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I'm Peter Roberts, immigration attorney, who does work for YC and startups. AMA

236 points proberts | 1 comments | 16 May 25 15:05 UTC | HN request time: 0.645s | source

I'll be here for the next 5-6 hours. As usual, there are countless topics given the rapidly changing immigration landscape and I'll be guided by whatever you're concerned with. Please remember that I can't provide legal advice on specific cases because I won't have access to all the facts. Please stick to a factual discussion in your questions and I'll try to do the same in my answers.

Edit: I am taking a break now and will return later this afternoon/evening to respond to any comments and answer any questions. Thank you everyone for a great and engaged AMA so far.

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argo_cve ◴[16 May 25 18:46 UTC] No.44008652[source]▶
Hi Peter. I am a Lead Computer Vision Engineer, working remotely at Veryfi (YC 17). I am a citizen of Russia, living in Armenia for last 3 years.

We applied to O1 visa, got approval from the USCIS, then got visa stamps and at the day of my flight visas were revoked. Embassy said to reapply - I did and now it's been 11 months of Administrative processing (as they said in the DoS).

My employer tried writing to the Congressman's office couple times, but every time Embassy answers ~"please wait, no timelines". I also filed a DHS Trip complaint and received this statement: "We have made any corrections to records that our inquiries determined were necessary, including, as appropriate, notations that may assist in avoiding incidents of misidentification".

With everything above, we were not able to get any meaningful timelines or figure what's going on. Is there anything we can do to make movement in my case? It's hard to plan your life living like this, so it is very important for me. Thanks!

replies(3): >>44011169 #>>44012906 #>>44014191 #
yeputons ◴[17 May 25 00:51 UTC] No.44011169[source]▶
Not a lawyer here.

My advice would be to relax, enjoy Armenia, and assume you are not entering the U.S. in the next couple of years, for any reason. Administrative processing (I assume you actually mean 221(g) refusal) can easily take 1-2 years. The most extreme case I've heard of took 4 years.

In 2016-2020 writing to a congressmen could actually help: https://daniel.haxx.se/blog/2020/11/09/a-us-visa-in-937-days... , but not anymore. Last year I've heard about some success stories with U.S. courts. Still, it took for one O-1 person about two years from the initial visa interview.

I've also never heard of anyone getting any timeline estimations.

A related small thread with Peter's response: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44006801

replies(1): >>44013666 #
1. hippich ◴[17 May 25 11:59 UTC] No.44013666[source]▶
Just I quick note - writing to congressman may actually help and worth trying. My mom's greencard was stuck in 2023 due to some bs with documents in consulate with officer there non responding. After the letter by my senator I got a call from the officer over there and the issue resolved within a day. This is of course different from op's issue, but just wanted to note that it is worth trying in any case.