Hello,
Originally we did our USCIS papers with a lawyer who told us that we needed to put down Warsaw as our embassy which is why we did it, he then said when the time came we would be able to transfer to another embassy. My husband does not have a Schengen and apparently, we cannot get it from any embassy not in Belarus which is insane. After waiting about a year and living in SE Asia we went to Georgia for a few months to wait it out and try to get into another embassy. Kazakhstan did not take us and we saw a lot of issues with getting visas from Israel from acquaintances and on forums, we had also lived in Turkey, Indonesia, and been in Dubai which are massively Muslim countries so Isreal would be a risk as in we were told they might not even let us in because of this.
When our Embassy was assigned to Jakarta, I contacted NVC and explained the situation, i.e. that we only had visitor visas in Jakarta and needed help transferring our case to another embassy. They basically told me that they couldn't do anything because my husband does not have proof of residency in any other country. We sent our papers in, no where in the process did they ask for residency, Jakarta accepted all of our papers and even gave us an appointment day which is even crazier bc according to visa agencies in Indonesia (we had already talked to two agencies and a friend from Indonesia who helps get American visas) they shouldn't have even accepted our papers in the first place. Apparently, we could try to get him a work Visa but that would be seen as fraud since the work visa would come in after we even got an appointment date.
I wrote to my congressman and am waiting for a reply hopefully but I think the only other option would be trying to get a residency or work/student permit in a country around us and transferring our case. We had spent so much money already on flights and Airbnbs that flying back anywhere would really start to run us dry.
***SORRY for the rant, I am just at a loss that all of this was allowed to happen and we were told they won't accept us when we tried to get a medical appointment when we had already traveled halfway across the world for this. This feels completely unethical from the US embassy side tbh...after multiple communications with NVC and no issues or questions from Jakarta we had assumed Jakarta had taken us in with good faith knowing the situation happening in eastern Europe.