Administrative processing without 221g

Hi,

I appeared at the New Delhi consulate on 5th February for my H1B stamping (non-cap academic H1B which was already approved from the USCIS when I was in the US) along with my wife who applied for her H4 visa. The interview lasted for just about a minute and the visa officer said that both our visas are approved (he didn't even ask for our marriage certificate). However when we did not receive our passports until after a week from the interview date, we thought of tracking the passport. Tracking showed that our passports are still with the consulate. We then checked the visa status on the website ([https://ceac.state.gov/CEACStatTracker/Status.aspx?](https://ceac.state.gov/CEACStatTracker/Status.aspx?)) and the website shows that our visa case is under administrative processing (the message said "Your visa case is currently undergoing necessary administrative processing. This processing can take several weeks"). As far as I know such messages are shown only in the cases of 221g. However, we were not given any 221g slip so it's very confusing because the visa officer clearly told us about the approval, didn't ask for any other documents, or gave any slips or forms.

What could be the reason for this? How long may I still have to wait? Has anyone else seen such a status message after getting the visa approved? Is there something I could do to find out the cause, and get the visa processing expedited (assuming it is indeed stuck)? My return date to the US was 15th February and we had to cancel our tickets. My work is suffering due to this.

Thank you.

This is not unusual. Although they say the visa is approved, they can put the case under mandatory administrative processing. This could include PIMS verification, background checks etc.

Are you working for an academic institution? If yes, then what’s the major area of your work? Cases are put under admin processing when the area is related to a sensitive field.

Thanks for your reply. Yes, I am a postdoctoral researcher working at a university. My major area of work is computational statistics and machine learning. I am not sure if it is directly listed as a sensitive field (though many seemingly non-sensitive areas do fall under the sensitive list).

I had letters from my university expressing the urgency of my immediate return but no documents were asked at the time of the interview. Is there anything that could still be done to expedite my case (like me checking with my university about the PIMS verification, or some university official contacting someone at USCIS or US embassy in India) so that I could return at the soonest (I already had to cancel my ticket of Feb 15)? It’s already been 3 weeks.

Another thing is that my wife appeared for her H4 interview with me (her case status is also the same) and the visa officer didn’t even ask for any proof of marriage, photographs, or even asked her a single question. Is it a normal thing for dependent visa interviews?

Also, we appeared for our interview on Feb 5 and the latest case update date shown is Feb 5. I read somewhere on the US embassy (New Delhi) website that the case status is usually updated twice a week. Could it be that they haven’t even started looking into our case yet?

Thanks.

They not always ask for proof of marriage. It depends upon officer’s discretion.

If you did end up in TAL, then it takes b/w 3-8 weeks for it to get resolved. There is no way to expedite the process. The case status on consulate website gets updated as per that consulate’s schedule.

Did you got your visa?

whats the update?