Visa denial and Mandamus Action

American Consulate Offices overseas increasingly deny marriage based visa applicants, especially in "high risk" countries, such as China. We have seen staggering numbers of visa denial came from Guangzhou, China. Unfortunately, it takes very long time, frequently several years, for the post to return the file to USCIS for revocation. We have seen cases where visas were denied in 2005 and now CIS issued a notice advising clients that it has received the file back from the post. Client have yet to receive "intent to Revoke" notice. After clients respond to the notice, CIS may either reaffirm the approval or revoke the approval and clients may then appeal the revocation.

Because of long delay in receiving the file back from the post and the chance to respond to the grounds stated for the revocation, we filed our first mandamus action in federal district court three months ago. Our client's I-130 visa petitions for her husband and two step children were filed in 2005 and in 2007, we filed our first mandamus action to compel the CIS to adjudicate the petitions. CIS approved her petitions in less than 60 days after the lawsuit was filed. In April of 2008, after several minutes interview, their visa applications were denied as the visa officer did not believe the marriage was bona fide. Knowing the chance to respond and overcome the grounds of denial may take years, we filed her second mandamus action.

Although government filed motion to dismiss for lack of subject matter jurisdiction(hearing has been set), post nonetheless quickly returned the file to CIS and CIS has issued notice acknowledging the receipt of the file from post. It took the post to return the file in less than four months from the date of visa denial and less than three months after we filed our lawsuit.

If your relatives' visa application is denied by the visa officer overseas and you have been waiting for very long time(more than one year, for example), you may consider filing a mandamus action.