Pirozhok

Nothing useful. Reached out to the congressional office at the 90-day mark, but they just received the same copy/pasted response I did from the embassy.

That sucks. I guess it's nice knowing we're not alone in the waiting, but it all seems to pointless and unnecessary.

Quick update for anyone interested: the embassy reached out via email yesterday (the 6 week mark since the interview) and told her to come by and pick up her passport (without the US visa). When picking it up, they were very friendly and blamed the delay on computer problems. They made it sound like the case isn't actually in AP, and they're just waiting for a system they don't fully understand to spit out the visa.

Howdy all, I am currently in Warsaw with my Russian fiancée and wanted to share our experience so far, since I've spent so much of the past few months reading about others' here. We came to Warsaw via Hungary. She had several EU visits and Schengen visas prior to covid, and I provided a pretty thorough sponsorship letter/documentation, so we were lucky enough to receive one valid for about 6 months. That was one of the worries we had early on, but it turned out to be a non-issue getting here. Her interview was on July 15. Went well, and after a 3-4 hour wait + 10 minutes of asking simple questions, she was told she'd be approved and have her passport back in 3-5 business days. I'm typing this in a hotel room in Warsaw, so that didn't happen. Instead, we're in AP. Pretty routine from what I can tell: the CEAC status shows "refused" and the USTravelDocs page shows "Document Delivery Information:" without further details. I reached out a bit over a week later specifically because we had previous issues receiving emails from them (the appointment instructions were sent to an old email address that only appeared in the part of the DS-160 where they ask for all emails/social media from the past 5 years. She forgot the pw and stopped using it 4ish years ago). In their response, they confirmed the case is undergoing routine administrative processing, no additional documents/information were required from us, and all there is to do is wait until they contact us. That was on July 24. As others before me, I'm having to cancel flights, extend stays, etc. while I enjoy an prolonged "vacation" in Warsaw. Because of this, I check the CEAC status regularly hoping for news. This is why I've noticed something I haven't seen much of and was hoping someone has seen a similar experience that I have not found while searching: the "case last updated" date isn't changing. It updated once after the interview, once when they replied to my email, and that's it. Others seem to have it updating several times before the visa is approved (at least when it takes this long), so I'm curious whether anyone has seen something like this and has an anecdote indicating whether it's likely to suddenly jump to "issued" one day, still probably has a few behind-the-scenes changes to wait through, or maybe just fell behind someone's desk and isn't getting looked at at all?

Ours was stuck in that status for about 2 weeks before the attempted to send the instructions via email. I say "attempted" because they didn't send it to the correct email address, told me to keep waiting when I emailed them at around the 4-week mark, and eventually admitted they'd sent it and offered to re-send to the correct email address on, I think, the third time I contacted the NVC for a status update. That part of the process was a fuster-cluck of delays and problems for us. She was able to get a Schengen visa to Hungary. I did write a pretty detailed letter of support, including a lot of docs confirming my financial situation. I also added her as an authorized user on my credit card with a $50k limit and included that. Another potential factor is that she traveled to the EU pre-covid quite a bit, so has a history of previous Schengen visits without overstaying. Not sure what combination of factors wound up mattering, but she asked for a 30-day stay and was approved for 6 months or so. After she applied, the visa approval only took about a week.

As the weeks went by without hearing anything, I started emailing the Polish embassy through their USTravelDocs support address. It took asking 3 times, but they finally stopped giving form letters and told me they sent the email back in mid-March (when the CEAC site began showing READY) to the wrong email address. I got them to re-send and got it this morning. It might be worth reaching out to them, specifically saying you have been waiting a while and want to confirm whether they have sent the email yet.

This is our plan as well. Is there a specific visa center you used and can personally recommend? She's in St. P too. She's obtained Schengen visas before for travel and always did it all herself, but she's considering visiting one of these visa companies because it's so much more strict than a few years ago.

I'm at the same stage, and I reached out to the Warsaw embassy recently via email to see if they would give any updates, since I've been READY for a while now. Got back a form letter saying it can take a several weeks to receive instructions from them, and to please not schedule the appointment until we have been contacted with instructions to do so. From old posts here and other forums, believe it'll be coming via email from Warsaw. I'll update with a more confident answer if I ever actually get something from them personally though.

Adding another to the list. She's partial to the meals on Turkish Airlines anyway, so we just start on their website directly. There really aren't enough options to save much by shopping around at this point anyway.

It's been a couple months, how about now? We had a delay going to NVC thanks to a clerical error on the USCIS's part, but hopefully not too much longer until we have a date and she's applying for a visa. The Forum Vinskogo suggestion is interesting, as that's actually where I saw people suggestion Hungary back in October. It seemed to make sense, which is why I was wondering if there's something the folks here knew as to why Greece/Italy would be preferable to Hungary.

I'm curious if anyone has a good answer to this specific question? It seems like with visa windows shortening and the US visa process being so open-ended with timeframes, it's had to come up before, right?

I remember this issue. Wound up using a program that allowed me to insert annotations anywhere, so I just added annotations over the fields that weren't directly editable. I don't remember 100% what I used, as it's been a year now, but I think it was just the Edge browser.

Open question to anyone trying the Schengen route to Poland: I haven't seen Hungary mentioned in these threads at all. Is there a reason that I've missed that's ruling them out as a potential entry point?

And I thought single entry meant you could go to any of them, provided you didn't leave the Schengen territory.

I recognize you from the Jerusalem threads. Did you opt to transfer because Spain only granted a single-entry visa?

Yep, I read up on your situation after joining too (new to the site and just getting settled in as I prepare to sort all this out for us). I didn't ask only because you've been active and seem to be updating us all as things unfold already. I was actually hoping that other countries might be open to taking the rejected Schengen into account too. I'm not opposed to going to Jerusalem, but it seems like so much of this stuff is on the whim of whomever is working at the consulate and changes by the week and I'm a bit worried that they currently seem like the only real option. OP seemed open to any other country, so was hoping to see if they maybe found luck elsewhere too.

What did you end up doing, and how did it work out?