Congratulations E2LondonMarch24 sorry you had to wait awfully long. I’m wondering whether you could begin the process of renewing your waiver a year prior to your 5 year waiver lapsing? To make the renewal seamless.

Congratulations Babsy86 hopefully you get it back before your travel plans! Hopefully it’s a 5 year waiver too!

Thank you. It’s all quite unbelievable really isn’t it! 4-6 weeks for the last one … and soon it’ll be 1 year for this !! Hope you get your passport back soon!

Ahh the 300 club, not really exclusive more the norm.

Worrying reports on Facebook (Unable to screenshot as has names and pictures):

Anonymous participant: There's issues in general with visas atm
Reports of people attending appointments hoping for a recommendation for a waiver (10-12 month wait after appointment) and being denied
Whole line of people just blanket denied recommendations
It's worrying!

Tues: Anonymous participant - hey can I ask you what forum you’ve seen this information? My husband has sent off his passport and he just got it back today, and it was denied! We weren’t expecting it, he was given a visa about 10 years ago. No new offences, he offence was in his teens and now wiped off his record

I applied last April and got interview early September. Still waiting and over 10months since my interview in London. I wanted to go to a wedding 😅 which I have obviously missed now. The bit I don’t get is if nothing has changed since my last 5yr visa what is this huge paperwork burden they speak of? Best of luck to everyone in the same boat. Bit worrying to hear that lots of people are being denied.

Think the backlog is the reduction of staff stateside due to doge. Every application regardless of how many you have had approved is treated as a new application and treated in that way.

Hi WaiverWait, and welcome to the forum. Could I ask how you found us here? We are always looking at how to expand our visibility so other people can get the support I hope this site provides.

Could I ask the date of your interview in September? I can then add you to the tracker spreadsheet at https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets...it?gid=0#gid=0 which shows where you are relative to others in the process. Unless of course you've already done so...

The paperwork burden hasn't actually changed at all. The requirements are the same. But what has changed specifically is that every application is now decided completely independently of any previous waivers being granted. Previously, the consular official could use the fact that a waiver had previously been recommended as a factor in deciding to recommend a new waiver be requested, if nothing else had changed. Now, the rules state that the consular official must base any decision completely on the circumstances of the new request, and should not place any weight on previous waiver requests.

FYI, based on the data we have in our tracker, which is very very limited as we are reliant on people finding this site and submitting their information, "lots of people" are not being denied waivers. We only have a handful of waivers denied for London consular requests since Jan 2023. All we can say definitively is that timescales have increased substantially for applications in our tracker since mid-June 2024.

All the best

jools

Welcome ScotlandUSA1967. Great to have you here. Could I also ask you how you found us? Need to work out if our "signposting" on other forums is working effectively... Yesterday I posted a link here in the FB Orlando group...

Are you also waiting for a waiver? If so, could we add your details to the tracker spreadsheet? https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets...it?gid=0#gid=0

Happy to do so for you if you provide interview date, visa type requested, and location (assume London). Or you can add it yourself.

All the best,

jools

That's exactly where I found the forum. I have 2 years left on my visa before having to go through the process again ( which I've done for the last 15 years) so glad I've found this as I'll have to start the process far sooner than I had initially expected due to frequent travel.

Thanks for the info Jools. It makes sense now if they treat every time as a fresh application. I also found the “privacy” booth at the embassy in London not private at all with people close behind me in a queue listening to me having to explain the most intimate details of my life. 🤪 My date was 9th Sept 2024 for B1/B2

Based on current wait times for interviews and then for the waiver itself, 18 month's in advance is probably a good target!

Do stick around here. The more the merrier! and share the link as well if you want.

jools

A pleasure. I have added your dates to the sheet. You're in our next large group in the 280-290 days range so far. All current London results are above 300 days, most recently 342. We can never be specific, but wait times do seem to be increasing.

Keep us up to date. We're all here to support one another, either having already gone through this process, or dealing with it for the first time.

jools

Very disappointing to see that Cummings has apparently been denied a waiver after being asked to submit their passport. Sheets shows that passport was received back on the 17th, notes say "Waiver refused after passport submission, previous visa granted 10 years ago and no changes in circumstances"

Not sure if Cummings is here, but you have our condolences.

jools

Very harsh, after a wait in excess of 300 days. wonder if the denials are being cherry picked to reduce amount of outstanding. It's certainly not a case of everyone being denied, feels much like pot luck at the moment.

I think that's the person who's comment I posted today. They same surname and from the Orlando FB page. Someone else mentioned a forum and they did ask which forum but I'm guessing they know about this one if their timeframes are on it?