State Department designates processing posts for visa applicants from Ukraine, provides additional border-crossing guidance

The U.S. State Department has designated processing posts for visa applicants from Ukraine and provided additional border-crossing guidance to U.S. citizens.

Key Points:

• The U.S. Consulate General in Frankfurt, Germany, will now process Ukrainian immigrant visas (IV), including Diversity Visa (DV) and Fiancé(e) (K-1) visas. The U.S. Embassy in Warsaw, Poland, will now process Ukrainian adoption cases as well as A and G diplomatic and official visas.
  • IV and DV applicants who have already been scheduled for appointments in Frankfurt or Warsaw can request their cases be transferred to another post by contacting the alternative post. The alternative post will have the choice to accept the transfer.
  • IV and DV applicants who have not been scheduled will be automatically reassigned to Frankfurt and will be notified when they receive an appointment.
  • Individuals can contact KyivIV@state.gov for questions about non-adoption IV and DV applications or ImmigrantVisasWarsaw@state.gov for questions about adoption applications.
• Nonimmigrant visa (NIV) applications can be processed wherever a Ukrainian applicant is physically located and can schedule an appointment. A list of U.S. embassies is available here.

Additional Information: The State Department is recommending that U.S. citizens who are trying to leave Ukraine to consider redirecting from Poland and Moldova border crossings to border crossings in Hungary, Romania or Slovakia. Border crossings into Poland and all main border crossings into Moldova are experiencing over 30 hour wait times in some cases. Those crossing land borders should be prepared to wait many hours to cross. More information on security and border crossing issues is available here.

BAL Analysis: The situation in Ukraine may change with little or no notice and companies with employees in the country are encouraged to follow State Department information and warnings closely.

This alert has been provided by the BAL U.S. Practice group. For additional information, please contact berryapplemanleiden@bal.com.

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