New announcement regarding changing embassies

Generally speaking, most DV interviews happen in your country of residence. That is obviously the most convenient, for you, and the government likes to schedule that way. However, many times, people will feel the need to “switch” embassies because their own embassy is under performing, building a backlog of cases and so on. This situation has become common because the embassies don’t work appropriately in some cases. We have seen embassies like Ankara for instance that has consistently underperformed for years, meaning that people there would routinely search for other embassies OR just lose their chance. Bad behavior has been seen from other embassies too, with some embassies refusing to schedule enough, or in some cases ANY cases on a month to month basis.

So – people were relieved about a year ago when the government introduced new rules that appeared to relax the policies a bit so that someone could ask for an embassy change if they were simply “physically present” in a country where they were not resident. I announced and described the new policy here.

However, KCC never correctly supported this policy, and in general the embassies were not consistent in their approach either, some seemed to understand and respect the new policy, but most did not. My recommendation has remained that if you wanted to change embassies, the safest way to achieve that was to move to another country and update your DS260 address before becoming current. I explained that in my changing embassies post here.

Now, the government have just announced a change in their rules. You can read the announcement here.

The new policy, if implemented, will supersede the earlier policy regarding physical presence and make some other critical changes which will impact people.

• The government now will try and restrict interviews to country of residence (or country of nationality) only, with “limited exceptions”.
• People living in certain countries with closed embassies will be required to use the designated assigned embassy, which I will list below.
• Post to Post transfers (“transfers” happen after scheduling) were previously organized without KCC involvement, but may now need to be requested via KCC (the announcement refers to NVC, but that is likely incorrect for DV cases).
• Requests for change will require evidence supporting change of location requests.
• These policy changes will not affect DV2025 cases, or any cases already scheduled, but will affect cases starting with DV2026.

So basically they are tightening up the stance regarding embassy location. They will be making embassy changes harder to achieve and will put barriers in the way. My earlier guidance will remain the best advice – if you can see your embassy is not going to schedule you, you need to move to another country and unlock your DS260 to make that change – and that must be done before your case becomes current since you will be unable to unlock your DS260 once your case is in stage 4 (current and processed). That has been the most reliable way to change and remains the best way.

Of course, the implementation of this new policy remains to be seen. But wise applicants will be paying attention – because your chances of a greencard can disappear very easily if you get stuck at a badly performing embassy.

By the way, I would cheer this new policy if it bought a commitment from all the embassies that they would keep up with their local workload, BUT that is not mentioned in this announcement and remains to be seen. Sadly, I think we will continue to see bad behavior from some embassies for the time being.

Here are the designated posts for people whose “home” embassy is closed.

Immigrant Visa Designated Processing Posts