Why Was My USCIS Interview CANCELLED?

Why was my USCIS interview canceled by Immigration? I understand that if you get that letter in the mail that your interview has been canceled, it can set off alarm bells inside your head because your first instinct might be to think that the worst is happening in your case and that you're about to get denied just because you have gotten this cancellation letter. If this has happened to you, let's talk about what it might mean for your case and let's talk about what you should do.

My name is Moumita Rahman, and I have been a practicing immigration attorney for the past 13 years. If you would like my help on your case, give our office a call at 212-248-7907. We are based in New York, but we serve clients all over the United States.

So what are some of the reasons why immigration might cancel your interview?

Number one, there are some times where they may decide to not give you an interview and thus they might cancel an already scheduled interview. This is something that is happening more and more frequently over the past year because as USCIS is rushing to approve as many green card cases as possible in order to catch up with the backlog. Many times they might review a file for which they have already sent an appointment letter and realize that, “No, maybe we don't need to give an interview after all!” And thus they might cancel it and send you a request for evidence instead.

Next, if there has been some sort of weather emergency or other emergency that has required immigration to cancel all of their appointments because their facilities were not usable or there was some other uncontrollable act of nature or God that prevents the immigration office from operating properly. Let me give you a few examples where my client's interview has been canceled by immigration because of these reasons.

Number one: The whether. If there is any sort of catastrophic or severe weather event such as thunderstorms, hurricanes, snow storms, severe ice alerts, this means that the immigration office has to consider the safety of its employees first. And if it's not safe for the immigration officers to travel to their office to conduct interviews, then in turn, that also means that your interview may get canceled.

Next, here is another thing that you may have never considered, but if the USCIS Immigration Office, or the building becomes unusable because of lack of electricity or Internet usage, then they would also have to cancel your interview. And believe it or not, I actually traveled all the way from New York to Phoenix, Arizona for my client's green card interview. The day that we got there, that office in Phoenix actually had to cancel all of their immigration interviews because the office had no Internet. Believe it or not, even immigration experiences problems such as this as well.

Next, this is something that we see a lot in our office because, of course, we file a lot of VAWA cases for clients who have already filed a joint application with their spouse. In situations where you might file an amended application requesting VAWA, or requesting a waiver of your I-751 joint filing requirement, as a result, if you do file these amended applications or updated applications, sometimes they might decide to cancel the previous interview so that they have enough time to process your new application.

And next, sometimes they may just have a shortage of officers and they may have over rescheduled too many interviews for a certain period of time. They might need to shut down for office training or other things like this, which they're not going to broadcast the public. But USCIS is still a bureaucratic office and they still have to do things such as train employees and do other things that might sound very administrative in nature, but they still have to carry those things out.

So rest assured, a canceled interview does not mean a flat out denial of your case. Sometimes the reason has absolutely nothing to do with you, but if you experience a canceled interview, the best advice I have for you is to simply relax and wait. Give immigration some time. They will let you know of their next steps.

And obviously, if your case falls outside of the normal processing time range, then you can always create service requests and inquiries to see why your case taking so long.

And if you've experienced the canceled interview, drop us a line. Let us know below. Let's do each other a favor and let others know what happened in your case.A lot of people are probably going through the same thing that you're going through, so share your experience below.

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In addition to canceling interviews, USCIS is also waiving many, many interviews for green card applications. I'll include a link to my latest video regarding this phenomenon, which you can view right after we finish here.

And if you want my help with your case, call our office at 212-248-7907 to see if we can book you an evaluation.

Click here to watch this video and I'll see you there.

🔹 USCIS Case Status: https://egov.uscis.gov/

🔹 USCIS Processing Times:  https://egov.uscis.gov/processing-time