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What exactly are they doing when they put your application in "administrative processing" for years with no explanation or time estimate? What could possibly ta

What exactly are they doing when they put your application in "administrative processing" for years with no explanation or time estimate? What could possibly take years to process on a standard visa application? Does anyone know?

Someone1234 6y ago
It can get stuck between departments. US Visas bounce around between security services (Homeland Security, FBI, DoD/NSA), immigration, and State/NVC. These other departments can flag any visa for additional scrutiny. When excessive delays like this occur it is often a security flag, because then it has to go back to the origin agency and even the department within that originally created the flag to decide if it is a valid match to this individual (and or the facts are correct). Keep in mind that the other departments handling this, it isn't their primary responsibility. They're dealing daily with e.g. terrorist threats, drug trafficking, or similar threats/violations. Nobody is interested in prioritizing State's visa processing (of which they receive many). Plus the people or department who created the original match could no longer exist/work there, and now the request is bouncing between different departments with nobody wanting to take responsibility for it. PS - Just to be clear I'm not defending this. It is a giant mess and hugely dysfunctional. But to understand why something can get stuck in "administrative processing" for years, you have to realize how deep this rabbit hole goes.
- nurgasemetey 6y ago
  I didn't see any defending. Maybe these departments are understaffed.
csomar 6y ago
It's like a bug ticket. Unless there is a rule (law) that they must be fixed by a certain time, they'll just become forgotten.
rob74 6y ago
They're probably busy processing the requests where somebody (e.g. a congressperson) intervened to get them expedited?
- tsjq 6y ago
  Haha! That's so meta !

Someone1234 6y ago

It can get stuck between departments. US Visas bounce around between security services (Homeland Security, FBI, DoD/NSA), immigration, and State/NVC. These other departments can flag any visa for additional scrutiny. When excessive delays like this occur it is often a security flag, because then it has to go back to the origin agency and even the department within that originally created the flag to decide if it is a valid match to this individual (and or the facts are correct). Keep in mind that the other departments handling this, it isn't their primary responsibility. They're dealing daily with e.g. terrorist threats, drug trafficking, or similar threats/violations. Nobody is interested in prioritizing State's visa processing (of which they receive many). Plus the people or department who created the original match could no longer exist/work there, and now the request is bouncing between different departments with nobody wanting to take responsibility for it. PS - Just to be clear I'm not defending this. It is a giant mess and hugely dysfunctional. But to understand why something can get stuck in "administrative processing" for years, you have to realize how deep this rabbit hole goes.

nurgasemetey 6y ago
I didn't see any defending. Maybe these departments are understaffed.

csomar 6y ago

It's like a bug ticket. Unless there is a rule (law) that they must be fixed by a certain time, they'll just become forgotten.

rob74 6y ago

They're probably busy processing the requests where somebody (e.g. a congressperson) intervened to get them expedited?

tsjq 6y ago
Haha! That's so meta !