People have started receiving their 2NLs for April 2017  interviews.   It will take a few hours – and possibly even a couple of days before all have gone out. As we know, these 2NLs were significantly delayed this month, most likely due to the additional work for KCC caused by the travel ban canceled interviews that needed to be rescheduled.

The email itself has no useful information. It simply tells you to check the ESC site for the interview details. Some people that receive the email will find the ESC site is not ready, those people should try again after a few hours. Also, some people find the email itself goes to a trash or spam folder or somehow miss it. So – if you think you may have been scheduled but missed your email, you can check the ESC site, just in case. The 1NL (you have been selected letter) is replaced by a new letter which gives the appointment details.

For those that received their interview notice, now is the time to start preparing for the interview. Gathering documents, scheduling the medical and so on. To learn how to prepare please view my guide on preparing for the interview.

If you have received your 2NL – please take a moment to reply to this post and add your region/case number range PLUS the date of submission and whether you unlocked at any point. This helps me gauge the backlog and DS260 processing times. Last month it was clear that cases submitted later than early September had a chance not to be scheduled because of backlog on DS260 processing. I am hopeful the pace of processing has sped up now, so I expect to see October and November submissions scheduled for April interviews – but some feedback will be useful to determine that accurately.

If as I suspect we do see some December submissions being scheduled this month, it will indicate that the backlog has been reduced or even eliminated. There will always be a minimum amount of processing delay for the background checks, but the 5+ month delays we saw in the beginning were a volume of submitted cases being taken on a first come first served basis. That created a waiting time in addition to the required processing time. As the volume has reduced, the waiting time will be almost eliminated, and the processing time will be just a few weeks. That is precisely what we have seen in previous years.