Police Certificate

[Rich Nason 1]

I apologize if this is in the wrong spot. My fiance is in Russia, and we just received our NOA2 notification on Aug 30th. She has gone to Nizhny to apply for the police certificate of which they told her it would take about 1 month to obtain. I know we have a little time, as it will take a few weeks for our package to get to the consulate. My question for those that have gone through this process, is do we need this certificate before we can schedule the interview, or do we need it to be able to schedule the interview. I am trying to avert having to wait on any documents once she receives her packet 3. My hope is that we will be able to actually schedule the interview when she gets the packet, and then ensure that we have collected supporting documents such as the police certificate while we are waiting for the interview date, much like we will do with the medical exam. Any information on what will be needed in order to actually schedule the interview once she receives her paperwork would be greatly appreciated as I am trying to collect financial support docs, along with anything else that will need to be collected on my end and sent to her.

Thanks,

Rich

[Mogambi 96]

In some countries you can even schedule the interview before she receives her Packet 3. For instance, in the Philippines, all you need is the case number, and that is assigned from the NVC and can be obtained by calling them a week or two after they receive your info from the USCIS. In that case, you can go online and schedule your interview, even before your packet is sent from NVC to the local Embassy, and before that Embassy sends out the Packet 3. Russia may be different.

However to answer your other question, the police report will just be brought along to the interview, so it's certainly not required for scheduling the interview.

I will tell you though that in our case, we needed police clearance from Thailand. I assumed we would have it in the 2 weeks they quoted, and we scheduled our interview. Of course it didn't arrive in time, and we had to reschedule our interview twice to later dates while we waited for it to arrive.

But yes, you can certainly schedule your interview to when you 'assume' you'll have everything. If for some reason there is a delay, you can reschedule your interview to a later date.

[Rich Nason 1]

Thanks for the info.. I will have to give that a go, and see if it's possible to set the interview date once the NVC has assigned us a case number. Luckily for us, it is actually a law in Russia that such an inquiry for a police check must be completed in 30 days. She did have to go to a major city in order to advert postal time pile ups on top of that month. But again thank you for the information. We were worried we would be waiting a month for this document before we can even schedule the interview.

Rich

[StarGirl 13]

Hi, this is right, it'll take her one month to get the police certificate.

It is not needed in order to schedule interview. She needs to have it with her only when she goes to the embassy in Moscow.

I have conflicting info regarding time when you can actually schedule interview. Through my correspondence with the embassy, it looked like I absolutely had to wait for them emailing my US fiancé to inform that we were able to proceed with scheduling. On the other hand, one couple, here on VJ, said that they actually scheduled their interview before receiving this email. So.... I am still not 100% sure what is the right way.

Also, it might be that your fiancée won't be getting packet 3. In my case, all we had was an email with instructions. No package came via regular mail and I am having my interview in couple of weeks. I've read that sometimes this package reaches the recipient when she has already left to US - beauties of Russian post service )))) All the forms that you will need to fill out can be downloaded from website.

So, I wouldn't worry too much about police certificate, and go ahead and order it now - it's good for one year in Russia.

All she needs to do to schedule is to register on http://www.ustraveldocs.com/, pay the fee... and well, wait for the email meanwhile collecting and organizing all the supporting evidence.

Good luck!

Edited September 9, 2012 by StarGirl