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Sometimes, it doesn’t make sense. When a potential client contacts us regarding a decision by a consular officer, we try to understand, first of all, why was the decision made? What caused the consular officer to make the decision he or she did? Often, we can understand the position of the consular officer; while we may not always agree with that position and in fact challenge the position, we at least can identify the problem. But sometimes, we are confounded. Take for example the situation of J. J contacted us after he had been turned around at the border by Customs and Border Protection. The CBP protocol memorializing J’s request to enter the US was clear: it said that J needed a different type of visa. He had previously been a student in the US, and he needed to obtain a visitor visa in order to return to the US…

Did you go to your employment visa interview and the consular officer told you that the approval of your petition is being revoked? This is not an uncommon story, as more and more H-1B, L-1, O-1, and P-1 petitions are being recommended for revocation every year by consular officers. In general, consular officers must defer to the judgment of USCIS and the grounds for revocation are limited. To recommend revocation of the approval of a petition, the consular officer must have discovered material new facts or misrepresentation or find that the visa applicant does not have the qualifications for the visa. But often times consular officers substitute their own opinion and readjudicate the petition. We are seeing this more frequently, particularly in the context of O visa adjudications, in which the consular officer sets a much higher bar for qualification than USCIS. The stakes are particularly high for those applicants…

Most people understand that if they are arrested, it is possible that their visas will be revoked. DUIs, drug possession, domestic violence, shoplifting — these are just some of the situations in which individuals with valid visas have their visas revoked. But what is less known — and understood — is that the Department of State has the ability to revoke visas for any reason in which eligibility is questioned. In other words, the inquiry into whether an individual qualifies for a visa does not stop at the time of issuance; it is a process that can be — and often is — reactivated at any time after issuance. In fact, we are seeing more revocations for non-criminal issues than criminal problems. So what leads to this re-examination of an individual’s eligibility? The trigger points for such a “verification reactivation” are numerous. For example, consular officers conduct validation studies, checking…

Mssrs. R, Y, K, K, and D each submitted entries for the DV–2018 Lottery during the registration period in the fall of 2016. They each had been divorced by an Uzbek court before the Lottery, so they indicated in their entries that they were divorced. Each of them was selected as a winner. After attending their interviews and presenting the court decisions as evidence of their divorce, they were advised by consular staff that they were being refused immigrant visas because they had not picked up their divorce certificates from the local registration office prior to submission of their entries: as a result, in the eyes of the Embassy, they were not officially divorced when they completed their Lottery entries. While the Uzbek law on divorce is ambiguous, it has been in effect since 2011. What is beyond dispute is that the issuance of a court decision renders the couple…

The case of Mr. B is illustrative of the consular tyranny prevailing in Tashkent and how Mr. Deeb has apparently impacted Department of State decisionmakers in formulating visa policy. Mr. B. has a high school diploma and thereby satisfies the Diversity Visa education requirements.[1] He is of Tajik background and grew up in Uzbekistan, where he learned the Uzbek language. Yet, when he attended his interview at the US Embassy in Tashkent, the consul tested not his knowledge of the Uzbek or Tajik languages, but his English- and Russian-language capabilities in violation of the State Department’s Foreign Affairs Manual: (b) A DV refusal must be based on evidence that the alien did not in fact obtain the required degree and not on your assessment of the alien’s knowledge level. You may not administer an exam, either oral or written, to test an applicant’s basic knowledge in order to determine whether…