KESA

My husband's interview was also June 5th (maybe we saw you guys in line outside the consulate 😂) his visa was issued June 7th. Have you tried emailing them to check in? @AnaBanana12345 they didn't ask for our AOS documents - my husband brought an updated version to the interview (we applied to the NVC ages ago - so we had updated financial information by now, so our lawyers recommended we fill out a new AOS document and bring it just in case). But they never asked for a copy of the original or the new one we had filled out. We brought copies of both just in case though. For our interview: His appointment was 8am, we arrived in line at 7:20am and were 4th in line The windows opened at I think 7:45am and if you were applying for an immigrant visa, you were instructed to go to window #2 At this window they looked at the print out of his confirmation page from the embassy (the sheet that says if you elected to have the visa delivered vs. to pick it up) and his passport After that you move to the side and wait for the doors to open at 8am Once the doors open: they won't let you in until your phone is off and they won't let you in with any bag larger than an 'A4' size - so anyone with backpacks got asked to leave their bags outside the embassy (my husband gave his to me, the guy in front of us was alone - so he went across street where I think there was a storage facility or something -- it meant he was further back in line though so delayed him a bit) There was a lady with a tote bag that was let through, they just did a quick search but she was allowed to take it inside cameras, laptops or any larger electronic devices are also not allowed With all that, my husband was through the doors at 8:05am He handed his phone to security, who gave him a ticket to pick it back up when he left He then went to a counter where they gave him a ticket with his number/place in line to be interviewed That same person at that counter called his number and did his preliminary interview. For him, he says he only waited about 10 minutes between getting his ticket and getting called back up (he says people that came later had to wait longer since there were more people / a longer line by then) He handed her his passport She asked the following questions: name of his sponsor, is this your first or second marriage, do you have any kids, how many times have you entered the US, what was the duration of the longest stay, have you committed a crime She asked for the following (original) documents: marriage license, birth certificate, police clearance certificates, 1 photo The entire exchange lasted 5 minutes (some people that weren't prepared with all the correct documents took as long as 20 minutes for this interview) After that he went to sit back down and wait to be called for his secondary interview - this was the longest part. They didn't open the interview window until 9:30am, so he ended up waiting for about an 1hr-1:15hr to be called for this interview Once he was called for the second interview - this took about 5 minutes Very friendly - handed back all documents that the first interviewing officer had taken (the marriage license, birth certificate, etc.), excluding the police clearances, which she kept Questions: how did we meet, when did we get married, where did we get married, what do you do (career-wise), what is your wife's job / position She also asked to see my updated W2s (we had applied through the NVC back in early 2021, so we had two years of updated W2s that she wanted to see Because of the updated W2s - we showed her the physical copies, but she said they also needed to be uploaded to the CEAC portal before she could issue the visa. We uploaded immediately after the interview, when there had been no case status change by the following morning - we sent an email to support-poland@ustraveldocs.com asking if they had received the documents and checking on the status of our case. We did not receive a reply, but by the following morning (about 24 hours after we had sent the email, and 48 after the interview had taken place / we had uploaded the W2s) when we checked our CEAC case status it had changed to 'issued'. My husband received an email a few hours later saying that his documents had been 'collected from the US embassy' and when we double checked on the embassy portal website it said the passport was ready for pickup. We checked our case status at the following links: CEAC status link: https://ceac.state.gov/CEACStatTracker/Status.aspx?App=NIV Embassy Website: https://portal.ustraveldocs.com/SiteLogin?country=Poland&language=en_US

Hi All! For everyone that's had their interview: how far in advance did you guys schedule your medical / how quickly were your results ready? (@aerodnight @MCGH @IvanRi)

We got our interview letter today as well! Timeline below: DQ: March 17, 2022 Requested Embassy Transfer (from Nairobi to Warsaw): March 24, 2023 Embassy Transfer Approved / new Warsaw Case Number issued: March 27, 2023 IL Received: April 21, 2023 Interview: June 5, 2023 (We were both living / working in Kenya when we started our process so we initially applied through that embassy - the backlogs at the Nairobi embassy are so crazy, we waited for our interview letter from them for over 12 months before we gave up and requested an embassy transfer to Warsaw. Got the IL from the Warsaw embassy less than a month after requesting the transfer! 🤯)

No 😒 It was a pretty disappointing event. They really focused on USAID / security updates and then briefly touched on visas for like 60 seconds - they basically said 'immigrant visa processing increased x% in 2022, for those of you still waiting we appreciate your patience as we continue to work through the backlog' and then moved on. Super unhelpful, especially considering the statistic they cited was referring to all immigrant visas, which is up due to the increase in processing of DV and E3 visas. Meanwhile all IR and family based visa processing was actually down 4% in 2022 (I'm pulling the numbers from the monthly immigrant visa issuance statistics reports) - so they kind of dodged all of our questions, obviously a group of US Citizens asking about visas are asking about the visa categories related to them, not the DVs / employment visas 🙄

I registered yesterday! I'm asking if they have a plan to reduce the backlog for IR visas (my question below): "Hello - Can you please speak to the embassy's plan to reduce the backlog for Immediate Relatives of US Citizen visa interviews? Current wait times are well over a year. In January (the last month this data is available as of today) there were over 500 E3 visas processed, but only 49 IR visas processed (a 27% decrease from last month, and a 66% YoY decrease). The backlog and wait times for Immediate Relatives has been growing, while processing numbers for this visa class continues to decline. Is there a plan to process 1000+ Immediate Relative applications, like the embassy did for DV applicants back in September?" It's going to be at 4:30am US east coast time lol so should be an early morning. If anyone else wants to submit a question, it might increase the odds they actually address one of our questions if there's a few submissions on this topic!

I think when they put E3 they must mean all the employment third preference categories (E31, E32, etc.)? I thought they meant Australians at first too but that would just be so random 😂 But I still have no idea why they would process so many in that category last month? We were so pissed when we saw this yesterday. It's really hard to wait this long, but it's even worse to watch as they continue to prioritize other categories (that are LOWER priority categories than us!) and not care that the backlog for us just continues to grow... it's so infuriating.

Does anyone know how long the Nairobi Embassy is currently taking to schedule interviews? We were approved by the NVC in April and are trying to get a sense for how long the wait is going to be (we originally submitted our I-130 back in Feb 2021, so this whole process has taken almost 1.5 years so far!). We're applying for a CR1 visa -- I'm the sponsor (US citizen), he's from South Africa but living in Kenya / applying through that consulate.