Let’s dive in to what is the status of US embassy and consulate interviews as of December 2020.

For many of you who are going through the process, part of the process involves an interview at a US embassy or consulate if you’re going through the CR1 or IR1 or K1 process. For those of you who are just starting out in your immigration journey, I’d like to give you a little bit of context at what phase the interview comes into play.

The first step for a CR1 or IR1 spousal visa is a petition, and same with the K1 fiancé visa, the first step is a fiancé visa petition. With that petition, you’re showing immigration you have a real relationship based on love. Once that petition is decided and approved, the next step is a US embassy or US consulate interview in the immigrants’ country of origin.

This year with COVID, it’s been a tough year for individuals who are going through an immigration process. The US embassies and consulates closed across the world for routine services. Later in the year, they began resuming services for expedited interviews. Now, we are starting to see that the consulates and embassies are starting to begin trying to resume normal procedures. They’re slowly starting to begin scheduling interviews at US embassies and consulates.

Every country is different in terms of how they’re handling Corona virus and what their levels of COVID are. It has impacted the US embassy and US consulate’s ability to reopen or to have routine services.

We are noticing an uptick in the scheduling of interviews. There is a very long backlog. There was a lot of people who had interviews scheduled in March, right when COVID started picking up and their interviews were sadly cancelled.

But we are starting to see that interviews are being rescheduled for individuals who had interviews canceled. We’ve also had a lot of success with individuals who are going through an expedited interview process, requesting an expedite. We have videos on our YouTube channel about what an expedite request is and who might be eligible and you’re welcome to schedule an appointment with one of our attorneys to discuss if that’s an option for you.

See: Expedite Requests for K1 Fiancé and CR1 Spouse Interviews

The good news is that we are seeing embassies and consulates begin to start taking additional steps at scheduling interviews and addressing interviews that had been cancelled earlier in the year.

That’s not a hundred percent great news but it is a step in the right direction. We’ve noticed in our Facebook group that a lot of individuals have posted that they’re really excited that their interviews have been scheduled or they’re really excited that they’ve gotten petition approvals.  Interviews being scheduled not at the level that they were pre-COVID but they are beginning to schedule interviews on a more regular basis.

Some US embassies and consulates have posted on their website that they’re taking steps to resuming interview scheduling. The best thing you can do is check the US embassy or consulate website for the country where your interview will take place so you can see what updates that that US embassy or consulate has with regards to interviews. That’s the best place to get the most up-to-date information about the status of interviews in your specific country.