Will consulates closure (covid) & EO of immigration ban result in future visa backlog

[harden4mvp 3]

So consulates can't issue IVs, and more and more cases are "stuck" at the visa issuance stage. If this continues, there might be unused visas by end of Sep (e.g., especially for F2A which is CURRENT).

Then, when quota gets reset on Oct 1st, will the unused quota of this year's spill over and continue to be available?  If not, then we'd be looking at a longer queue.  For F2A, it may even retrogress. Please correct if I'm wrong on this, would love to be corrected!  

[Sparkle Sparkle 914]

We will all the lucky if the same rules that used to apply still applies after COVID-19.

[DaveAndAnastasia 2,093]

There's no way of knowing right now, and it almost certainly will vary by country. Probably depends on how visas from that embassy or consulate broke down prior to the closings.

 

For relationship-based visas, I suspect there will be a backlog of cases that hadn't had interviews yet when the embassy or consulate closed, and that will even have additional cases added to it that made it through the US side of processing during the lockdown.

But the volume of new cases will be down for a while because of the side effects of travel bans and people being less willing to travel immediately after bans are lifted.

Edited May 25, 2020 by DaveAndAnastasia

[harden4mvp 3]

15 hours ago, Sparkle Sparkle said:

We will all the lucky if the same rules that used to apply still applies after COVID-19.

Thank you.  I found an official blog post from USCIS (albeit 10 years old) https://www.uscis.gov/archive/blog/2010/03/visa-numbers

Looks like the spillover is moving down the preference tier. Unused F2A visas would go to F3, but unused F1 would go to F2 also 

[harden4mvp 3]

2 hours ago, DaveAndAnastasia said:

There's no way of knowing right now, and it almost certainly will vary by country. Probably depends on how visas from that embassy or consulate broke down prior to the closings.

 

For relationship-based visas, I suspect there will be a backlog of cases that hadn't had interviews yet when the embassy or consulate closed, and that will even have additional cases added to it that made it through the US side of processing during the lockdown.

But the volume of new cases will be down for a while because of the side effects of travel bans and people being less willing to travel immediately after bans are lifted.

Yes, unfortunately there is no doubt the backlog will be piling up due to Covid and EO visa ban.