US Immigration from Philippines

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In another thread I had mentioned that we had our passport stolen on a bus after the K1 interview. Our original plan was to go to the US on January 15th but because of this situation this has been delayed. I have extended my stay in Manila until Feb 19th to help facilitate getting this new visa/passport/CFO certificate asap. The visa expire date is February 22nd so there is not much time. I wrote to USEM last week with a summary of our situation, an expected timeline etc and surprisingly they responded within 12 hours and told me that they will need the new passport. However they did not answer my questions in the email.

We are currently having the new passport sent via Victoryliner from Tuguegarao as its the fastest way to get it to Manila (VL does not take passports but we have made it look like documents) as we need this passport overnight.

I have two questions if someone with previous experience can help answer:

1) I asked the Embassy about a new DS-160 for the new passport number, details etc. From research, it appears I cannot update this and that the Embassy would have to update this in their system. Is this correct? When I go to our DS-160 its impossible for me to edit it now as its already been submitted a long time ago.

2) For those that have done the CFO during the pandemic, how long did it take to receive the certificate from the date you sent the documents to them. We have already done the CFO by phone, sent all the documents via email, but will have to send a copy of the new passport and visa to them. From the point on sending, how many days did it take to receive the documents you needed?

Thank you.

Hello all, What is required for an IR1/ IR2 Interview, copies of your Income Tax Returns, or an actual Tax Transcript from the IRS. The NVC website says Tax Return Copies OR IRS Transcript. Hoping to clarify. Thank you so much.

Hello, My wife and daughter have their IR2 interviews on Jan 21. My daughter was born out of wedlock, w/ me listed as the Father on BC. My wife and I married 4 months later, and we had the Child's birth legitimated through the city registrars office, and have proper documentation of such. My question is...wITH the i-130 and ds 260, etc approved, and NVC stating the child is documentarily qualified, are we good to go in terms of Parental Relationship, or could they still require DNA ? Thank you so much

I used to go to one of our local LBC branches to send for years.

Good exchange rate - High Fee - Inconvenient (have to go to the branch)

Through advice from several members here I switched to Remitly.

Not the greatest exchange rate - No fee if bank account to bank account- Convenient (app is very user friendly and their customer support is great)

In June 2020 (also from advice from members here) I started using Western Union.

Good exchange rate (usually about 1 peso higher than Remitly) - No fee if bank account to bank account - Convenient (app is not as easy as Remitly but works fine)

Both Remitly and WU take about a week for the no fee acct > acct transfer however after about 4 months of transferring through WU the speed has changed. My last 6 (or more) transactions have all been in her bank account next day.

I send about every 2 weeks and at least 1k USD a month, so in 6 months my wife gets over 6k more pesos now that I use WU. To me that adds up and I am happy I switched. As a bonus Remitly noticed I had stopped using them and added 20USD to my account free for my next transfer, so I sent 100USD to mu wife with Remitly to take advantage of that

I just wanted to share in case anyone was interested.