Morocco - A Few K1-Visa Questions

[SaRy 73]

Hello everyone,

So me and my fiancé are in the process of preparing our application for a K1-visa and I've been wondering about a few things:

1. Do "Layovers" count as "Countries you visited in the last 5 years"?

2. How does the Consulate (Casablanca) contact you (call/text/email/letter) for the interview?

3. On average, how long do they give you between the day they contact you for the interview and the actual interview?

4. Would it be better to prepare my documents (certificates and their translations) before the interview or after? Would I have enough time after I get an appointment?

That's it for now. Thanks!

[Rebecca616 38]

if the US citizen hasn't filed a petition yet, there is a long wait ahead until an interview will happen. The petition has to be approved before the foreign fiancé is allowed to file for the visa and yes you should be getting your documents prepared as it takes some time to get them together. Did you leave the airport on the layover/how long ? i was in France for 3 hours on a layover but i didn't say i had visited there. It can take a couple months or longer from the time the embassy receives your file to the time you have an interview. Make sure you have sent the US citizen all the information they need to even file the petition. My husband was contacted by mail but it may be an option now to have a text or email sent but im not positive.

[SaRy 73]

Thank you for your reply, Rebecca!

But the thing is documents like that tend to expire, for example the birth certificate is only valid for like 3 or 6 months). So I think it's better to get them after getting the interview to make sure they're valid by the time our application gets processed.

[Rebecca616 38]

Yes, that's true. I was surprised to learn that a birth certificate expires in Morocco.

[SaRy 73]

I'm probably going to wait until I get the appointment, unless advised otherwise.

[CassandraSerenity 8]

The birth certificate for the Moroccan fiancé may expire in Morocco in 3 months, but the US will accept a birth certificate for up to one year from issue date. You will need a copy of the birth certificate to file the original petition.

I can tell you that we front-loaded our petition and included his divorce decree, his birth certificate, his police certificate, his court certificate, and all of the translations when we originally applied. It's not needed, but we also didn't have a RFE. Habibi's interview is Nov 7th and he's getting updated copies of the police and court records and their translations (just to be sure).

[SaRy 73]

Hey Cassandra,

Thank you so much for this very helpful piece of information, it helped relieve my stress a little. So I will be preparing my documents before hand now

[EandH0904 1,184]

We did not get those things before the K1 application - they expire, so we figured we would wait until at least the case number from NVC is obtained to get them - with the hopes that the interview would then be within three months. Maybe it's optimistic though.

[CassandraSerenity 8]

We did not get those things before the K1 application - they expire, so we figured we would wait until at least the case number from NVC is obtained to get them - with the hopes that the interview would then be within three months. Maybe it's optimistic though.

You should work on getting them as soon as possible. My fiancé had his interview scheduled (because you don't schedule it the embassy does) 3 weeks after the embassy received his information. It was just enough time to do the medical which needs to be done two weeks before the interview. It can take time to get the court and police records, plus the certificate of celibacy (trust me you'll need it because we did even though he's been married before) and you'll need time to get them all translated to English.

Don't wait. Start getting it all together now.

[SaRy 73]

Thank you, both, for your advice. So I guess the middle ground would be to prepare them after my fiancé files the petition and before the Consulate calls me for my interview.

I think that at the worst case scenario I can redo them after a couple of months before they call me or right when they do.