Comment by argo_cve

Comment by argo_cve 2 days ago

5 replies

Hi Peter. I am a Lead Computer Vision Engineer, working remotely at Veryfi (YC 17). I am a citizen of Russia, living in Armenia for last 3 years.

We applied to O1 visa, got approval from the USCIS, then got visa stamps and at the day of my flight visas were revoked. Embassy said to reapply - I did and now it's been 11 months of Administrative processing (as they said in the DoS).

My employer tried writing to the Congressman's office couple times, but every time Embassy answers ~"please wait, no timelines". I also filed a DHS Trip complaint and received this statement: "We have made any corrections to records that our inquiries determined were necessary, including, as appropriate, notations that may assist in avoiding incidents of misidentification".

With everything above, we were not able to get any meaningful timelines or figure what's going on. Is there anything we can do to make movement in my case? It's hard to plan your life living like this, so it is very important for me. Thanks!

proberts a day ago

If you want to try to take control back over this process (and your life), you probably need to file a mandamus action. This is essentially a demand that a government official execute his or her official duties. I don't handle mandamus actions but I'd be happy to refer you to some very good attorneys who do.

  • argo_cve a day ago

    Thank you. Yes, I would appreciate any referrals you can share.

yeputons 2 days ago

Not a lawyer here.

My advice would be to relax, enjoy Armenia, and assume you are not entering the U.S. in the next couple of years, for any reason. Administrative processing (I assume you actually mean 221(g) refusal) can easily take 1-2 years. The most extreme case I've heard of took 4 years.

In 2016-2020 writing to a congressmen could actually help: https://daniel.haxx.se/blog/2020/11/09/a-us-visa-in-937-days... , but not anymore. Last year I've heard about some success stories with U.S. courts. Still, it took for one O-1 person about two years from the initial visa interview.

I've also never heard of anyone getting any timeline estimations.

A related small thread with Peter's response: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44006801

  • hippich a day ago

    Just I quick note - writing to congressman may actually help and worth trying. My mom's greencard was stuck in 2023 due to some bs with documents in consulate with officer there non responding. After the letter by my senator I got a call from the officer over there and the issue resolved within a day. This is of course different from op's issue, but just wanted to note that it is worth trying in any case.

morpheuskafka 2 days ago

It’s doubtful you’ll get any answers. Lawyers are of little help due to “consular nonreviewability” and your case clearly has hit some sort of national security flag. Since this was pre Trump II, it likely was a real human review not their new approach of automated revocations for poorly designed queries (a student was recently revoked due to fishing license citations).

As I understand, AP generally means Washington and not the consulate is actually the block/decision maker now, but they wouldn’t even officially tell you that. It could be with State or they could be waiting an opinion from someone. Picture some CIA agent who got stuck with a boring desk job and has a stack of thousands of visas to research.