US Immigration from Philippines

My Filipina wife wants to go on her 26 day dream tour of Europe. She is a U.S. 10-year green card holder. We will drive 10 hours for her Shengen Visa interview (Netherlands) in San Francisco in January. My concern is that they require that her tour, insurance and airline tickets be paid in full prior to arriving at the VFS.global interview. She's had the same job for over 3 years, she makes a fairly good amount of money (~$60k), and we have plenty of money in the bank.

There is nobody talk to at this visa service about the chances of her being rejected since she is still a passport holder from a 3rd world country. If she is denied a visa, we are out over $6,000, which is the prepaid amount for the airline ticket, tour price, and insurance required. Does anyone have experience with the Shengen visas and how often people from 3rd world countries are denied?

If the chances of her being rejected are over about 10%, I'm thinking the risk of prepaying for everything is not worth it.

Thanks in advance.

Is it necessary to apply for ROM? Or can we just skip it if I have just applied for N-400?

Hello!

I'm a Filipino who recently immigrated into the US last 2023. I had to leave a lot of stuff behind, namely finishing my college degree (which I'm going to be done with soon!) and my then-girlfriend, now wife. My wife and I married through a Utah remote marriage and I'm now planning to file an I-130 for her to apply through the F2A route (although I'm planning to naturalize by 2028 and get the category upgraded to IR-1 since I don't see the F2A priority date becoming current anytime before that).

I have a few questions regarding the whole process:

1. My wife and I agreed to not have her surname changed until she reaches the US with me. Thus, we're considering skipping reporting the marriage to the Philippine consulate in San Francisco since, having extensive experience with bureaucracy with the system in the Philippines. Will this decision be a non-issue when it comes to the whole process of filing her papers on the US side?

2. The relationship my wife and I share go back to 2021 where we met online, all the way up to 2023 where we formally began dating before marrying this 2024. However, my wife is under 21, also contributing to the choice to marry in the remote marriage because of the strange rule in Philippine marriage law (a spouse must obtain parental consent if they are 18-20 years old or parental advice if they are 21-24 years old). However, here in Maryland (and, in extension, Utah), the spouse must only be 18 or above to marry without parental consent. Is this also a non-issue on the US side?
3. Given everything we have above, are we all set to begin filing for her I-130, or is there something we're missing before we do so?

Thank you!

Has anyone sucessfully scheduled a VAC fingerprinting appointment at https://www.usvisascheduling.com/en-US/?

We've been trying since Thanksgiving and each time we take a slot for my wife's mamma, within a few hours the appointment is removed. I have almost 10 screenshots of my confirmations in the Portal as record, but non of them seem to "stick" and I can't figure out why.

I guess we're required to have the VAC before our interview on the 16th, but it's not looking like that's possible....

Oddly, we were able to get an appointment to stick for her papa on the 13th, but i'm not sure her mamma is allowed to use that same appointment considering we were not able to add her as a dependent on the application because the system flags duplicate accounts and you can't delete accounts....

Any advice?

Thanks!

Any site admins - Is there a reason that when I post now, if I want to include an attachment (Screenshot, etc.) it says "Max total size: 4.72kB"? It basically means I can't add attachment to any of my posts. I would add a screenshot to show you what it says but.....