Almost two years ago I began the journey of trying to help my mother in law visit us in the USA. Here was that post for some background info if someone is interested: How to help my mother in law migrate - no lawyer wanted!
Fast forward to December 26, 2016 my mother in law was finally granted her visa and was allowed to come here.
Since it was so late my mother in law had to wrap up some things back in Iraq before coming here. After wrapping up some family matters she went to go purchase a ticket to come here and found out that her visa had expired already?
I didn't believe it since she got the visa December 26, 2016 but sure enough on the visa it had an issue date of December 26, 2016 and an expiration date of February 9, 2017. This gave her only around 40 days to come to the USA.
Her English is not so great so she never really noticed this and I never asked her for a visa copy or print out until today. Now she has an expired visa and she had never left the country of Iraq. I don't know how to proceed as I mentioned it took nearly two years and a lot of money to complete this process. My wife is completely devastated about this as she was expecting to see her mother and show my mother in law her grand kids. We have not seen her in close to 15 years.
What are my next steps now? I am a bit confused on how to proceed. This is an Immigrant Visa based on my wife bringing her mother here. She was planning on coming mid January beginning of February but I told her to hold off due to the Trump policy banning any form of immigration. And now that she wants to come her visa has expired...