budleigh

I hope you don't mind another update, maybe our story might help someone else in a similar situation at some point and helps me to get it off my chest!

So having asked for our passports the embassy in London have now written to say we need to provide extra info (what they have asked for seems straightforward enough) and that more administrative processing is needed.

They have said that we can have our passports back in the meantime if we like, so obviously not going to be issued anytime soon then :-(

I dared to think that by sending the passports we would be nearing the end of this hellish delay. We were even beginning to start seriously thinking about timings for moving this year again to get the kids settled in schools for the start of the new school year. But as always one step forward two steps backwards!

So just for the record and probably one of the worst case scenarios for L1 applications!

Application sent June 2008
Approved July 19th 2008
Interview at Embassy in London August 2008
7 months 'Administrative Processing'
Email from embassy to say they wanted our passports March 2009
Email to say further admin processing was required April 2009

......

meauxna

Bummer.

I think it's important to add that there is a reason for the AP and this is not something that most people are likely to run into. When I first read this post, I thought 'where are they from?'. A scan through your past posts gave the answer, and all men from the T countries now have this lengthy AP process.

Bear in mind that if any of you do travel out of the UK right now, it can re-set or prolong the AP for the L-1 application.
I know, I'm a real bucket of sunshine today--sorry.

budleigh

Thanks meauxna

Good point I should have mentioned that although he is a UK citizen my husband was born in the middle east.

My husband is due to travel to the US again in May, but it sounds like we should be looking at canceling this trip then?

I'm sorry for the barrage of questions but from your experience is this the same type of AP that we have previously been through with the same associated time scales? we have obviously been given no idea of how long this will now take, just a bit worried that a long term grounding might have serious consequences for his job :-(

meauxna

Unfortunately, there is no real answer for you from what I have read/observed. You can contact the Dept of State (DOS) as much as weekly for updates, but they will mostly tell you that it is pending and they can't give you a time frame. The best answer you can get from them is that they've released the case from checks and are returning it to the Embassy.

There isn't even a guaranteed answer about the continued travel (whether or not they'll re-run any or all of the checks that have been completed).
One complication seems to come from the validity of the checks.. if one expires before the rest are complete, that one needs to be re-done. AP for some Pakistani males can last over 2 years (immigrant visas, don't know how much difference that makes).

You can read the 221g information at this forum, (and find the DOS phone number) but keep in mind that not every post will apply to your situation. Look for the pinned explanatory posts from user mary_mj4mj who has gathered the most information on this topic.

budleigh

once again thank you so much for some more very useful advice meauxna