Attorney Murthy’s Consular Meeting at Chennai, Part 3 of 3 Posted Sep 03, 2004 urthyDotCom This is our third and final installment, reporting to MurthyDotCom and MurthyBulletin readers on Attorney Sheela Murthy's personal meeting, July 7, 2004, with Michael Thomas, the Chief of the U.S. Consular Section at the U.S. Consulate at Chennai, India. Part 1 and Part 2 of this report can be found on MurthyDotCom. ©MurthyDotCom New and Expanded Facilities at Chennai ©MurthyDotCom Michael Thomas led a personal tour, showing Attorney Murthy five recently-constructed visa interview windows. Scheduled to be opened in August or September, the purpose of the windows is to deal with the additional workload due to the mandatory personal visa interview requirement. The U.S. Consulate at Chennai is also planning to substantially increase the number of visa officers by almost double to conduct visa interviews - from about ten to twenty. With this increase, the consular post at Chennai becomes one of the largest nonimmigrant visa posts in the world. Other large visa posts for U.S. visas are at Seoul, Manila, Bogotá, and across Mexico. ©MurthyDotCom Visa Issuance Does Not Guarantee Entry to U.S. ©MurthyDotCom Mr. Thomas wanted to make it clear that, even after one has been granted the visa at the Consulate, s/he could be denied entry at the airport or any other Port of Entry. This long-standing rule applies to any visa category since the inspecting officer has the right to deny a person admission to the United States. It is required that individuals be admissible upon presenting themselves at the Port of Entry. For example, if a person contradicts a statement made at the Consulate, or if there is a discrepancy between the documents being submitted at the Port of Entry and the statements by the applicant, the inspector at the airport may return that person to his/her home country. ©MurthyDotCom AC21 Portability Applies to Certain Consular Cases ©MurthyDotCom Chad Peterson, the Chief of the Immigrant Visa Section at Chennai, confirmed that the Consulate would issue an immigrant visa for certain employment-based applicants whose I-485 applications had been pending for longer than 180 days and whose I-140 petitions had been approved, should the applicants switch from adjustment-of-status to a consular-processing cases. ©MurthyDotCom Security Advisory Opinions ©MurthyDotCom The U.S. Consulate at Chennai will request a security advisory opinion (SAO) when required for national security concerns. Such an SAO will also be requested for guidance from the U.S. Department of State on a specific situation or person. For one who is subject to the SAO or any other opinion or guidance, the U.S. Consulate will issue that person a section 221(g) denial, stating that there is insufficient documentation to issue the visa at that time. Generally, one must wait approximately 60 days. After that, s/he is allowed to send an eMail to the nonimmigrant visa section of the Consulate at Chennai with his/her name, passport number, and a brief summary of the facts for follow-up to find out the status of the pending visa application. ©MurthyDotCom The Visa Mantis security checks can take much longer. Indian nationals, generally, are not subject to Visa Mantis requests to the same extent as nationals of China or Russia, for example. ©MurthyDotCom Percentage of Fraud Denials ©MurthyDotCom Michael Thomas pointed out that the number of visa refusals based on section 212(a) for fraud or misrepresentation was only about 70 cases of the 180,000 visas issued during the last reported year. This must be heartening news for those who assumed the proportion of visa refusals based on fraud or misrepresentation was very high at the U.S. consular post at Chennai, India. ©MurthyDotCom Conclusion ©MurthyDotCom We, again, thank Mr. Michael Thomas for his graciousness in meeting with Attorney Murthy and allowing us to share this valuable information with our MurthyDotCom and MurthyBulletin readers. © The Law Office of Sheela Murthy, P.C.
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