In recent months, we have been seeing the US Consulate in Guangzhou China take a much harder line on K-1 visa applicants. In the past, the vast, vast majority of cases being approved on the day of application. Now we are seeing applicants turned away with requests for further documentation. This is becoming a hardship on some of our K-1 clients as many do not live in or near Guangzhou and most have to take 1-3 day train ride or fly to the city for their visa interviews. The Consulate does allow applicants to mail in additional documentation but they require the applicant to return personally or hire a local to pick up the passport with the K-1 visa stamp. Moreover, the Consulate is quoting a response time of 6-8 weeks to make a decision on the K-1 visa after submitting the additional documentation.
We have also been receiving many reports and requests for help from pro se filers who have received these requests for documentation or even for denials. While it appears that, after review, many of the denials were the result of poor interviews, many requests for documentation were the result of the Consulate’s insistence extreme documentation of the relationship between the parties. The Consulate’s requests have been quite uniform in these cases and we are now able to better advise of clients when preparing the K-1 visa applications. In addition to these new documentation requirements, we are educating our clients and are performing mock interview sessions to prepare for the real interview. It is very important that applicants avoid a denial at all costs because once the case is denied, it makes further applications extremely difficult and time consuming.
While these new K-1 visa policies ar Guangzhou make the application more difficult and time consuming, we have adopted and our clients are more prepared than ever and most are getting their visas the same day as the interview. For the few that get the request for documentation, we have been able to get final approvals in 1-2 weeks instead of the 6-8 weeks quoted by the Consulate.