H-1B vs. DCF w/citizen spouse

[CBKB 12]

So now I'm starting to worry a little...more than a week has passed and still no e-mail. Other DCF via Tokyo seem to have had just a few days' wait for the e-mail; the CO did sign off on the I-130 right in front of me and told me it is approved. 

 

The paper notice of approval allowed us to get the police report (now in hand) and we need her to be in the system to complete the DS-260 and schedule the medical. She also now has the official job offer letter in hand and they want her to start on April 1, yikes! Her offer letter does say something to the effect of providing "assistance in obtaining an appropriate visa for you to work in the University of XXXX pending your receipt of permanent residency." But I don't think her hiring department actually understands the timeline needed for an H-1B or similar.

 

Best-case scenario we get the e-mail in a few days, can schedule the medical within a week, schedule the final interview for two weeks after the medical (the embassy said there needed to be two weeks for the medical results to be received by them), then another few days after the interview to get her passport and packet sent to her. That would put us at about a month from now, which is enough breathing room. However, any delays along the way (long wait for a medical appt., difficulty quickly arranging travel between Kyushu and Tokyo) would start to make things tight.

 

No questions, just an update and some venting/worrying...

Edited February 5 by CBKB

[millefleur 5,037]

23 hours ago, CBKB said:

So now I'm starting to worry a little...more than a week has passed and still no e-mail. Other DCF via Tokyo seem to have had just a few days' wait for the e-mail; the CO did sign off on the I-130 right in front of me and told me it is approved. 

It sounds like you're approved for sure, could just be some stalling on their end for some reason. Did you get the case number yet? 

Edited February 6 by millefleur

[CBKB 12]

Actually about an hour or two after you posted, @millefleur , I received the e-mail! We got the case number immediately at the embassy--it was printed on the letter the consular officer handed to me. Unfortunately us having the number didn't mean it was showing up in CEAC.

 

She's now in the system and we spent a couple of hours going through the DS-260 yesterday...tough to figure out dates and addresses for everywhere she's lived in the last 34 years.

 

By the time we finished the DS-260 around 4pm most of the designated medical exam facilities were closed...the one we could get through to didn't have any appointments available until Feb 28th, which really pushes our timeline of her starting her new job April 1st. We're hoping the other three facilities will have something available earlier. The Tokyo embassy requires a two-week wait after the medical for the final interview but only holds interviews on Mondays and Wednesdays, so that plus a ~1 week wait to get passport et al. returned by mail really puts us right up on the edge of making our schedule.

Edited February 6 by CBKB

[CBKB 12]

Another update: we've successfully scheduled a medical for tomorrow (!) at the medical clinic in Kobe. My wife had to quickly get a Covid shot today (the last one she got was a fourth booster but that was more than a year ago) and then is off on a whirlwind day trip to Kobe starting 5am on Friday. Thank goodness for the high-speed train system. It seems that the two Tokyo-based clinics are full for roughly the next month, so I assume the one clinic in Kobe has plenty of capacity thanks to it not being in the 42-million-plus population Kanto region.

 

I've put in a request for an interview appointment at the Tokyo embassy for the first week of March, which is comfortably past the two weeks they want us to allow for the medical results to make their electronic way to the embassy. If we can get an early March date (they only do DCF interviews Monday and Wednesday mornings) we're all on track. Unfortunately the embassy doesn't even promise a response for 7 business days, so we won't know for another 10 days or so whether or not we can get an appointment. 

 

At some point I'll do what others have done and provide a full timeline. We did have trouble early on getting the embassy to respond, and I'm still not sure exactly what the best method is to get a DCF case rolling.