Immigration News  |
| Changes in immigration that impact your life. |
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| Administrative Processing at U.S. Consulate, Chennai |
| June 06, 2006 |
Applicants for non-immigrant visas no longer have to spend their time making calls
and sending e-mail messages to the American Consulate, Chennai to check the status
of their visa cases which have been refused pending administrative processing.
The Consulate has devised a procedure where at the time of their interview an
applicant who has been refused pending administrative processing would receive
either a pink handout or a blue handout from the Consular officer. If you received
a PINK handout, you can check the status of your case online, as per procedure
detailed below. If you received BLUE handouts please read the following paragraph
and follow the instructions given therein.
Blue Handout Cases – Wait till the Consulate contacts you
The blue handout will inform the applicant that additional information is needed
or further additional processing would be required. In such cases the American
Consulate, Chennai will get in touch with the applicant in due course as and when
further action is required from the applicant. Specific instructions will be sent
on a case by case basis. If your case falls within this category, PLEASE DO NOT
CONTACT the Consulate regarding the status of your case.
Pink Handout Cases – Check the status online
If you received a pink handout at the time of your interview, you can check the
status of your case through the online system. The case list is updated on a daily
basis to show the cases that have been processed. A case will have only one of
three remarks “Pending process” or “Contact the Consulate”
or “Send Passport”.
Pending process: Your case is still pending administrative processing. A visa
cannot be issued prior to completing this processing. The Consulate cannot waive
this processing for any applicant. This is not a matter of missing documents and
is in no way related to the number of times an individual may have been able to
obtain visas or enter the U.S. in the past. If your case is “Pending Process”,
please DO NOT contact the Consulate or you may risk delaying the administrative
processing of your visa.
Contact Consulate: Your case has been processed and the Consulate needs
additional information from you to process the case to completion. Please e-mail
the Consulate at Chennaisao@state.gov.
In the subject line of your email indicate your case number and the remark “Contact
American Consulate, Chennai”. You may write a simple email indicating that
the online status of your case shows that you need to contact the consulate, and
requesting the documents required to be submitted by you. Sample text of the email
can be: “The remarks against my case number on the website indicate “Contact
Consulate”. Please let me know the documents I need to submit in order to
further pursue my application.”
Send Passport & DD: Each case will have specific instructions about the documents
that an applicant is required to send. Some cases will have simple directions
such as send Passport and DD. Others may require additional documents such as
the copy of the I-20 or the original DS-2019 with feasible reporting dates. Whenever
you are asked to send in the itinerary with the passport, you need to also send
proof that your travel plans are still valid and necessary. You may send in all
necessary documents marked “Attention: CHENNAISAO” using VFS Services,
Tel: 044-5231-6767. The service fee of Rs.141/= per passport (inclusive of Service
Tax) is payable in cash or by DD/HDFC Bank Check favoring “HDFC Bank a/c
VFS”.
For further information and latest status of the cases are available on the website
of U.S. Consulate,
Chennai.
Conclusion
We at VisaPro receive a lot of calls in our Indian office in Hyderabad regarding
the delays in their visa processing due to administrative processing. Applicants
are often confused regarding how long they need to wait before they can get a
decision on their application. We thank the American Consulate, Chennai for establishing
a procedure whereby certain applicants will be able to check the status of their
visa applications that are pending ‘administrative processing’.
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