On a case-by-case basis, the U.S. Consulate General in Chennai is accepting employment-based immigrant visa cases for processing when all the following conditions are met:
1. INS has already approved an E1 or E2 category immigrant visa petition and the applicant has an original I-797 form.
2. The applicant is a resident of the Chennai consular district
3. The priority date of the case is current or could reasonably be expected to be current within 60 days (we will not warehouse non-current cases).
4. Waiting for the INS to process the change-of-status application would cause the applicant hardship.
5. The applicant has attorney-certified copies of all pages that made up the original immigrant visa petition .
6. There does not appear to be any indication that the case is fraudulent
7. And our workload permits us to take the case
If you believe that your case meets these conditions,
1. Have your attorney send certified copies of your I-140 paperwork to the Immigrant Visa Unit, U.S. Consulate General, 220 Anna Salai, Chennai 600 006 India with the original I-797 Notice of Approval Form complete forms OF-169 and OF-230, part 1.
An e-mail address where we can contact the attorney with confirmation that we have accepted the case.
DO NOT send any submissions to any officer or employee by name. Doing so mixes business with personal mail and results in lost paperwork when officers transfer.
We are accepting E3 cases that meet the above conditions on a more limited basis, where it is clear that the applicant is highly skilled. We would accord precedence to applicants who have already received H1-B visas in the same profession or for the same employer.
NOTE: This procedure only applies in change-of-status cases. If INS has approved an employment-based petition and you had asked from the beginning to apply for the visa in Chennai, then we must wait for the case to arrive from the National Visa Center.
