I've been appointed by a US university as a postdoctoral researcher on a J1 visa in the 'Research Scholar' category. I was supposed to start in July, but I'm currently in France (as a French citizen) and I've been waiting to get my visa and the authorization to fly.
I finally managed to schedule a visa appointment at the U.S. embassy in Paris in early September. My understanding of this statement from the U.S. embassy in Vienna is that someone in my category (J1 Research Scholar) is both exempted from Trump's executive order on non-immigrant visas, and potentially exempted from the travel ban under "national interest" exemptions. So there is a chance I could get my visa and get to the U.S. by late September/early October.
However, as far as I know the U.S. embassy in Paris hasn't issued a similar statement. If my visa appointment is canceled, the university that appointed me will be forced to postpone my official hire to January 2021, which would be pretty bad given financially that I don't have a salary at the moment.
So I have a few questions:
- Does anyone have more information on the policy of the U.S. embassy in Paris?
- How likely is it that my visa appointment will be cancelled a week before?
- Could I contest a potential cancellation on the grounds that my visa category is exempted from the EO?
Many thanks in advance for your advice on this very stressful situation!
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source https://www.reddit.com/r/immigration/comments/i8efi9/exemptions_for_j1_research_scholar_from_france/