In June/July 2017, the National Visa Center (NVC) issued notices for a large number of the immigrant visa cases, which had been previously confirmed completed and awaiting interview scheduling by NVC. As a reminder, in October of 2016, NVC began issuing immigrant visa fee bills and processing cases when their priority date became current based on Chart B ‘Dates for Filing’ of the bifurcated U.S. State Department Visa Bulletin.  However, the newly issued notices for the previously completed cases confirmed that the I-526 petition was transferred from USCIS to NVC; and requested the submission of the immigrant visa applications (Forms DS-260) and all supporting documents anew for each one of these cases.

We have now received clarification that these notices were issued in error. NVC is currently in the process of updating the information regarding such cases, where the submission was already made and acknowledged completed by NVC, if the case priority date has again become current per Chart B of the Visa Bulletin. We have received confirmation that NVC’s notification regarding application and document requests for such cases may be ignored.

After NVC reviews each case’s status, NVC will send instructions to the agent if any documents that were previously accepted need to be re-submitted. Otherwise, cases that were completed and waiting for an interview appointment will return to the interview queue under their original completion date and applicants and their attorneys/representatives will receive a new notification letter.

The NVC will confirm when these previously retrogressed cases have been restored, at which time NVC will be better able to answer detailed questions about a specific case’s status, which, based on the agency’s estimate, should take approximately two weeks.

Nadia Sowinski authored this post.