I-601 Provisional Waivers will be adjudicated in USA before a foreign individual's departure abroad for consular processing of his visa and waiver.

"Provisional I-601 waivers" will be a big and welcome change from current practice of filing I-601 waivers abroad at the consulate and waiting for approval for many months or even years if denied.

USCIS proposes to allow the immigrants to obtain a "provisional waiver" in the United States, before they leave for their countries to pick up their visas. Having the waiver in hand will allow them to depart knowing that they will almost certainly be able to return, officials said. The agency is also seeking to sharply streamline the process to cut down the wait times for visas to a few weeks at most.

“The goal is to substantially reduce the time that the U.S. citizen is separated from the spouse or child when that separation would yield an extreme hardship,” said Alejandro Mayorkas, the director of the immigration agency.

On Friday January 6, 2012, the agency will publish a formal notice in the Federal Register that it is preparing a new regulation governing the waivers. But agency officials, speaking on condition of anonymity on Thursday before the proposal was formally announced, stressed that this was only the beginning of a long regulatory process that they hoped to complete by issuing a new rule before the end of this year (2012).

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/07/us/path-to-green-card-for-illegal-immigrant-family-members-of-americans.html?_r=1&smid=fb-share

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"U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) intends to change its current process for filing and adjudication of certain applications for waivers of inadmissibility filed in connection with an immediate relative immigrant visa application. Specifically, USCIS is considering regulatory changes that will allow certain immediate relatives of U.S. citizens to request provisional waivers under section 212(a)(9)(B)(v) of the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952, as amended (INA or Act), 8 U.S.C. 1182(a)(9)(B)(v), PRIOR TO DEPARTING the United States FOR CONSULAR PROCESSING of their immigrant visa applications." - FR Doc. 2012-140 Filed 01/06/2012 at 8:45 am; Publication Date: 01/09/2012.