K1 visa petition processing may be longer than six months due to many reasons. Sometimes, longer waiting period is from the locality of the consulate involved or the embassy consulate that has influence to the home country of the foreign fiancé. Filing for the application must be made personally at the consulate office. The process will start from the date of filing the completed application from 40 to 90 days. Sometimes It takes a longer time to process because of the required additional thorough inspection to the application.
Your application will also pass through the US Citizenship Immigration Services (USCIS). The petitions are processed in the order they received within 6 months. The USCIS receives thousands of visa petitions over a month that may be one reason why an application takes too long. However, once the USCIS approved your petition, it will be submitted to the Embassy for additional processing with visa interview that usually takes one or more than a month.
Several factors that take the petition to process more than 6 months to accomplish
- Submission of the incorrect application fees
- Submission of incomplete documents by the US citizen petitioner
- Missing signatures
- Submission of incomplete documents by the visa beneficiary
- Delays in submitting documents
- Loss of or non-receipt of packets by the USCIS or the National Visa Center (NVC)
- Data input errors on the part of the USCIS or NVC
- Transfer of cases by the USCIS
- Large increase in the number of other people applying for immigration benefits
- Changes in the financial situation of the petitioner
In addition, there may be possible delays about the security checks on either the petitioner or the beneficiary due to lack of available records or complex background.
You may notice that several of these factors are out of your control. Though, the delay of a K1 visa petition and supporting documents commonly caused by the preparation. Another problem in the petition of the K1 visa usually occurs with the affidavit of support from the US citizen petitioner.
Ways to make the application process faster
To make a K1 visa application process faster, you must prepare the right documents completely.
There are many forms the K1 applicant must acquire, these include:
- Valid passport
- Birth certificate
- Divorce certificate (if applicable)
- Police clearance (from the places where he or she lived since the age of 16)
- Certification of medical examination
- Documents that prove of financial stability
- Application of two non immigrant visa
- One non-immigrant fiancé visa application
- Receipts of the application fees
- Two visa photos
You can contact the USCIS regarding your K1 visa petition, or you may even view their website. You can visit your current status using the receipt number you received after you filed your initial petition.
Moreover, if the situation takes longer than the stated processing time of the service center and you have not received a Request for Evidence (RFE) from them, then, you must coordinate with your attorney or you may contact the USCIS directly to update the condition of your status. You can ask for assistance of an experienced immigration attorney or specialist if you are not sure on what to do.