IR1/CR1 Interview timeframes in Warsaw

[aerodnight 76]

13 minutes ago, Zoothie said:

WOW. Warsaw clearly cleared their backlog. We waited for 8 months for our interview and I see the wait is back to 2 mos. Enjoy!

When was that? Could be due to that diversity lottery interviews, I guess

[slavaskii 886]

54 minutes ago, Zoothie said:

WOW. Warsaw clearly cleared their backlog. We waited for 8 months for our interview and I see the wait is back to 2 mos. Enjoy!

Super glad to see this for you IR1/CR1 folks. We routinely heard that Warsaw was the most capable embassy in Europe, and I think it's really starting to show now. I thought they were excellent when we interviewed for K-1 back in June, my wife and I were both very impressed with everyone there. I noticed the State Department was seemingly staffing the Embassy with people from all over Eastern Europe / Central Asia, so they've got really solid folks inside. 

 

Best of luck to you all as you continue onwards.

[Zoothie 8]

The backlog went to 8-9 mos when they transferred Moscow load to Warsaw, which happened about Nov-Dec last year. All their IR/DV-visa applicants were in the limbo since May, when Moscow stopped issuing most visas, and all that backlog just went to Warsaw. DV/IR - all of them, with DQ dates from deep last year, and hence standing ahead of "normal" processing in the queue. But I can see the wait is back to normal now.

[TBoneTX 45,248]

41 minutes ago, slavaskii said:

Super glad to see this for you IR1/CR1 folks.

Heartily echoed.  Any good news at all in this forum is cause for joy.

[Moscowmojo 19]

Your other option is to request a transfer of your case to a different country.  That is what we just did.  Our case started out and Moscow and we knew it would automatically be transferred to Poland.  As soon as that happened I wrote a few Embassy's where Russians can travel too easily to see if they would accept our case.  Kazakhstan and Romania responded positively.  I requested to move the case from Poland to Kazakhstan and it was moved the next day.  Now we are just waiting for an interview date in Almaty.  We looked at the Schengen visa and Italy looked like the best option for us if we would have went down that road.  She would have to show 300,000 rubles in the account to get the Visa.  Also, travel is a nightmare to Poland for Russians as they need to go through Istanbul, Dubai, Doha etc, then go to the country issuing the visa and then to Poland.

[Master5 12]

8 hours ago, Moscowmojo said:

Your other option is to request a transfer of your case to a different country.  That is what we just did.  Our case started out and Moscow and we knew it would automatically be transferred to Poland.  As soon as that happened I wrote a few Embassy's where Russians can travel too easily to see if they would accept our case.  Kazakhstan and Romania responded positively.  I requested to move the case from Poland to Kazakhstan and it was moved the next day.  Now we are just waiting for an interview date in Almaty.  We looked at the Schengen visa and Italy looked like the best option for us if we would have went down that road.  She would have to show 300,000 rubles in the account to get the Visa. 

Hi @Moscowmojo! What's the email address you used for contacting Kazakhstan embassy? I can't find any email address for IV enquiries on their website. My wife got a Schengen visa refusal recently (yes, we showed 400,000RUB in her account and travel reservations, bunch or other supporting docs), so I'm trying to transfer the case to some country where you can actually travel to.

 

BTW, Romania does require a visa for Russian citizens as well.

 

8 hours ago, Moscowmojo said:

Also, travel is a nightmare to Poland for Russians as they need to go through Istanbul, Dubai, Doha etc, then go to the country issuing the visa and then to Poland.

Now imaging traveling like that with little kids as in our case!

Edited December 16, 2022 by Master5

[Simplytex 387]

16 hours ago, Moscowmojo said:

We looked at the Schengen visa and Italy looked like the best option for us if we would have went down that road.  She would have to show 300,000 rubles in the account to get the Visa.

So, I've heard that number thrown around a lot as a defacto-standard for Russian's trying to get Schengen visa... Just FYI, I don't think it's true because my wife doesn't meet that threshold (I told her to start spending down Rubles as they basically aren't transferable these days.) Instead, when applying for the visa, I included a letter stating that I would provide financial support, and copies of my bank statement, payroll info, etc. Didn't have any issues with it.

 

Btw, there are minimum standards but not to the level of 300k rubles, usually depends on length of stay, etc. https://www.schengenvisainfo.com/schengen-visa-application-requirements/means-subsistence/

[Moscowmojo 19]

4 minutes ago, Simplytex said:

So, I've heard that number thrown around a lot as a defacto-standard for Russian's trying to get Schengen visa... Just FYI, I don't think it's true because my wife doesn't meet that threshold (I told her to start spending down Rubles as they basically aren't transferable these days.) Instead, when applying for the visa, I included a letter stating that I would provide financial support, and copies of my bank statement, payroll info, etc. Didn't have any issues with it.

 

Btw, there are minimum standards but not to the level of 300k rubles, usually depends on length of stay, etc. https://www.schengenvisainfo.com/schengen-visa-application-requirements/means-subsistence/

Regarding the Schengen, from my understanding, it all depends on the country you are applying to for the Schengen, every country has different requirements.  I our case we were looking at Italy as the best option and the Russian Visa company recommended she show at least 300K roubles for our length of stay.   I think some European countries want to make it as hard as possible for Russians to get a visa.  We ended up not applying for a Schengen, so I have no personal experience with it.

[Moscowmojo 19]

8 hours ago, Master5 said:

Hi @Moscowmojo! What's the email address you used for contacting Kazakhstan embassy? I can't find any email address for IV enquiries on their website. My wife got a Schengen visa refusal recently (yes, we showed 400,000RUB in her account and travel reservations, bunch or other supporting docs), so I'm trying to transfer the case to some country where you can actually travel to.

 

BTW, Romania does require a visa for Russian citizens as well.

 

Now imaging traveling like that with little kids as in our case!

Yes, you are right, Romania requires a visa for Russian citizens, but its pretty easy to get one.  10,000 Rubles and two weeks and its good for Bulgaria and Bosnia too.  My wife had a Bulgarian visa which would have allowed her into Romania.  Although with Romania you still  have the issue of no direct flights from Russia and no connecting flights through Europe, except for maybe Serbia.  I will say the American Embassy in Romania was very quick in their responses and friendly and could be an option for some. Bulgaria refused our request to move our case there from Poland as they only accept Bulgarian residence.

[Moscowmojo 19]

The United States is trying to identify countries that are more accessible than Poland, in which Russians could obtain American visas, US Chargé d'Affaires a.i. in Moscow Elizabeth Rud said in an interview with RIA Novosti.  The article is in Russian but the video has her speaking English.  Here is the link to the article.

The US is looking for an affordable country for issuing immigrant visas to Russians

 https://ria.ru/20221128/vizy-1834655753.html?in=t

[DK999 14]

11 hours ago, Moscowmojo said:

The United States is trying to identify countries that are more accessible than Poland, in which Russians could obtain American visas, US Chargé d'Affaires a.i. in Moscow Elizabeth Rud said in an interview with RIA Novosti.  The article is in Russian but the video has her speaking English.  Here is the link to the article.

The US is looking for an affordable country for issuing immigrant visas to Russians

 https://ria.ru/20221128/vizy-1834655753.html?in=t

Gee I wonder where they'll find such a country? Someone please send them the "Visa Requirements for Russian citizens" wiki page

[BenNomad 88]

11 hours ago, Moscowmojo said:

The United States is trying to identify countries that are more accessible than Poland, in which Russians could obtain American visas, US Chargé d'Affaires a.i. in Moscow Elizabeth Rud said in an interview with RIA Novosti.  The article is in Russian but the video has her speaking English.  Here is the link to the article.

The US is looking for an affordable country for issuing immigrant visas to Russians

 https://ria.ru/20221128/vizy-1834655753.html?in=t

Thanks for posting that link. Good to know the State Dept isn't blind and deaf to the issue. I would think that Turkey would be a logical alternative to Poland but who knows?

[Master5 12]

19 hours ago, Moscowmojo said:

The United States is trying to identify countries that are more accessible than Poland, in which Russians could obtain American visas, US Chargé d'Affaires a.i. in Moscow Elizabeth Rud said in an interview with RIA Novosti.  The article is in Russian but the video has her speaking English.  Here is the link to the article.

The US is looking for an affordable country for issuing immigrant visas to Russians

 https://ria.ru/20221128/vizy-1834655753.html?in=t

Thanks for sharing! The correct translation from Russian would be "The US is looking for an accessible country for issuing immigrant visas to Russians". They move so slow though. Armenia, Georgia, Turkey, Kazakhstan, Israel - they could just spread the case load between those 5 long time ago.

[Lynxyonok 316]

On 11/28/2022 at 1:23 PM, Zoothie said:

WOW. Warsaw clearly cleared their backlog. We waited for 8 months for our interview and I see the wait is back to 2 mos. Enjoy!

There was a massive rush of Russian expedites in early spring to mid-summer with beneficiaries booking up interview dates for months and months out, then rescheduling them as those expedites were shut down. If I had a nickel for every interview window I saw desperately abandoned too shortly in time for anyone to retake it...

 

Only three reschedule attempts are possible prior to having to pay anew; as more people realized they'd have to wait the entire 15+ months, interview appointment windows started to be more prominent. I think nowadays it's easy to catch one within 6 months whereas last summer it was nigh impossible. People became more cautious.

 

(Yes, this revolved around K1 interviews, but overall resource drain had to roll over to CR1 ones too).

Edited January 9, 2023 by Lynxyonok

[Simplytex 387]

2 hours ago, Lynxyonok said:

There was a massive rush of Russian expedites in early spring to mid-summer with beneficiaries booking up interview dates for months and months out, then rescheduling them as those expedites were shut down. If I had a nickel for every interview window I saw desperately abandoned too shortly in time for anyone to retake it...

 

Only three reschedule attempts are possible prior to having to pay anew; as more people realized they'd have to wait the entire 15+ months, interview appointment windows started to be more prominent. I think nowadays it's easy to catch one within 6 months whereas last summer it was nigh impossible. People became more cautious.

 

(Yes, this revolved around K1 interviews, but overall resource drain had to roll over to CR1 ones too).

Yeah, probably the resource allocation for rescheduled expedites and also diversity visa interviews before they expired. 

 

Well in any case I don't know of anyone who has been DQ after smoothoperaytor and master5 besides my wife (Dec 20) so I guess I'll be the data point for current processing times... Hoping by Valentine's Day!