5 Reasons Why your Visa is STUCK in Administrative Processing

If your visa is stuck in a refused 221g administrative processing AP status, this is a deep black hole and it is very, very, very frustrating. Maybe you have a visa application that's pending or an interview coming up and you're worried about administrative processing. Either way, I'm going to give you five reasons why your visa is stuck or might get stuck in administrative processing. What's up, everybody? If you don't know me, I'm Josh Goldstein, and I'm an immigration lawyer with more than 20 years of experience, and I've devoted my entire career to fighting these horrible visa delays. And last year, I filed more than 500 lawsuits in federal court, mandamus lawsuits, to challenge various sorts of immigration delays, including administrative processing. So if anyone knows anything about administrative processing, it should be me. And today, I'm going to offer you five reasons why your visa might get stuck in administrative processing. This is just my opinion. It's pure speculation. I could be completely wrong. What do I know? But I have a lot of experience with this. So I think it's worth listening to what I have to say. One reason why you might get stuck in administrative processing is that you are Muslim or you're from a majority Muslim country. Many of my clients with these sorts of delays are from Muslim countries or majority Muslim countries. And I think this is a factor that contributes to triggering administrative processing. There's some sort of Islamophobia or bigotry against Muslims or people from Muslim countries. Sometimes I have someone, a client from Lebanon who's Christian. He says, listen, I'm not even Muslim. I'm Christian. So what's the problem? Well, yes, but Lebanon is technically possibly considered a Muslim country. So it's either you're Muslim or you're from a majority Muslim country. The number two reason why your visa might get stuck in administrative processing is that you're from a country with a questionable relationship with the United States government. This is all about politics. It's not about you. So countries like that I would consider Cuba, Venezuela, Pakistan, China, Iran, Afghanistan. These are countries where there's the politics is not in good shape and there's some sort of dispute between the two governments. I think that if you're from one of these countries, you may be more likely to get your visa stuck in administrative processing. The third reason why your visa might get stuck in administrative processing is that you have traveled extensively, particularly when the travel touches on countries that are majority Muslim or countries with questionable relationships in the United States. Our office, for example, has helped half a dozen people who were pilots, who flew relief missions. To their credit, it's very admirable. It's very, very admirable in my opinion. And they wanted to help people. So they flew humanitarian relief missions to Afghanistan and Pakistan and Somalia and various countries like this. They were doing all this relief work. Guess what? Their visas were put in administrative processing and I speculate that their extensive travel to these regions is what triggered administrative processing. So if you traveled a lot or to areas that touch on these topics, I think that might trigger administrative processing. Number four, if you're male, I think, and again, this is pure speculation and I could be wrong. I think that males are more likely to be put in administrative processing than females. Now, why is that? Why would they do that? I have no idea. I don't know why they do any of this. I don't know why they don't review and make a decision on visa applications expeditiously. But in my experience, I think that males are more likely to be delayed than females. And five, military service. If you've served in the military at all, then I think it's possible that you may be more likely to get stuck in administrative processing. And now sometimes people say, hey, but Josh, that's not fair. I live in a country where military service is not optional. It's required. It's obligatory. There's conscription. You have to serve in the military. So why are they holding this against me? Well, to this, I would say it's not fair. Nothing about this is fair. It's terrible. It's unfair. It's cruel. It hurts very good people. If you want to do something about it and you want to take action, watch my next video that I'm going to put right here. And you can see what you can do to get your visa out of administrative processing.