Title says it all. Especially for those in specific visa categories like H1B/H4 with approved I-140s. Such visa holders can extend the status until they receive a green card but due to severe backlog in some cases such as for India, they will not get it for many years or even decades. So requiring them to go through visa stamp via a mission/embassy outside every time they want to travel back to the jobs they are already doing for years seems waste of time and very redundant. Canada stamps a visa along with an extension or change of status request, for example. This seems such a common sense.
US is more concerned or worried about people entering the country or people who are staying here. They want to run you through their process once in a while to make sure you are still a “good” visitor. Just like they do the background check for all federal employees every x years.
Sure, they can do a background check every few years if this is needed for the work they are doing. An extension request within US requires a background check already, bye the way.
Because they can.
Because it is essentially meaningless in the US system. A Visa is a permission from the US embassy to board a flight to the US. It doesn’t even guarantee admission nor does it imply you are staying legally in the US. Border control officers are the ones who grant you admission, and your status determines if you are staying legally in the US. These are 3 different things.
They want a option to deny you.
Deny what? People who gets refused an extension have to leave anyway.. So they could just refuse to extend instead of having to require them a stamp while outside the country! This way people aren’t stuck in uncertainty while they miss work and their kids miss school while they keep paying bills in their homes in the US.
Deny after a personal interview, which happens only during stamping. The extension is purely paperwork.
Just a ridiculous red tape they have
It's not really clear why. It used to be allowed to renew E, H, I, L, O, and P visas inside the United States, but then in 2002 Congress passed a law requiring all visas to carry biometrics - consequently the decision was made to discontinue visa revalidation within the US as the required biometrics had to be collected at a consulate. However, theoretically the biometrics could have been captured at USCIS ASCs, so maybe the reason why this wasn't allowed was an issue of cost (putting too much load on existing ASCs and having to add new ones) or something like that.
FYI. An extension within country these days requires to go through biometrics at ASCs. May be at that time ASCs weren’t enabled for that service.
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Cos USA loves to be different from the world 🌎