US Immigration from Singapore

Have you wondered how affected international travel has been due to Covid? The Caribbean seems to be recovering (US vacations?) but everything else is still significantly down. Asia is 6% of pre-Covid levels. Europe is 9% of pre-Covid levels. Central and South America are at 50% of pre-Covid levels. We mined relevant data through March of this year (below).

Hi everyone,

reading this forum has been extremely helpful so far.

We were happy to get approved for Exceptional Consular Filing in Singapore for our I-130 petition due to my husband's job offer in the US.

We just had our official filing appointment and brought a big file with every document we own, feeling overly-prepared.

All was fine but... they asked for my husband's birth certificate (he is the petitioner).

He is a Naturalized US Citizen who moved from China as a child and China didn't issue birth certificates before 1996.

We told the (very rude) document collector that he has a naturalization certificate (showed it but they hardly glanced a it) and no birth certificate, plus this seems like an irrelevant document in this process.

But he insisted and gave us a printed instruction on how to get some sort of notarized certificate from China and they won't process our I-130 until they get it.

As you can imagine, this is a very difficult and time-consuming process to and we are not sure if we will succeed doing that from Singapore.

We are in a time crunch and this may add weeks/months to our process.

We actually want to appeal to this as from all sources it seems strange that they ask for his birth certificate... He is a US citizen.

Has any other petitioner been asked about the birth certificate?

Would just like to hear experiences to understand.

U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) is updating policy guidance in the USCIS Policy Manual to increase the amount of time a grant of employment authorization is valid for applicants seeking adjustment of status under Section 245 of the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA).

Background:

When an applicant applies for adjustment of status, he or she may also apply for employment authorization so that the applicant may work in the United States while waiting for a decision on the adjustment application. Currently, USCIS issues adjustment applicants Employment Authorization Documents (EADs) that are valid for 1 year. However, in the interest of reducing the burden on both the agency and the public, because the current median processing time for certain adjustment of status applications is close to or greater than 1 year, USCIS will now issue initial and renewal EADs to adjustment applicants that are valid for 2 years. Replacement EADs will not be affected by this update; USCIS will continue to issue replacement EADs with the same validity dates as the original EAD.

This guidance, contained in Volume 10 of the Policy Manual, is effective immediately. The guidance contained in the Policy Manual is controlling and supersedes any related prior guidance.

Policy Highlights

Updates the validity period for initial and renewal EADs issued to applicants for adjustment of status under INA 245 from 1 year to 2 years.

Citation

Volume 10: Employment Authorization, Part B, Specific Categories, Chapter 4, Adjustment Applicants Under INA 245 [10 USCIS-PM B.4].

Reference: https://www.uscis.gov/sites/default/files/document/policy-manual-updates/20210609-EmploymentAuthorization.pdf

Do I have a problem?

I just completed the i-134 so that it will be available to my fianc if they ask her for a Affidavit Of Support. All along, I had been thinking that there would be no problems in that area. Now I am not so sure.

I have read on a lawyer website that the Philippines consulate does not permit Assets in Lieu. Is that the same in Singapore? And if that is so, what do I need to read to defend myself?

• I am 61 and retired for the last 7 years. My K1 Fianc is 56 and will retire to move here to America.
• My assets are not fabulous, but also not bad at all.
• I own my home ($190K) and have no debts at all beyond monthly utilities.
• I have $60K in various property including my cars.
• I keep 5K in checking accounts.
• I have a yearly income of about 17K - as filed in my tax returns. That income is random and based on the amount of money I have selected to withdraw from my retirement accounts. In other words, all I need each year.
• I started living off my savings of $500K when I retired. Those accounts are now worth $1M.

Am I in trouble or will my assets carry me through this process?

We've had tons of questions on whether the Kingston US Consulate in the Jamaica has been approving marriage based US Visas (and if so at what rate). To answer that, we dug into the official US State Department data and plotted visa approvals for K1, CR1 and IR1 visas over the last 2 years. Here is what we found:

• K1 Visa processing is down by 50% from pre-Covid levels, with an 6 month backlog of cases.
• IR1 Visa processing is back to pre-Covid rates. It appears the consulate focused here to reduce backlogs.
• CR1 Visa processing (couples married less than 2 years) is similar to IR1 Visas.
• IR-5 Visa processing is WAY DOWN with a small uptick in April. This is after a full 12 months of virtually no cases processed. This year long backlog will take 8-12 months to clear unless the consulate prioritizes things. It appears they slowed down on IR-5s to focus on IR/CR-1 visas.

What do you think of the data (below)? Do you think the US consulate in Kinston is artificially slowing down IR-5 processing to prioritize other work or for other reasons?