NVC Expedites Spouse Visa Cases to Manila

Spouse visa Applicants from the Philippines due to a backlog at the US Embassy in Manila caused by a higher than normal influx of cases, caused by faster processing times at USCIS, overwhelmed the consulate’s capacity to schedule interviews. This led to significant delays. In response to the backlog, the National Visa Center (NVC) decided to “expedite” cases

The normal process for a spouse visa is that one’s case is first submitted to USCIS (United States citizenship and immigration service). 

USCIS reviewers process a spouse case and once satisfied, forward it to the State Department’s National Visa center (NVC).

The US sponsor then submits to NVC his or her financial documents, and the spouses civil documents and police clearances. NVC reviews these and when satisfied that the applicants documents are complete, they advise the applicants they are “documentarily qualified”.

Soon after NVC staff directly contacts the US consulate in the spouse’s country to schedule the interview. 

Once the appointments confirmed, NVC transfers the cases to the foreign consulate while at the same time sending the couple an email advising them of the time and date for their consulate interview.

This is how the process should work. 

But for spouse visas for Filipino beneficiaries, this system has broken down this year.

Earlier this year, I announced that USCIS had hired new staff, and due to the addition of new staff they had been processing fiancés Visa cases much more quickly than usual. 

During 2023 USCIS had taken about 15 months to process a fiancé visa case, whereas with the influx of new staff many cases were approved by USCIS five times faster than previously, many in only three months!

That was good news for the applicants who had applied for fiancé visas. 

But, that good news, had unintended consequences.

The speed at which USCIS pushed out cases that later ended up at consulates for their interviews virtually a year earlier than originally planned, created a log jam.  Three times as many cases were now chasing the limited available interview appointment times.

A consulate that was staffed to conduct X number of cases a  month,  suddenly was faced with three times as many applicants asking for interviews. 

And until additional manpower could be recruited and transferred from the USA, the backlog of those waiting for interviews kept piling up.

This was especially felt at the US Embassy in Manila. 

This embassy is the busiest of all the US Embassies in the world. 

Suddenly, with a much larger than usual influx of cases needing interviews, the consulates appointment calendar was overwhelmed. 

Applicants who normally had to wait only a few months to get an appointment date. Now we’re waiting half a year and longer.

Now let’s return to NVC. Clerks of NVC reached out to the consulate in Manila asking for dates for spouse visa interviews. 

Instead of being given dates, they were put on hold. 

Next month the clerks now with twice as many cases on hold reached out to Manilla again to schedule the interviews and again were put on hold, rinse and repeat. 

Finally, after 6 to 9 months of cases that should have departed NVC, still just piling up at NVC, awaiting an appointment date. 

NVC gave up trying to coordinate with the Embassy to book appointments directly.

NVC has given up, and has decided to kick the problem over to Manila. They have cleared their pile of hundreds of backlogged cases by transferring them to the Embassy in the Philippines without waiting any longer to schedule the interview for the applicants.  

Once the cases have been shipped out, NVC have emailed each couple advising them of the good news “their cases have been expedited”.

I view this as good and bad news. The bad news is the State Department’s internal communications have failed. 

Routine coordination between NVC and the consulate has broken down. This is a professional management issue I hope they find a way to resolve going forward.

The good news is that for each spouse visa applicant there now is activity on the their case.

Yes, now the client is going to be battling with a scrum of other applicants all struggling to score a limited appointment time. 

But at least the different type of frustration of simply having to wait and being helpless is over.

For most hearing from NVC that one’s case has been shipped to, “expedited”, to Manila is good news, 

Though hearing from NVC that one has a confirmed interview date would’ve been better news.

In the meantime, Visacoach is working with our Filipino spouse visa clients, to prepare for their interviews to bring their partners home to the USA