Jo Seph

Hey guys,

I have done my fair share of reading the forums to try find an answer to this but I have yet to find someone in this situation so I wanted see if anyone had any further knowledge.

I attended an interview on Tuesday 28th Feb at the London US Embassy for an O1 Visa application, at the end of the interview I was neither accepted or denied as the consular officer said that she needed some more time to review my work, she was pretty vague and I hadn't read up about admin processing prior to the appointment so I didn't know what exactly what that meant at the time. She was going to keep my passport but I said that I was flying the following week and she said well then you can keep the passport, we will contact you when needed (as per any AP case).

The strange part is she never gave me any kind of additional paperwork such as a 221(g), nor did she request any further paperwork from me. So essentially from what I can tell and my vibe from the interview she was questioning my O1 status and wants to investigate that further to see if she deems me eligible?

Has anyone got any experience with time scales when there has been no 221(g) given and no indication of whether it will be accepted or denied and the individual has been told specifically its to look more into their work as apposed to extra background checks etc?

I am a 25 year old white caucasian British male who has lived in the UK since birth and attended university and got a full education.

Thanks in advance to anyone that may have any answers!

ian-mstm

Good... it's important! Did you happen tell her when you'd be back in the UK? I hope you did, because otherwise she has no idea! If you did tell her, then you can likely expect some communication at about that time.

Ian

Jo Seph

I didn't tell her when I would be returning as she didn't ask, she really wasn't very friendly at all and kind of made me feel like if I pushed it asking any questions she would be even less helpful.

Do you know anything about if not receiving a 221(g) has any correlation to the speed of her processing it? My visa is not to move there its a 3 year visa to take short trips to perform as a musician on tour, which as an afterthought is something I should have highlighted in the interview but she didn't me chance to ask anything between cold quick fire questions, but its on my application anyways.

I'm hoping that maybe because she didn't give me a 221(g) that the officer may be planning to process it ASAP?

Ive already had to cancel one weekend of gigs because of this delay (which I know I should have allowed contingent time planning for) but I have a total of 18 confirmed this month which I now dont know whether to cancel or hold out in the hope it gets approved in the next week or so

Thanks for any help!

ian-mstm

Well, not receiving a 221(g) is good! If she was going to deny the visa you would have received the form. That didn't happen... so that's good!


There's no way to know. Most often, if you've gone into administrative processing it can take anywhere from a week to 2 years to sort out... although most are sorted very quickly. I don't mean to alarm you, but there's really no way to know how long it'll take.

Ian

Jo Seph

Thanks a lot for replying, just crossing everything and hoping then I guess!

Orangepants

If you do a search of the forum, you'll see that a couple of other people had this issue with O-1s in the last couple of months at the consulate. Maybe you could ask them how/when it was resolved. There is search feature on the right hand side under the page numbers. Good luck.

Jo Seph

Thanks for that Orangepants, I have done a few searches and this is the only thread I can find that is a similar issue: http://britishexpats.com/forum/us-im...essing-890244/

I have messaged the user but if you have a spare few mins and have seen any more similar threads if you could put the links here that would be very much appreciated

Thanks

Orangepants

Yes that's the one - if you left click on the user name of the last person who posted, you can see he posted an update on his own O-1 - did you contact Dave O or just the original poster?