After a refusal or a year of administrative processing, the question is always the same: what does their file say? State's records are gettable in part — and walled in part, by a statute worth understanding before you pay anyone to promise otherwise.
INA § 222(f) makes visa-issuance and refusal records confidential — the consulate's internal deliberations about your visa largely stay behind it, FOIA or no FOIA. What that clause does not swallow: your own submissions, much of your correspondence trail, CEAC-level status records, and material in other systems referencing your case. The craft is requesting around the wall rather than into it.
Paired with a USCIS A-file request, the two files often disagree with each other in useful ways.
Usually not the internal substance — 222(f) holds that line. What you can often establish is the processing posture and timeline, which is the skeleton of an unreasonable-delay record.
The statute has edges — certain court and government uses, and material outside 'issuance or refusal' records. Edges are argued case by case, not promised on a webpage.
Often yes: even a partly walled response documents the wait and the non-answers, and costs little while the demand letter ages.