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As the title of this video suggests, we are discussing the K-3, CR-1, or IR-1 Visa so basically Marriage Visas for spouses of American citizens or possibly Lawful Permanent Residents in the United States. A question that comes up frequently is: "How long is the visa interview?" How long is it going to take?" Long story short, and I am sure folks that watch my videos with any frequency probably know I am kind of a broken record on this, but it is going to depend on the case. Every case is different. Quite frankly, 80% of the time maybe even a little less but call it the majority of the time, most cases do process through in a predictable manner but there are let's call it 20%, a minority of cases at the very least that don't process through in a routine manner. Something comes up; there is some kind of bureaucratic snafu in the case of the interview; you might get an interviewing officer who just wants to go more in depth; you might get a situation where they think that they need to call in the Fraud Prevention Unit or undergo what is referred to sometimes as a Stokes interview. Again it is very dependent on the set of circumstances in the case; it is dependent on the Officer involved. 

Now again, my opinion most people don't hire Attorneys to assist with Immigration for the routine cases. It is in the off chance you end up with a non-routiner or the minority case where things get jammed up and in a sense somebody like me steps in to sort of unblock the log jam if you will and just keep things moving. To one degree or another, sometimes we are able to do that with a great deal of alacrity, sometimes circumstances takes a little longer again everything is different. 

As far as the length of the interview a recent article from Foreign Policy, that is foreignpolicy.com, we will go ahead and put this up on screen. The State Department's Visa Issuing Authority is in Crisis. Quoting directly, this is a tiny excerpt from a really interesting article, quote: "It is a rushed system: A standard visa interview may be 5 minutes or less conducted through bulletproof glass, often in a language other than English." I can say the bulletproof glass is a given. Since I have ever been dealing with Consular processing, there has always been a layer of bulletproof glass between the applicant and the folks behind the counter. Now they say "standard" visa interview. Well define "standard". Again all cases are different and you may have a situation where they decide that they need to call in Fraud Prevention Unit or they want undergo a Stokes interview etc. The notion that it is 5 minutes or less, yeah some interviews can be rather short. I have seen interviews that have gone on for hours; I have seen interviews where they have called or the petitioner back in the United States and put them through a simultaneous back and forth. "Also often in the language other than English". Again, that is very circumstantially dependent. Most of our cases, especially in the Marriage Visa categories there is a certain level of concern among Consular Officers that the relationship is genuine. For this reason oftentimes they may be wanting to conduct the interview in English to ensure that that person at least has basic communication skills and can communicate with their spouse.

Again all of this again is somewhat circumstantial but at the end of the day, yeah some interviews can be very short and I have seen some interviews be very long, and you just never quite know. So always 'hope for the best, plan for the worst'. We have found that folks who are concerned about this when they do retain us they are not retaining presuming the majority of cases where it all goes through, again pretty predictively it is not a matter of it is easier in any way shape or form but that it goes through in a certain consistent manner. I think the reason we get hired is in the off chance that it might be one of those cases that even though it ostensibly looks like a pretty standard routine case, it ends up in practice having a lot of unforeseen issues.