There has been a lot of publicity of the travel ban, but not as much discussion of the heightened screening. Late last week the Department of State issued a cable explaining how the heightened screening would be implemented. Below please find excerpts of the cable
…
“The Executive Order and Presidential Memorandum highlight the critical importance of maintaining extra vigilance in the conduct of our work and continuing to increase scrutiny of visa applicants for potential security and non-security related ineligibilities. Consular officers should not hesitate to refuse any case presenting security concerns under §221(g) of the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) in order to explore all available local leads and pending the outcome of an SAO as appropriate, or issue any other refusals or take other precautionary actions pursuant to any applicable ground of inadmissibility under the INA. All officers should remember that all visa decisions are national security decisions. A consular officer should refuse under §214(b) of the INA any nonimmigrant visa applicant whom the consular officer believes may fail to abide by the requirements of the visa category in question.”
…
“In order to ensure that proper focus is given to each application, posts should generally not schedule more than 120 visa interviews per consular adjudicator/per day. Please that limiting scheduling may cause interview appointment backlogs to rise.”
Assuming a 8 hour day of interviews, that leaves the consulate officer 4 minuets per interview. In order to complete an interview in this brief time frame, it is critical that those appearing for an interview have all of their documents together, neatly and tabbed so the officer can find them.
[contentblock id=5 img=gcb.png]