How to transfer case from Hong Kong to Philippines?

[coloradocouple 0]

Hi all, long-time lurker who has ran into a little road block.

 

My fiance, who is Filipino, has been working in Hong Kong. We've been processing our case at the Hong Kong embassy and they currently have our file. While waiting to receive all our police clearances, my fiance's employment contract expired and her boss didn't extend her, so she had to move back to the Philippines.

 

Now she's back in the Philippines and we need the case transferred to the embassy in Manila. The HK website states that they need a formal request from the embassy in Manila before they transfer our case. I reached out to the customer support number for the Philippines embassy and they've been no help, they keep telling me to call Hong Kong.

 

Has anyone had a similar situation before? I'm not sure who to reach out to in the Philippines to get them to start the process. Do we call, email, write a letter? I can't find instructions anywhere. (Some consulates have an online form to fill out, I can't find anything for Manila)

 

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

 

Thanks!!!!

[Crazy Cat 39,227]

I would email both consulates and request a transfer. In addition, your local Senator's office might be able to reach out to both.

Edited March 14, 2019 by missileman

[coloradocouple 0]

Just now, missileman said:

I would email both consulates and request a transfer. In addition, your local Senator's office might be able to reach out to both.

Thanks for the reply! Are you referring to the @ustraveldocs.com email addresses?

[Crazy Cat 39,227]

5 minutes ago, coloradocouple said:

Thanks for the reply! Are you referring to the @ustraveldocs.com email addresses?

I would look for an email address directly to the embassy/consulate as well as the traveldocs.  Sometimes, you can find links.

[Crazy Cat 39,227]

Hong Kong acshk@state.gov

 

[Hank_ 9,173]

52 minutes ago, coloradocouple said:

Hi all, long-time lurker who has ran into a little road block.

 

My fiance, who is Filipino, has been working in Hong Kong. We've been processing our case at the Hong Kong embassy and they currently have our file. While waiting to receive all our police clearances, my fiance's employment contract expired and her boss didn't extend her, so she had to move back to the Philippines.

 

Now she's back in the Philippines and we need the case transferred to the embassy in Manila. The HK website states that they need a formal request from the embassy in Manila before they transfer our case. I reached out to the customer support number for the Philippines embassy and they've been no help, they keep telling me to call Hong Kong.

 

Has anyone had a similar situation before? I'm not sure who to reach out to in the Philippines to get them to start the process. Do we call, email, write a letter? I can't find instructions anywhere. (Some consulates have an online form to fill out, I can't find anything for Manila)

 

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

 

Thanks!!!!

Contact the U.S. in Manila, they will initiate the transfer.   Call first, then I would email.

 

I know of others that had their case file transferred, all had to contact the embassy in Manila.

 

Contacting the Embassy
Embassy Manila’s Visa Information and Appointment Service center hotlines are (+632) 548-8223 or (+632) 792 8988. The call center is open Monday through Friday, from 8:00 a.m. to 8:00 p.m. (Manila time), except on Philippine and U.S. holidays. Callers in the U.S should call (703) 520-2235 on its Eastern Standard Time equivalent of operation hours.
 
EMAIL:   IVMANILAREPLIES@STATE.GOV

 

 

[Greenbaum 12,258]

If you wish to have your immigrant/fiancée visa file transferred from one Embassy to another U.S. Embassy/Consulate, please contact the appropriate U.S. Embassy/Consulate directly in the country where you wish to apply and follow their instructions for case transfer. Please click here for the full list of all U.S. Embassies and Consulates overseas.

 

The old Embassy will need to receive a formal file transfer request from that U.S. Embassy/Consulate in the country where you wish to apply. Upon receipt of this request, they will immediately forward the file for the New Embassy to process.

 

Once you contact your New Embassy you then can discuss the transfer of your fee. Be sure to have your payment receipt available.

[coloradocouple 0]

Just remembered this thread and wanted to follow-up for people from the future who may have the same issue:

 

I emailed pretty much everyone I could think to email, but the one that ended up working for us was support@ustraveldocs.com. Their response:

 

Quote

Thank you for writing to the U.S. Visa Service Desk. 

We understand that you would like to request for the case transfer of your fiance. 

Please send a scanned copy of the signed letter with the explanation of the reason for the request in JPEG format so we can follow-up your concern. Kindly limit each attachment to a maximum of 2MB. 

 

Both my fiance and I signed the letter (don't know if both signatures were necessary, but wanted to be safe), then we emailed a scanned copy. (Note: They did not ask for proof that she could legally reside in the Philippines, which is contrary to some information I found online. It's possible they didn't ask because she was moving back to her home country and they already had proof that she could live there because she's a citizen. Perhaps they would have asked for proof of legal residency if she got a job somewhere else like Japan and we were transferring our case there. I dunno, I digress.)

 

The support people replied almost immediately with a case number, which was nice. Unfortunately, they said that this process could take "a couple weeks to several months". Let's just say that I wasn't in a very good place after reading that, lol.

 

We went a couple weeks without hearing anything and getting no useful updates when we called the call center. One day out of the blue I was checking our case status on the CEAC website and noticed our case number changed. A normal case number is something like HNK##########, and ours changed to HNK########## 01 MNL

 

So even though we couldn't get an update from an actual human being, it was encouraging to see that stuff was happening behind the scenes. 

 

A couple days later during my daily call to ustraveldocs, they confirmed that our case was transferred to Manila, but it was still processing and we couldn't schedule an interview until we get a letter from the embassy. After another three weeks, we got an email from the embassy inviting us to schedule an interview. (We never received the letter in the mail. Email only. Which makes sense because the letter they emailed us still had her old Hong Kong address. Ughhhhhhh....)

 

Everything after that ran smoothly. I was a little concerned that stuff might get a little wonky if the case wasn't transferred correctly (the fact that they still had her old HK address had me a little spooked), but my concerns were unfounded. 

 

Start to finish, the process took 59 days, including weekends and holidays.

 

 

Thanks everyone for the help. Like I said earlier, I'm mainly a lurker here and I've been able to find a ton of useful information from searching these forums. 

 

[Hank_ 9,173]

Thanks for the update.  Truly do appreciate.