My interview got canceled. Now what? Hi, I'm Jim Hacking, immigration lawyer practicing law throughout the United States out of our offices in St. Louis, San Diego, and Washington, D.C. Some people apply for a green card. Some people apply for citizenship. In both of those cases, those people are going to have an interview. And when you get scheduled for an interview, sometimes weird things happen. What I mean by that is sometimes you'll get an interview notice and then you'll get a notice that says, "Due to unforeseen circumstances, this interview has been canceled. Please wait for a new appointment date."
And the immigrants in these situations usually tend to freak out. And I understand why. You've been waiting so long, so long, so long, so long for your immigration interview, because you really want that benefit. You want your citizenship. You want your green card. And then you finally get the interview notice and the Immigration Service then pulls the rug out from under you and says, "Sorry, no interview for you." And then people want to know what happens next. Well, a couple of different things happen. Sometimes they just reschedule it right away. So if you're in a good office that operates efficiently, like in Fairfax, Virginia, you're going to have your case go for another interview probably in about three or four weeks.
Other places where there are backlogs and that aren't run as efficiently, that might send you back into months and months of delay. So not much you can really do if your interview gets canceled. You can't really just show up and say, "I demand to see somebody today." You really have to wait for them to reschedule it. Now, if I had an interview that was scheduled and then de-scheduled, I would probably call the 1-800 number and ask them, "Hey, what's going on? How can I get this thing rescheduled? I really want to get my case over with." If your case gets set for interview and then canceled, and then they never schedule you again for an interview, which actually happens, to me that's a sign that there's something wrong with your case and that you're probably going to need to sue them. That's something that's going to get the case moving again, get your interview reset.
So if months and months have passed since you had your interview scheduled and then de-scheduled, you probably need to think about suing them, or at least taking some kind of action to get their attention and remind them that you're here and remind them that your case remains pending. Of course, you can use this time to continue preparing for your interview. You should always be ready to show up for an interview on short notice. Sometimes you only get two weeks or one week or three weeks of notice. So you always want to be ready. You always want to be going over your application a couple of times a month to make sure that you're familiar with the questions and that you're ready to answer and that your documents are ready to go if you get scheduled for that interview. But if your interview gets canceled, you're pretty much just waiting. There's not much you can do, other than to call the 1-800 number and try to get it reset. But for the most part, that's not going to happen.
If you have questions about this, give us a call, (314) 961-8200. You can email us, [email protected]. Be sure to join us in our Facebook group, which is called Immigrant Home. If you like this video, we ask that you please share it out on social and that you subscribe to our YouTube channel so that you get updates whenever we make new videos. And finally, on Tuesdays and Thursdays, usually at noon Central, you'll find me in Immigrant Home and in our YouTube channel answering as many of your immigration law-related questions as possible. Thanks a lot. Have a great day.
