US Immigration from Iran

My fianc and I are a same sex couple. I'm a US citizen. He is an Iranian living in Iran. We're two men who fell in love, got engaged, and are waiting to get married in the US where it is safe and legal for gay couples to marry. I filed for a K1 visa the first week of January 2017. Trump took office and started a series of travel bans that blocked us. The K1 interview was in August 2017. The case was put in Administrative Processing. We were told it would be two weeks to four months for an answer. Months passed. The supreme court upheld the ban. I reached out to Senator Duckworth of IL for help in June of 2018. Her office took 4 months to respond. When they did finally engage and reach out to the embassy, the response from the embassy was non committal. Months continued to pass. Senator Duckworth's office was inconsistent in their support, often ignoring emails and phone calls for months at a time. We finally hired an attorney and filed a writ of mandamus in April 2019. That same month Trump declared the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) a terrorist organization. The IRGC is a branch of the Iranian Armed Forces. For reference, Iran requires mandatory military service for young men coming of age. It's not voluntary and you have no say in which branch of the military you get assigned. It's completely random. My fianc was conscripted (forced) into the IRGC for his mandatory military service. That was 15 years ago. He served the minimum time and got out. He received no weapons training. He saw no combat. He never left his state or country. The Department of State dragged the mandamus suit out for 10 months. The judge finally ordered the embassy to adjudicate our visa petition in February 2020. Within approximately one business day, the embassy refused the visa based on Presidential Proclamation 9645 and INA 212(a)(3)(B). They offered no waiver. We suspected the 212 was because of his forced military service in IRGC. My partner is not a terrorist. He has never been nor will he ever be a terrorist. Our attorney wrote a really good legal brief detailing why he qualifies for an exemption under the law and sent it to the embassy. The embassy invited him for a second interview to discuss his military service in detail under oath. The interview occurred the first week of July 2021. It went very well but at the conclusion they handed back his passport and said the decision whether to give him the visa was not theirs to make. Only Washington could make that decision. We were devastated. After multiple emails to the embassy from the parking lot, multiple conversations with the embassy's receptionist, and waiting an additional 2 hours in 110+ degree heat, we gave up and headed back to the hotel. From the hotel, I reached out to Senator Duckworth's office again for assistance and summarized everything. They reached out to the State Department and the embassy. The embassy responded that they had submitted everything to their partners in Washington immediately after the 2nd interview. State never responded. That was 90 days ago. I am now back in the US. My fianc is back in Iran. We are waiting with no idea how long it will take for an answer or what that answer will be. It's going on 5 years since we applied for the K1 visa. Five years. Days have turned into weeks, which have turned into months, which have turned into years of waiting. I can't begin to explain the pain we are in. This has impacted both his and my mental and physical health. I have reached out to Senator Duckworth's office four times this week and have received no response. Three emails and one voice mail. Complete silence. I emailed The White House and the President immediately after the 2nd interview back in July. I've received nothing except a generic auto reply. This week I have started emailing The White House daily. No response. It doesn't need to be this difficult. It shouldn't be this difficult. I need this to matter to someone in power. I need to know that we matter. My fianc is not safe in Iran. Being gay in Iran is punishable by death. The US government knows this. This is not a hard call to make.

My fiance and I are caught in this. It's completely unfair. If the embassy had adjudicated our petition in the 20 months leading up to April 2019, we wouldn't be in this trap. There is an ongoing mandamus suit asking a federal judge to review.

https://thinkimmigration.org/blog/2021/05/06/iranians-forced-into-military-service-face-immigration-blockade/

"In April 2019, the United States government designated Iran s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) aka Sepah or Pasdaran, a terrorist organization. Designating a group as a terrorist organization carries serious immigration repercussions for members of the group, including grounds for inadmissibility that are nearly impossible to overcome. IRGC is, in fact, a branch of the Iranian armed forces that operates independent of the regular army. The designation as a terrorist organization is retroactive, which means any person who has ever served under the IRGC banner, even prior to 2019, is now subject to the terrorist bar and ineligible for any U.S. visas.

This has created an arbitrary and capricious retroactive trap for certain Iranian men, who have and remain subject to a 2-year mandatory military service. They may complete their duty under any of the branches of regular military (Artesh) or under IRGC/Sepah. Unfortunately, draftees don t have a choice in where they get to perform this mandated military service. They are literally lined up, given numbers that are randomly drawn, and then are told where to report for duty based on a lottery as their number is called. Now, those that have served in the IRGC or will do so will lose their ability to enter the U.S.

Regardless of the intent of the terrorist designation, the results have been devastating for ordinary Iranians who don t have a choice in how their country is governed. For example, if a draftee is assigned to IRGC, failure to report for duty will be cause for imprisonment in harsh Iranian prisons, and may even carry a death sentence. The retroactivity nature of the designation means that young men forced to serve their 2-year mandatory service in IRGC in say 1996, are now ineligible for a U.S. visa in 2021.

The dragnet set up by the IRGC terror ban is overbroad and consequently ineffective. Since 2019, thousands of families have been affected by the designation and because there are no waivers, the visa denials are final. The U.S. government doesn t care what the reasons were, or your particular situation, they just deny, deny, deny. The blanket designation requires this nondiscretionary result.

The injustice is real and ripe for challenge. We just filed suit in federal court, asking the court to carve out an exception so every case can be decided on its own merits. If a visa applicant willingly served and/or rose up in the IRGC ranks, the intent of the designation is clear and the person should be denied a U.S. visa. However, if service was forced and was inconsequential, the applicant deserves a fair shot at a U.S. visa. Blanket denials based on assumptions are wrong and un-American."

Hello Everyone,

Need your advise. I am the US citizen petitioner living in the states. My wife is from Iran and her I-130 was recently approved. We are in the process of finalizing the NVC document gathering process.

Two Questions:

1. My wife was never married before we met but I had a divorce five years ago. Should I upload my divorce decree under the beneficiary's civil documents section on the NVC website?

2. According to the State Department's website (below link) people from Iran applying for immigration visa: "Police records are not required for immigrant visa applicants because posts cannot verify them." ......... However, on NVC's website it shows Police Certificate as a required civil document. What should I do?

Police Certificates

Available

Comments: Available but unreliable. Police records are not required for immigrant visa applicants because posts cannot verify them. Clean record certificates can be obtained in Iran or from Iranian Embassies and Consulates, and the physical appearance of the certificate changes significantly depending on which authority issued it.

Hello everyone,

My I-130 for my wife who is from Iran was approved on 08/24 and today I received an e-mail from NVC with my log-in details. Because my wife is residing in Iran our choices for US Embassy locations are: Turkey, Abu Dhabi and Armenia. Due to Covid-19, the US embassy in Turkey is not accepting any visa cases unless you are a Turkish national or residence (per their website). So I was planning to pick Armenia instead and thought I can make that selection when I start the NVC process.

However, when I logged in to the NVC website today to pay the fees, I noticed on the top right it states "Interview Location: ABU DHABI". I never picked this embassy and was surprised, the interview location has already been chosen.

Questions I need your input on:

1. Does NVC make the selection of the US embassy for the consular interview for you, or can I pick and/or change that?

2. Does anyone know how I can find out the workload and interview wait times for the Abu Dhabi or Armenia embassies?

Appreciate your feedback on this.

Hello All,

Does anyone know if the San Fernando Valley, CA field office still offer the same day oath?

Thank you.