POURSOHI v. BLINKEN

Background

Plaintiff Poursohi is identified in the opinion as a lawful permanent resident residing in California. Plaintiff Mirmotalebi, Poursohi’s spouse, is identified as an Iranian national and a lawful permanent resident of Canada residing in Montreal. Poursohi filed an approved family petition for Mirmotalebi. The plaintiffs submitted an immigrant-visa application and provided the final required documents on February 15, 2020. The National Visa Center determined that the application was “documentarily qualified” on May 12, 2020, meaning it had received the required fees, forms, and documents for interview scheduling.

Mirmotalebi’s application was classified as a Tier Three family-preference application. The interview was to occur at the U.S. Consulate General in Montreal. The State Department had suspended routine visa services worldwide in March 2020 because of the COVID-19 pandemic and later resumed them in phases. Safety measures and local restrictions reduced interview capacity, while Montreal’s number of documentarily qualified applicants waiting for interviews increased from 2,521 in July 2020 to 7,427 in July 2021.

The plaintiffs sued seeking relief under the Administrative Procedure Act (APA), which permits courts to require an agency to act when it has unreasonably delayed, and under the Mandamus Act, which permits a court to compel a federal officer or agency to perform a duty owed to a plaintiff. Defendant Antony Blinken moved for summary judgment. The plaintiffs opposed the motion. The opinion also states that the plaintiffs later sought discovery and moved to stay consideration of the summary-judgment motion.

Legal standard

The court applied the summary-judgment standard under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 56. Summary judgment is proper when there is no genuine dispute about a fact that could affect the outcome and the moving party is entitled to judgment under the law.

To evaluate whether the visa-processing delay was unreasonable, the court applied the six factors from Telecommunications Research and Action Center, commonly called the TRAC factors. They consider: whether the delay follows a reasonable decision-making rule; whether Congress provided a timetable; the effect on human health and welfare; the effect of faster action on higher-priority agency work; the interests harmed by delay; and whether the agency acted improperly.

Court’s analysis

The court found that the first factor—the reason for and length of the delay—weighed heavily for the government. The application had been pending for approximately 18 months when the court issued its order. The court determined that this period alone did not show unreasonable delay, particularly because the State Department’s processing capacity had been sharply reduced by the pandemic and because the agency was scheduling applications in order of document-completion dates within its priority tiers.

The second factor also favored the government, or was at least neutral. The court found no binding congressional deadline for processing this family-preference visa application. It rejected the plaintiffs’ reliance on a statutory statement that immigration-benefit applications should generally be completed within 180 days, describing that provision as nonbinding and inapplicable to consular officials at the State Department. The court also held that the State Department’s Foreign Affairs Manual did not create an enforceable 60-day right because it lacked the force of law and used nonmandatory language such as “expects” and “strive.”

The third and fifth factors favored the plaintiffs because family separation, emotional strain, travel expenses, maintaining two residences, and other alleged harms affected their interests. The court nevertheless noted that the COVID-19 safeguards were intended to protect the health of government personnel and the public.

The fourth factor favored the government. The court reasoned that placing the plaintiffs at the front of the scheduling line would not produce more interviews and would disadvantage applicants in higher-priority tiers or applicants in the same tier whose applications had been complete longer. The court found that Montreal’s backlog established a queue and that the plaintiffs’ application was behind Tier Three applications that had become documentarily qualified earlier.

The sixth factor was neutral or favored the government because the plaintiffs made no allegations of improper conduct. Overall, the court concluded that the first and fourth factors, which it treated as especially important, outweighed the factors favoring the plaintiffs.

Disposition

The court granted Defendant Blinken’s motion for summary judgment. It ruled that the delay in scheduling Mirmotalebi’s immigrant-visa interview was not unreasonable under the APA or the Mandamus Act. The opinion also states that the plaintiffs’ requested discovery was denied and that their motion to stay consideration of the summary-judgment motion was denied.