K1 Expedite Request

[Boiler 43,434]

I see the confusion seems that the financial hardship is actually the beneficiaries not the petitioner.

[Marieke H 2,306]

Of course you can always request an expedite, but the problem in this case is that you are sending mixed messages. You are trying to prove that the petitioner experiences financial hardship, but at the same time you will want to convince the CO that the petitioner is able to financially support the immigrant for 6+ months while the immigrant can't work. 

[Wuozopo 4,285]

I think the bigger obstacle is how would he/she overcome the travel ban? That’s why London is not allowing K1s to schedule or re-schedule if previously cancelled. If you have worked out what will allow a non-family member (Fiancé) to enter the US Immediately, then work on your hardship. I don’t think the scheme of spending 14 days in Mexico will hold any water when it comes to getting London to let you schedule an interview. They are ignoring pleas from spouses who could travel immediately. If they answer an email, it is a generic “please be patient” reply.

[SalishSea 16,771]

21 minutes ago, Wuozopo said:

I don’t think the scheme of spending 14 days in Mexico will hold any water when it comes to getting London to let you schedule an interview

True, that wouldn't make sense in the context of financial hardship.  

[Kittens&Pickle 6]

15 hours ago, Ermehgerdd said:

It's been my experience, and that of many others recently, that London Embassy will not consider expedite requests unless the case also qualifies for a National Interest Exemption (NIE).  Some NIE examples I am personally aware of involving couples who have been recently approved for interview expedites in the Schengen Area are: the beneficiary is a parent of a US Citizen (London actually inquired about  the biological relationship of my son and fiance during our request), the petitioner works in a COVID mission critical position (the petitioner was a nurse), and a petitioner in the military who had orders coming up. 

 

I hope this helps! I would still give it a try even if your situation doesn't meet any NIE criteria!

 

 

 

My fiancé, the petitioner, is a nurse in an Covid-ICU and our embassy didn’t accept our case as an emergency one. It’s awful. 

[JFH 12,189]

15 hours ago, BC97 said:

She isn’t working for 5 months, regardless of whether I’m there or not.

 

I shouldn’t have posted the reason cause I knew I’d get people criticising the situation.

They are not criticizing, they are playing devil’s advocate, which is what the embassy will be doing too. Consider it preparation for what’s to come.

 

It is going to be a tough one, asking for a visa to be expedited based on financial hardship where the person receiving the visa cannot work for many months and has to part with the best part of 2 grand soon after arrival in order to be able to stay in the country, and will need to have health insurance and be fed. If the petitioner is not working, do you have a joint sponsor lined up for AOS? London will allow self-sponsoring of K-1s, although if you have sufficient savings to self-sponsor they will then question where the financial hardship for the expedite lies. 
 

But anything’s worth a shot. It costs nothing to try. 

[Limey 550]

16 hours ago, BC97 said:

She isn’t working for 5 months, regardless of whether I’m there or not.

 

I shouldn’t have posted the reason cause I knew I’d get people criticising the situation.

I don't think people are criticizing. You've posted here asking for advice that is what they are giving you.

 

At present covid19 is causing a big backlog of these applications, and as a result many people are trying to claim that theirs should be expedited based on various reasons, but mostly financial hardship. I imagine USCIS are seeing record numbers of requests based on financial hardship.

 

Looking at the USCIS site it says

 

Quote

All expedite requests claiming severe financial loss, regardless of the immigration benefit sought and regardless of whether the claimed loss is to a company or a person, must be documented to establish the loss and that the requestor is not able to withstand the temporary financial loss that is the natural result of normal processing times. 

 

So you're definitely going to have to provide good documentation that

1) establishes the loss (and presumably show how that could be alleviated by an expedited k1). When it says "document" I assume they want bank statements, bills etc.

2) show that the petitioner is not able to withstand the financial loss without an expedited k1.

 

As others have pointed out

1) you won't be able to work for many months after entering the US (I assume EAD and green card are probably also victims of covid19 backlogs, so you'd then have to attempt to get those expedited too)

2) health insurance is very expensive in the US. You'd certainly need to have that, considering that we're in the midst of a global pandemic. When I moved to the US on my k1 I had global travel insurance but I checked and found that would not cover me past 24 hours in the USA (since I was moving with the intention of staying, and it was "travel" insurance). I was going to be covered on my wife's work insurance, but that could only happen once we'd been married and she'd completed the paperwork at work. So I had to take a short term health insurance policy for one month until I could be added to my wife's. It was not cheap. If your partner is not working and therefore (i assume) does not have a work insurance policy to add you too, you may be talking about many months of health insurance payments until you can work. That's several thousand dollars at least...

 

If your savings could help the petitioner, I would be asking (as a USCIS examiner) why you can't send money to them now, rather than only helping out once you're in the USA?

I'm not meaning to criticize - just putting myself into the shoes of the USCIS employee who will examine your case - as I said, they must be seeing a surge in these, if they just rubber stamp them all as approved its just going to clog up the system with people jumping the queue, and encourage even more to do the same.
 

Edited September 15, 2020 by Limey

[BC97 13]

2 minutes ago, Limey said:

I don't think people are criticizing. You've posted here asking for advice that is what they are giving you.

 

At present covid19 is causing a big backlog of these applications, and as a result many people are trying to claim that theirs should be expedited based on various reasons, but mostly financial hardship. I imagine USCIS are seeing record numbers of requests based on financial hardship.

 

Looking at the USCIS site it says

 

 

So you're definitely going to have to provide good documentation that

1) establish the loss (and presumably show how that could be alleviated by an expedited k1)

2) show that the petitioner is not able to withstand the financial loss without an expedited k1.

 

As others have pointed out

1) you won't be able to work for many months after entering the US (I assume EAD and green card are probably also victims of covid19 backlogs, so you'd then have to attempt to get those expedited too)

2) health insurance is very expensive in the US. You'd certainly need to have that, considering that we're in the midst of a global pandemic. When I moved to the US on my k1 I had global travel insurance but I checked and found that would not cover me past 24 hours in the USA (since I was moving with the intention of staying, and it was "travel" insurance). I was going to be covered on my wife's work insurance, but that could only happen once we'd been married and she'd completed the paperwork at work. So I had to take a short term health insurance policy for one month until I could be added to my wife's. It was not cheap. If your partner is not working and therefore (i assume) does not have a work insurance policy to add you too, you may be talking about many months of health insurance payments until you can work. That's several thousand dollars at least...

 

If your savings could help the petitioner, I would be asking (as a USCIS examiner) why you can't send money to them now, rather than only helping out once you're in the USA?

I'm not meaning to criticize - just putting myself into the shoes of the USCIS employee who will examine your case - as I said, they must be seeing a surge in these, if they just rubber stamp them all as approved its just going to clog up the system with people jumping the queue, and encourage even more to do the same.
 

Thank you for such a detailed response. I know exactly where you’re coming from, and we will consider all of these things when filing. Like people have already suggested, we aren’t particularly optimistic, just feel we may as well try.

[SalishSea 16,771]

On 9/14/2020 at 3:38 PM, BC97 said:

I shouldn’t have posted the reason cause I knew I’d get people criticising the situation.

No more scrutiny than what can be had at USCIS/DOS.

[SalishSea 16,771]

21 hours ago, Kittens&Pickle said:

My fiancé, the petitioner, is a nurse in an Covid-ICU and our embassy didn’t accept our case as an emergency one. It’s awful. 

As expected:  the USC petitioner ICU RN is already within the US workforce, and does not need a visa (or expedited spouse visa)  to come over and help with COVID......

[Xia Angela 5]

On 9/14/2020 at 11:09 PM, BC97 said:

Does anyone have experience with expedite requests for K1’s? (Or any visa if there’s no difference!) My fiancée and I are going to make a request on grounds of financial hardship for the petitioner. 

 

Do we just send an email to the email address quoted on the NVC website, along with relevant supporting documentation as attachments, quoting our NVC case number?

 

The case is currently held up at NVC like all K1’s, and we are filing at the London embassy. I know that our chances of success are slim given what we have read, but any tips/pointers would be great, thanks.

 

 

Hii,

 

It's not hurt to try but ur reason isn't strong but maybe can be a boomerang. K1 beneficiary need to AOS later when enter so it's not gonna help for petitioner financial reason it can be boomerang because they can see it in a way the petitioner isn't make enough to support the beneficiary and maybe later can drag into public charge but this is just my two cents point of view.

 

I did request expedite K1 due to Military Order,that's a strong reason but for financial all i know only acceptable for spousal visa but not hurt if u wanna try.

 

Good luck

[joy717 4]

On 9/14/2020 at 5:21 PM, Ermehgerdd said:

It's been my experience, and that of many others recently, that London Embassy will not consider expedite requests unless the case also qualifies for a National Interest Exemption (NIE).  Some NIE examples I am personally aware of involving couples who have been recently approved for interview expedites in the Schengen Area are: the beneficiary is a parent of a US Citizen (London actually inquired about  the biological relationship of my son and fiance during our request), the petitioner works in a COVID mission critical position (the petitioner was a nurse), and a petitioner in the military who had orders coming up. 

 

I hope this helps! I would still give it a try even if your situation doesn't meet any NIE criteria!

 

 

 

Hey did you mean that the petitioner works in a COVID mission critical position or the beneficiary?

 

TIA

[Marcelina 246]

On 9/14/2020 at 11:09 AM, BC97 said:

Does anyone have experience with expedite requests for K1’s? (Or any visa if there’s no difference!) My fiancée and I are going to make a request on grounds of financial hardship for the petitioner. 

 

Do we just send an email to the email address quoted on the NVC website, along with relevant supporting documentation as attachments, quoting our NVC case number?

 

The case is currently held up at NVC like all K1’s, and we are filing at the London embassy. I know that our chances of success are slim given what we have read, but any tips/pointers would be great, thanks.

 

 

I didn’t read the all the replies but you can’t email anything to USCIS. Expedite request is only possible if visa is still processing and awaiting approval. You call USCIS and make an expedite request, if not denied they will provide you with fax number for additional documentation. If K-1 is already approved and waiting to be transferred to an embassy I’m not sure if you can do anything, we had to wait a full month and couldn’t expedite the process itself. I just secured my medical date super early, that helped a bit. 

[Evgeniia 0]

On 9/22/2020 at 10:54 PM, Marcelina said:

I didn’t read the all the replies but you can’t email anything to USCIS. Expedite request is only possible if visa is still processing and awaiting approval. You call USCIS and make an expedite request, if not denied they will provide you with fax number for additional documentation. If K-1 is already approved and waiting to be transferred to an embassy I’m not sure if you can do anything, we had to wait a full month and couldn’t expedite the process itself. I just secured my medical date super early, that helped a bit. 

Hi, I read your message. So you are sure that can't expedite processing if case at NVC? I sent request through online form on state.gov and they answered that we should wait till embassy contact us. I actually didn't understand is request approved or denied. Try to search some info about this.

[Marcelina 246]

3 hours ago, Evgeniia said:

Hi, I read your message. So you are sure that can't expedite processing if case at NVC? I sent request through online form on state.gov and they answered that we should wait till embassy contact us. I actually didn't understand is request approved or denied. Try to search some info about this.

So your K-1 got approved by USCIS and was sent to NVC? Yeah well from the research I did back when I was dealing with my visa you can’t expedite K1 stage at NVC, mainly because it’s just being there short time (a moth lol) to be sent to the embassy. I think only spousal visas can get expedited at NVC because they actually keep them there for a while for processing (but I never dig into it to much so I don’t want to write any wrong info). 

From my experience I was only able to expedite K-1 only at USCIS. You can contact embassy once you have the NVC case number but they won’t be able to help you much except for maybe booking an earlier date for an interview, which you already have to have your medical cleared up before.