Today, AILA (Am. Immigration Lawyers Assn.)
released a tour report of the National Visa Center
(NVC), which tour was done late last year.
It is a good "insider's view" of NVC, which is
the State Dept. processing facility through which
all approved visa petitions process on their way to
the Consulates overseas. NVC assigns the case number
used by Embassy, conducts security name checks,
and collects and processes biographical and financial
information on certain visa cases.
Since the NVC is closed to the general public and often
little understood, I thought that some of you who
are processing your own visa petitions (and others
who are "immigration followers") might be interested
in reading this 12 page report.
Some of the information not widely known:
*NVC is actually a contractor facility with 400 employees
working two shifts, with only 5 State Dept. employees
on site and one FBI field representative.
*NVC has about 2 million files on site, and is currently
receiving about 20,000 petitions weekly.
*Approved I-129F Fiancee Visa petitions are considered
an "expedite" at NVC, and are usually processed in a few
days and sent directly to Consular post on a daily basis
via DHL.
*NCIC (FBI criminal database) security checks usually
completed in 24 hours (and sometimes SOA opinions)
are done at NVC.
Hope that helps.
Here is the report, courtesy of AILA, Posted at Doc. No. 05032362 (March 23, 2005):
http://www.usaimmigrationattorney.com/NationalVisaCenterTourReport.pdf
