For fiancé and spouse visa interviews, specifically in Mexico, there have been recent updates on the Department of State website. Typically, we don’t do country specific updates but Mexico is such a high volume consulate. They are the highest volume in the world. They have so many cases and one of the longest backlogs.

This is really important for those of you who are going through an immigration process through a consulate through the US embassy or consulate in Mexico. But it’s also indicative of some changes we’re seeing and we’re hoping to see in other consulates across the world as consulates, the Department of State, and immigration is adapting to COVID and the changes that we’ve all experienced over the past year.

There was a recent announcement on the US Embassy & Consulates in Mexico website. The first part announced that the US Consulate General in Ciudad Juarez has resumed routine immigrant visa operations and that they’re scheduling thousands of socially distanced interviews.

Read: Update to Visas Services

This is great. These are the kind of announcements that everybody’s waiting for at all US embassies and consulates across the world. We’re hoping that things can resume to normal.

Again, the US consulate in Mexico is very high volume. It’s already had a very long line of backlog and COVID just aggravated the backlog. Now, we are seeing individuals who had previously had interviews scheduled and then canceled right before COVID, March through June of 2020, that they are working on getting through those.

We are seeing interviews being scheduled. We’re hoping now with the routine that they’re resuming we will all start seeing more and more interviews being scheduled. We know that there’s still going to be a long wait. It doesn’t necessarily mean you’ll get an interview tomorrow or the next week. It really depends on when your case was documentarily qualified and how long you’ve been in line.

The other part of the announcement is with regards to fiancé visa applicants. We’ve had a lot of people in our Facebook group who are going through the spouse and fiancé visa process through Mexico. They’re asking, “Is this good news? What does it mean?”

For K1 visa applicants, they actually made an announcement that they are going to be scheduling fiancé visa interviews for K1 visa applicants in Mexico City. This is great news because previously all interviews for fiancé visas, spouse visas, family visas, and everything else went through the US consulate in Ciudad Juarez.

With Mexico having so many people in line for interviews, having just one location where all of those interviews occur aggravated that backlog. With COVID, it just got worse. This is a step in the right direction. This is great news that the fiancé visa applicants will be able to have interviews in a separate location.

Hopefully, that will help not just fiancé visa applicants to have interviews. It’ll free up the resources for officers that are at Ciudad Juarez and consulates in Mexico. They can also process more cases there.

K1 Fiancé Interviews

Some of the questions we were receiving from individuals who are K1 fiancé visa applicants is, “I wrote on my application that I would be processing in Ciudad Juarez, that’s where I’d have my interview. Do I need to make any changes? Do I need to notify immigration?”

You don’t have to do anything. You just need to wait for a decision on your case and the National Visa Center will let you know when you can begin the next steps for the process. They will let you know where your interview will be.

Hopefully, this will mean that things will be moving a little bit faster, not just for individuals from Mexico. This is applicable in the sense that it’s indicative or it shows rather that the Department of State and immigration is trying to adapt and change to everything that’s happened over the past year.

Hopefully, we’ll see other US embassies and consulates taking similar steps and trying to find creative and unique ways to have interviews in other places to get things moving because we know all of you just want to have your interviews and you want to be able to be together and start your lives in the United States.