Well, it's finally done. Had my final interview in Montreal this morning and my case was approved without any problems (btw - we went the DCF route). They hardly asked any questions at all and I was in and out of the consulate in less than two hours.

One piece of advice: even if you get there early, it doesn't guarantee you that you'll be one of the first people served. They tell you to go to "window 14" when you go upstairs, but that window stays closed until about 8:15 or so. When they do open that window to give out numbers, everybody just lines up - it doesn't go by who arrived at the consulate first. There were some people there who were pretty upset because they had arrived at the consulate very early, but didn't pay attention when the window finally opened. So my advice is to keep an eye on the window and get in line right away when it opens.

Anyhow, I'm glad it's over. I was gambling that it would go well. I already had my plane ticket, and movers booked for next week!

WooHoooo! Congrats!

I'm sure the other Canadians would love to see the timeline. Great tip on watching the window (and not getting there *too* early!).

Travel safe!

Fastest time I have seen on her for a Canadian DCF is around 6 months. Did you better that? Congrats

Yeah, I guess I did. I made my original I-130 application on July 5th, 2006 in Montreal. If I'm counting right, that makes it 87 days from start to finish. Do I get a prize for fastest time?

I'm all out of the toasters today, so here's a star.


oh I just *have* to gloat... 33 days here, but it wasn't Canada, and it wasn't this summer. Star still goes to you!

Congrats.

Congratulations! That was fast!

Wonderful news Congratulations

We are happy for you...Godspeed!

OH you give me great hope!! I pray we get ours done fast like that!!

congrats!

What about proving US domicile? did they discuss any of that? would love to know........

Actually, there were almost no questions at all. It was extremely quick and painless. However, my situation is a bit unusual, which might have something to do with how easy it went. Here's my situation (stay with me - this gets confusing)...

My wife is a US citizen by birth, but has lived most of her life in Canada (which is where we met). In 1998 we entered the US on a K1 visa, got married in San Diego, and lived down there until 2002. At that time, we had a new baby, so we decided we wanted to return to Canada to be closer to family. Luckily, the company I was working for decided that they would allow me to continue working for them remotely (I'm a software developer, so I do everything over the internet). So we've been living up here (in Ottawa) for the past 4 years. In the meantime, I had to "abandon" my US permanent resident status since I had been out of the US for more than a year. Now we've decided to return to the US, mainly for career reasons. So here we are, doing the DCF thing. This brings me to my point. The paperwork I submitted for my application shows that I've been working for the same US company for the past 5+ years. I also have been filing my US taxes every year since I've been gone. So you can see that domicile was not really an issue. I clearly have ties to the US, and my US income has been consistent all of this time (and will continue once I arrive there).

Hope this helps.

Ahh yes in that situation I can see there wasn't much to discuss in the way of domicile.
Thanks for the reply.