Immigrant Visa Pause Update, Oct 1: Casablanca, Manila and Frankfurt Cancel October, Sydney and Amman Call Non-Plaintiffs Back

This covers Wednesday, the first day of the new fiscal year. Court matters are secondhand.

October goes the way of September at five posts

The hope was that 1 October would reopen the posts that had said "wait for October". Instead the cancellations rolled forward. Casablanca sent a second mass notice on 30 September cancelling every October appointment, in the same words as the September one; the K-1 that self-booked 27 October last week is presumably caught. Manila's 1 October applicants were told the post has no news of resumption this month. Frankfurt turned K-1 applicants away at the door on the 1st with no email, and applicants reported the same at Seoul and in Japan. Stockholm cancelled an early-October immigrant interview by email on the 29th. Paris refused entry to a K-1 on the 29th whose appointment the call centre had confirmed twice, then marked him a no-show; his petition approval expires on the 4th. London, by contrast, interviewed on the 1st after a confused morning in which early arrivals were sent away and later ones let in. That is eight October cancellations in our rows, across six posts, against one post confirmed open.

Three more posts reach non-plaintiffs

Sydney made its first callbacks: two spouse cases from pause countries, one interviewed on 7 July, neither a plaintiff, were emailed second interviews for 6 October with only the passport requested. Amman re-interviewed a non-plaintiff spouse from February for five minutes, kept the passport, handed over no slip at all, and said it had what it needed; CEAC moved from Refused to Ready. That no-slip ending is new, and a Guinean diversity visa applicant with the same pattern at Dakar went to Issued on the 30th. Tbilisi emailed a non-plaintiff parent a second interview and asked for her own financial information, though she does not work. Rio is calling its January cohort for mid-October, two confirmed. Warsaw invited a Russian sibling case for mid-October with "financial statement documents". London summoned the British spouse applicant in 221(g) since 8 July to a second interview on 2 October, with the public charge statement now described as required. All of it is in the re-interview guide.

Islamabad: touches for everyone, approvals relayed for plaintiffs

CEAC last-updated dates changed on 28 to 30 September for Islamabad spouse cases interviewed in January, February, July and August, including applicants who never contacted the post. Nobody has an email. Separately, a social-media account quoted in full says five or six plaintiffs in one class suit were re-interviewed on the 30th, asked eleven questions about education, work, assets, public assistance, health, the petitioner's insurance and household dependents, and all approved with passports kept. We hold that as relayed, not verified. One H-1B applicant at the same post finished a 221(g) that began on 11 June: employer tax documents, then the full petition, a passport request on 24 September and the visa on the 30th, 109 days end to end.

Approved in August, and still waiting

A Juárez spouse approved at the window on 21 August, green slip, passport kept, CEAC Issued the same day, saw the status move back to Ready on the 30th with no passport after six weeks. A K-1 at Ankara interviewed 19 September showed Approved and flipped to Refused with the processing text on the 30th. An O-1A renewal at New Delhi got a white slip with the passport handed back and a request to email the entire petition; another O-1A applicant has had the passport held 48 days. A Chennai L-1 who emailed court records on 19 September has had no acknowledgement. An Islamabad exchange visitor was told by the service desk that her passport is "with the post" while she holds it.

The court, secondhand

The government's emergency stay request is before the appeals court and there is no stay as of this writing. In the diversity visa case the judge granted the plaintiffs' supplemental motion only in part: the request to reserve the roughly 41,000 unused numbers past the deadline was refused, with the court reportedly constructing a narrower path of its own. Neither document has been read here.

By the numbers

23 cases added and 1 updated, 3,650 in the dataset. Ten cancellation rows added, 136 in all, with the first October control (London open on the 1st). The status-by-embassy page covers 46 posts, with Sydney added and 14 rows changed.