What could happen at the embassy. Hi, I'm Jim Hacking, immigration lawyer practicing law throughout the United States at our office in St. Louis, Missouri. In today's video, we're going to talk about the possible outcomes from an interview or an application at a US embassy abroad. Now, typically we're talking about immigrant visas, we don't handle non-immigrant visas at our office. The only time we ever get involved in non-immigrant visas is when we're suing USCIS. But generally, if you are applying for an immigrant visa to the United States, there are several possible outcomes. The first of course is that the case could be approved. So if the case is approved, then a visa will be issued and then shortly thereafter it'll either be delivered to you, or you'll be able to go pick it up either at the embassy or at some other place that the MC uses for the delivery of passports and visas.
You can also have your case delayed and placed back into administrative processing. So we've been seeing more and more of that. There's a huge backlog at the embassies around the world. Hundreds of thousands of cases are backlogged, and there has not been a lot of movement, but that's certainly one outcome is that you might not get an actual straight answer. You might just be delayed and you might have to wait for further processing. Now they're supposed to give you a piece of paper and that would be a refusal. So you might get a refusal. That's the last outcome, and that is when you actually do get the piece of paper, you can be told why they feel that you were inadmissible or that they're not going to give you a visa at this time. Now, if the refusal is based on section 221(g) that means that there's some information or documentation that's missing and that the state department might give you a visa, but they are going to hold the case and then eventually they're going to ask you for additional information.
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Now, the interesting thing is the state department will place a case into administrative processing or they'll place it under 221(g) and they won't necessarily tell you right then what documents are missing or what information is missing. So this is really frustrating for people. People go to that embassy interview thinking that they're going to get a visa. They're going to walk out of there and be able to come to the United States, but they often find that their case has been placed in administrative processing. So when that happens, it's quite the bummer for the foreign national and the bigger headache is when they refuse to tell you what's missing and we see that often. We talk to people all the time who've been placed in admin processing or had their case place under 221(g) and they're not even given the opportunity to provide the additional information.
So we're seeing this more and more often. It's very frustrating for our clients. It's very frustrating for people that reach out to our office, but those are really the outcomes. You get an approval, you get a delay with no explanation, or you get a refusal. Now there are refusals other than 221(g). Say if someone has a drug problem where they're going to have to stay outside the United States for more than a year, or if they have some inadmissibility bar, like they served in a military group that the United States now considers to be a terrorist organization, or if they think there's other kinds of flat-out bars on people coming in United States. You can get a refusal that is for all intents and purposes final. So the good thing about 221(g) is that they can be reopened. The case is still alive, but there are some refusals that result in an outright ending of your case.
Then the last thing that can happen is the embassy can send the case back to USCIS, technically NVC can too, but usually it happens at the embassy. If they don't like a case, they can send it back to USCIS for possible revocation. So remember, USCIS is the one that approves the family-based petition and the state department doesn't have the right to revoke it. They have to send it back to USCIS for possible revocation. And when that happens, either USCIS will revoke it or they can send it back to the embassy after reaffirmation. So these are all the possible outcomes.
If you're confused, or if your case is stuck at the embassy and you want help give us a call at (314) 961-8200. You can email us at [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 that on social and that you subscribe to our YouTube channel so that you get updates whenever we make videos, just like this one. And then most Tuesdays and Thursdays we're live in the Facebook group, answering as many questions as we can in that 60 minute time period. Hope to see you there. Thanks a lot. Have a great day.
