India US Marriage Visa Approvals by Month (K1 Visas Way Down, CR1 Visas Up)

[Captain Ewok 1,891]

We've had questions on whether the Mumbai US Consulate in India has been approving marriage based US Visas (and if so at what rate).  To answer that, we dug into the official US State Department data and plotted visa approvals for K1, CR1 and IR1 visas over the last 2 years. Here is what we found:

 

• K1 Visa stopped for 9 months.  It started again in January but there doesn't appear to be any effort to clear the backlog.
• IR1 Visa and CR1 Visa processing stopped for 5 months but started again last September.  There was a huge push to clear the backlog (seen by the processing spike below)

 

What are your thoughts?  It looks like K1s are not getting any priority which means longer wait times from petition receipts to interviews -- keeping family apart.

 

[SalishSea 17,818]

1 hour ago, Captain Ewok said:

We've had questions on whether the Mumbai US Consulate in India has been approving marriage based US Visas (and if so at what rate).  To answer that, we dug into the official US State Department data and plotted visa approvals for K1, CR1 and IR1 visas over the last 2 years. Here is what we found:

 

• K1 Visa stopped for 9 months.  It started again in January but there doesn't appear to be any effort to clear the backlog.
• IR1 Visa and CR1 Visa processing stopped for 5 months but started again last September.  There was a huge push to clear the backlog (seen by the processing spike below)

 

What are your thoughts?  It looks like K1s are not getting any priority which means longer wait times from petition receipts to interviews -- keeping family apart.

 

Wouldn't that data only be relevant if presented along with the numbers of approved petitions/applications in each category as well?

[JeanneAdil 6,491]

Many thoughts

1.  the spike in approvals in January could be the Long wait for many petitions because of  the country's additional security checks were finally done and visas issued for those who waited months and a year from time of interview /and not necessarily new interviews

2.   with the current covid medical crisis  (now in India) it may be hard to do the medical exam for the fiancee and spouse visas but they still issued 107 CR1 and 175 IR1 in April 

  (i think 46 K1 (and all their diveratives) 

 

stats on 

https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/legal/visa-law0/visa-statistics.html

 

3.  they processed 1294 B1/B2 (that don't need medical exams)

and 322 C1/D so crew members could return to work which could have been a request for expediting from the airline and cruise ship industry

 

They are trying but these "times are trying"

Edited May 29, 2021 by JeanneAdil

[Captain Ewok 1,891]

27 minutes ago, Jorgedig said:

Wouldn't that data only be relevant if presented along with the numbers of approved petitions/applications in each category as well?

These are the approved petitions.

[SalishSea 17,818]

15 hours ago, Captain Ewok said:

These are the approved petitions.

Approved petitions, or issued visas?  I guess I mean how many in each category are just sitting with no movement.  Could the higher numbers of issued CR/IR-1 visas be partly a result of lower numbers of K applications?

[Captain Ewok 1,891]

On 5/30/2021 at 7:01 AM, Jorgedig said:

Approved petitions, or issued visas?  I guess I mean how many in each category are just sitting with no movement.  Could the higher numbers of issued CR/IR-1 visas be partly a result of lower numbers of K applications?

Sorry poor language on my part.  These are approved issued visas. 

[Amrit Gurbir 21]

10 hours ago, Captain Ewok said:

Sorry poor language on my part.  These are approved issued visas. 

I think what he was trying to say is that the chart doesn't conclude anything about k1 vs cr1/ir1 priority.  You would need to find data on how large the backlog is for K1 vs IR1/CR1 to come up with that conclusion.  

[Jrbrooks 0]

Agree - it’s not fair to compare visa types because the total numbers could be different (maybe more marriage visa applications in general thus more approvals). Though it does look like fiancé visa processing started later than the other two. But it returns to a level similar to before March 2020. 
 

Medical exams are done outside of the process at a hospital so not really a barrier I think. 
 

Would love to see the backlog stats. I recently got asked If I’ve called my congressperson haha - is there anything anyone can do?