/authorization. 
 

 

Edited June 4, 2020 by BunyanP

[bojek 15]

On 5/29/2020 at 3:06 PM, DGF said:

With the exception of reviewing your application prior to your interview so they know what they want to ask you about, there is no processing that is done by the embassy before an interview. I think what was being referred to on the last page is the processing that takes place after an interview which is done in order to issue a visa or to handle the submission of documents that were missing at the interview. That processing has definitely been stopped this whole time, but it won't lead to much of a backlog at all since the majority of those waiting haven't had their interviews yet. 

Thanks for the clarification. I forgot about that. 

 

On 5/29/2020 at 3:50 PM, jackanddeona said:

Fair enough. If corona hadn't happened I probably would have had my interview in the summer. I'm thinking right now ill be lucky if it's completed this year. But who knows.

Same, this really sucks. My appointment was in late April and I just replied to my fiance's family wishing me a happy bday on FB this week and it made me realize that I was well on spending my next one there. After 15 years it's long overdue and I really hope things don't get pushed far back to that point that I'm still not there in a year's time. 

 

Personally, I'm kind of expecting things to start moving again once the border restrictions do too so I'm wondering if the amount of issues that are happening at the moment are going to make them more likely to loosen restrictions sooner than later or if they'll just try to legislate a bunch of exceptions and case by case processes instead. https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/cbsa-document-outlines-scenarios-who-crosses-border-1.5594684 

 

 

 

[DGF 730]

26 minutes ago, bojek said:

Personally, I'm kind of expecting things to start moving again once the border restrictions do too so I'm wondering if the amount of issues that are happening at the moment are going to make them more likely to loosen restrictions sooner than later or if they'll just try to legislate a bunch of exceptions and case by case processes instead. https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/cbsa-document-outlines-scenarios-who-crosses-border-1.5594684 

Wow, thank you for sharing this. I'm absolutely astounded by some of the scenarios they deem non-essential and their justification. Can't be with pregnant spouse because you have to quarantine for 14 days first and that period is deemed non-essential? That's a load of nonsense. 

 

It's really interesting that in their scenarios a foreign national travelling on their diplomat passport to return to post is deemed essential. That means that if anyone from the consulate decided to return to the US when they shut down, the border closure is not stopping them from returning to Canada. Given that there aren't travel restrictions preventing the consulate from restaffing, and Canadians issued visas could still travel to the US, I don't see any reason why the border closure would prevent the resumption of visa services other than if the DOS were to require it. Hopefully that'll translate into Montreal being one of the earlier consulates to resume visa services, but I guess we'll have to wait and see. 

[MovingToFlorida 71]

On 5/28/2020 at 11:54 PM, Skaur0609 said:

I hope they restart the interview process soon. Montreal is reopened non essential business. Hopefully, they will start interviewing in July. 

Would they start interviewing if they have stopped immigration?  I guess some can still go. We are a family F3 visa so we can't go until Trump opens immigration up for us again. we had our interview booked and it was canceled 5 days before it due to closing the consulate for the pandemic. no idea when we'll get an interview now.