US Immigration from Philippines

There are currently no appointments available. is the message I get from UStraveldocs when trying to schedule my fianc s k1 visa interview. Anyone have any ideas on whats going ? I been checking for days and it says the same thing.

I'm in the last stretch of my US citizenship journey and am planning on applying for a US passport for me and my 10-year old at the same time. His biological father and I were never married and I was able to take my son with me to the US on a CR2 visa sponsored by my USC husband in 2021 without being asked for documents other than his birth certificate.

Looking at the US passport requirements, it seems I need some documentation to support his application without his biological father's consent. I'm aware that I have sole custody of him by Philippine law but how do I explain that to the State Department? Should I use DS-5525 even if I have legal custody just to be safe? Has anyone done this recently? Appreciate your inputs!

Now that our 129F is at the NVC, I m trying to look ahead a little. Poking around the Manila Embassy site they have a link for Visa documents. I come to this screenshot about creating an account.

Are these steps the beneficiary must do?
Thanks.

So, I have 2 sisters-in-law and a niece who, if approved would be traveling together from Manila to the U.S. Each has filled out a DS-160 and each has listed the others on their applications as traveling partners. My question is, how is the interview handled? Does each one schedule online separately and list the others again in the interview request? Will they be interviewed together or separately?

Here we go! My turn again to ask more questions. They are numbered for ease of reference.

1. As I mentioned in a recent post, I have retired and have my 13A Visa in hand with a sealed envelope that I am to give to the immigration officer at NAIA. Is that the same person that we show our passports to or is there a separate office to find?

I know that I need to use my 13A Visa to get my yellow ACR-I card.

2. Can I go to the local Bureau of Immigration with my visa, photos, application and receipt of payment of the fees within a few days of arrival or is there something in that packet that I need to wait for?

3. Am I correct that the ACR card is valid for 5 years but I need to check-in every year?

We are installing as high speed internet as possible and will add VPN once we get there. I know that I asked the next three questions before, but that was a while ago. Please forgive the repeated questions!

4. A VPN would allow us to continue using US-based remittance websites, correct? (We are going to look into the great idea mentioned in a much earlier post about depositing a a US check into a US dollar account, but we want to keep access to the remittance services for emergencies and Remitly told me that they would cut us off after 6 months in the Philippines).

5. VPN also allows access to bank, credit card, SSA, etc. websites, right? Netflix is not crucial, but a nice bonus.

6. Does anyone have recommendations for a good VPN service?

The big question now is phone service. We need our phones to access our US accounts (two-factor authentication, etc. I know one big option is porting the numbers over to Google Voice, although to be honest, I haven t quite figured out that process.

7. Is Google Voice the best overall option?

8. My current cellular plan gets cut off once the numbers port over to Google Voice. Is that correct?

9. The question I thought of was: what happens when you are away from wifi or when the internet goes down? Local SIM card or e-sim card? Any and all suggestions are welcome. I thought about keeping one off the phones connected to a US cellular carrier, but I heard that they will also cut you off after 6 months (even Google Fi), so that does not seem to be a great option.

Salamat! I may have more questions over the next few weeks because this is now very real!