I'm excited to have more good news. For those of you who follow
our firm and our YouTube channel and our Facebook group, you know I get excited to give
you good news because we're all about being positive here. Of course if there is bad news
to share, we want you to have all the facts. But who doesn't love to give good news?
Important information and updates about K1 and CR1 visas. It has just been
a very very difficult year. That's probably an understatement over 2020 and with COVID
There has been so many delays in the US embassies and consulates. For those of you who are
going through the fiancé visa process and spouse visa process, you know it has been painful.
What the good news is that there has been an update. Immigration has made an announcement on April 8
to provide special exceptions or an announcement rather for how they will handle K1 and CR1 visas.
I want to give a little bit of background and then I want to show you what the
announcement is. Then I want to talk about what it means and what it doesn't
mean. There's a lot of unknowns when announcements like this are made but I know a lot of you were
asking about this announcement and what it means. First, let's go into some context.
When COVID started in 2020, there were a lot of proclamations that were issued
that limited or suspended rather who could enter the United States. All of those
proclamations and all of those announcements from immigration were suspending entry of individuals
into the United States. K1 individuals who were applying for K1 visas and CR1 visas
have seen little to no interviews were occurring. Everybody is just stuck
in this limbo waiting for interviews and not knowing when they're going to start again.
On April 7th of 2021, American Immigration Lawyers Association filed a lawsuit against the Biden
administration. The AILA secretary, I thought this comment would be helpful or
powerful rather, they said that there are many ways of dealing
with the COVID crisis. And the Department of State has the resources to
do something more creative and responsible than to simply shut down the consulates.
We all agree and so, this lawsuit was saying, "Yes, we understand that
you need to take precautions because of COVID but completely having everything
screeched to a halt and everybody be stuck in limbo and be separated from their families. This
isn't a viable solution. We need to do something." On April 8th, the following
day, the Secretary of State determined, and so this announcement is on the Department of State website,
I will share my screen here in a second so all of you can see this. I know some of the individuals
in our Facebook group have posted this link as well but the announcement was
long. I wanted to pull out the main part. Our firm again, we represent couples going through
the immigration process. So I pulled out the part that is applicable to all of you who
are going through the K1 or a spouse visa process. On April 8th of 2021, the Secretary
of State determined that travel on an immigrant or fiancé visa is in the national
interest for purposes of granting exceptions under the geographic COVID proclamations
Again, those proclamations that I said were announced in 2020. We saw it continue into 2021,
limiting the entry of individuals from certain countries. Specifically the Schengen countries.
Let me go ahead, share my screen so you can see that announcement. Also I will
put the link to the official Department of State website to the announcement in there.
Also, the Department of State has a Facebook page that's helpful too for alerts.
You could always check that out too if you want to see regular alerts and information
about that. We recommend doing that as well but I will post the link below. Let me share my screen
Hopefully, all of you can see this. This was the announcement that was released on April 8th.
The Secretary of State determined that travel on an immigrant or
fiancé visa is in the national interest for purposes of granting exceptions under the
geographic COVID proclamations. The immigration journey is long and it has a lot
of hurdles you have to overcome and with these proclamations that happened in 2020 and continued
into 2021. Specifically you'll see right here, the geographic COVID presidential proclamations.
These are all that I highlighted here. These are all the proclamations that basically suspended
entry of individuals from entering the United States and the Department of State
interpreted that as screeching everything to a halt and not having interviews
for K1s and CR1s. Some have still occurred but it was really slow. All of you know
it's basically you're sitting in limbo, wondering when things will resume to normal.
The proclamations had restricted the entry for anybody who for a 14-day period prior
had been in the Republic of China, Iran, Schengen area, United Kingdom, Republic of Ireland,
Brazil and Republic of South Africa. All of these proclamations were released
and then the Department of State came to a screeching halt with interviews
saying that they couldn't schedule interviews because of this. That was the lawsuit that I said.
On April 7th, the AILA secretary was asking for the Department of State to find a more creative
way. And completely closing down interviews and services is not the way to go about it.
Alright, let me go ahead and unshare my screen. I want to talk about
what this means and what this doesn't mean. What it does mean is that now we have
an official announcement from the Department of State saying "Yes, we acknowledge that K1 visas,
spouse visas, should be able to be scheduled for interviews. That is something
that's in the national interest. For people to be able to have interviews, to be able
to be approved and be able to enter the United States, to be reunited with their families.
That is the good news. Also, it means that
individuals coming from those areas aren't going to be subject to that 14-day quarantine.
A lot of our couples and a lot of individuals in our Facebook group have had
to find creative ways of going to other countries, to be able to be there for 14 days so you could
visit the United States and visit your loved one, your fiancé, your spouse.
Basically, that announcement is saying that that's not required. We have to wait with
any proclamation like this. We really have to see how it's applied because it's very new
We have to see what CBP will be doing with this. Technically, under this proclamation, that
quarantine won't be required anymore. Also trends that we're seeing since this announcement,
we've had people in our Facebook group also with the hundreds and hundreds
of couples that we help, we are seeing more cases being forwarded to embassies for interviews.
We've actually had people in our Facebook group say that they're starting to see more interviews
for fiancé and spouse visas. Of course, this stuff varies from country to country but we are
seeing movement. Slowly but surely things are moving. I know you've heard me say that in
other videos as well that we are seeing things are starting to pick up little by little
What this doesn't mean though, it doesn't mean that everything is going to resume to normal
processing. The Department of State and each US embassy and consulate in each country still has
the discretion to determine based on what's going on in the ground with COVID in
that particular country when they will be able to resume completely normal processing.
I want it to be clear that it doesn't mean that everybody's going to start getting interviews
right away. That would be great and we hope that this proclamation
will help to continue getting things moving forward. Getting clarity from the Department of
State saying, "Yes, we are going to have interviews for K1 and CR1 as we are able." We'll keep
you posted on the trends that we're seeing. Hopefully, that gives you clarity about what the
announcement is and what's to come and what it means and what it doesn't.