John1976

On 3/26/2017 at 7:19 PM, ChristianZane said:

SF is 7 months, 15 days, your priority date was August 10?  You are due March 25 (yesterday), don't bother bother calling I would wait this week for an update, you should hear something soon!

You were completely correct!  Got the letter today, interview May 3.  Finally! 

Thanks for everyone's help.

Anyone having any luck with the San Francisco office?  My wife did the biometrics on 9/14/16, and we've heard nothing since... we emailed and in late Feb they said "Your application information has been entered into the system which schedules applicants for interviews at their local Field Office. Interview appointments are scheduled as slots become available at the Field Office.", but over a month later we're still waiting.  I know someone who applied literally at the exact same time and got their citizenship months ago, the waiting is killing us.  Should we try talking to a tier 2 officer or keep waiting?  Thanks for the help/advice!

Thanks everyone!

Congratts..Please dont become a stranger to the site. You can always return to the site to give advice to others coming up and restore hope to them all. Good luck with whatever lies ahead

Will do, especially with some of the stuff we went through getting an expedited visa, sounds like not many people have experience with it, be happy to share my info.

So after applying for our visa only back in March, my wife has had her interview yesterday and we've been approved for an IR-1 visa.

We had a very limited time to get it in and we beat our deadline by only a week... what a crazy journey.

This forum and website has been INVALUABLE. So a big thank you to everyone that helped me (particularly Darnell and canadian_wife with my very first question). The information on here is amazing.

So we're moving from Australia to the US in just 3 weeks... we've had a few months potential preparation and gotten a lot of things in place, but it's only this week we've been able to pull the trigger on a lot of things. Going to be a crazy time, but a big adventure. My wife is pregnant and we are very excited about having a california girl

Thanks again everyone.

Thanks! I had done the DHL trick and figured out it was here either last Friday or yesterday. I emailed them this morning and they replied and said it had come in, so documents are being sent out this afternoon. Finally getting some movement on this visa, hooray

Does anyone know how long the consulate normally takes to look through the packages once they're delivered?

I'm 99% sure mine should have arrived today. Waiting for the go ahead to send my packet 3 instructions; all forms are ready to go. Wondering how long I'll have to wait though... this is the Sydney consulate in Australia.

I would suggest calling up NVC and requesting to speak with an supervisor. Explain what happened between you and Sydney (getting an expedite of sorts) and ask when your case is being sent over to Australia. Tell them you'll be paying the fees and sending the packages directly to Sydney, not NVC.

Does Sydney have a number you can call? If so, do it, and see what they say. Maybe even calling DOS would help.

Thanks for your help on this - no phone numbers for Sydney unfortunately, and I was ready to call up the NVC this morning and ask for a supervisor, but I finally heard back from both the consulate and the NVC overnight, and our package is on its way to Sydney. Phew!

While looking for how long this would take I found the DHL hack and found my package... very cool!

This is probably a long shot, but wondering if anyone else has any experience with this...

There is no Direct Consular Filing in Australia anymore, but the Sydney consulate has agreed to process our file in Sydney because of extenuating circumstances for us. We had already been approved at the USCIS when this happened, so they contacted the NVC to have our file transferred to Australia once it arrived.

Sydney Consulate seemed to indicate that once NVC received the file they would send it straight to Sydney. They had sent me a copy of the packet 3 instructions so I could prepare everything so it was all ready to go once our package was sent back. I rang the NVC on Friday and finally got a case number, but the person told me there were still two fees to pay and forms to fill in, I assume the ds3032 and the AOS and IV fees. We sent off the DS3032 via email as per the FAQ and figured once we sorted these out we'd be on our way.

I rang back tonight to see if I could get my invoice identification number and query about when it might be sent to Sydney, but the person I spoke to started talking about the NVC sending me packet 3 instructions, and had no notes on my file being expedited via Sydney. They told me to email the NVCInquiry email re: being expedited, which I did, and then I emailed Sydney to see if I can find out what's going on. The person also told me that SYDNEY would handle the payments if they were processing my file, so I'm getting crossed signals from everyone.

I don't suppose anyone on this board might have a clue as to what actually should be happening at this point in the process for me? Or do I just have to hold on and see what I get sent back via email? The waiting game is killing me!

Thanks for reading and any help you can offer.

Wow, so while I'm still negotiating with Australia, I got my NOA1 today, dated 14 Mar - entered it in the system and the I-130 was approved on Mar 22nd!

Currently thinking it will be fastest to just stay on this process rather than restart now.

I used my Australian address, as that is still where our home is.

Unfortunately I did not write anything about the extenuating circumstances on my cover letter.

I had read that people are being expedited in my situation (i.e. couple are both overseas) - and the petitions office told me I can request to have my current petition expedited once it reaches NVC.

The process is so slow here to organise anything - I emailed the address to organise an appointment locally, and there is a 5-7 working days lag in receiving a response!

So although it may be faster once you've filed here, the sheer delay in organising anything makes me think it may be faster overall to stick with the US filing and trying to be expedited. But I'm wondering if anyone else has experience in direct consular filing in Australia who can offer advice.

Note losing my filing fee is not a major concern, just getting a visa within the amount of time I have is the most pressing need.

Hi guys,

I'm in a bit of a quandary with this one. Long story short, my wife and I both live in Australia, I have a job I have signed for in the US, my wife is 4.5 months pregnant. I am a US citizen, she is an Australian citizen, we are applying for an IR1 visa for her.

As you are aware, DCF is no longer available in Australia, however they do allow it for exceptional circumstances. It turns out we do quality for local filing.

However, because they were taking so long to get back to us about this exceptional filing (it took about 2.5 weeks to get notice) we have already filed in the US. I haven't received NOA1 yet but the filing fee has been cashed.

I have spoken with the consulate and I can re-file here, but it will void my original application. I asked about getting my current application transferred back here and they ignored that question, I assume that means I can't do it.

So the question is - should I stick to the current I-130 filing in Chicago, and once it reaches the NVC apply for it to be expedited? Or should I file locally here? Does anyone have any experience on what the relative timeframes may be? We have about 3, 3.5 months from now to try and get a visa in time.

Thanks for your help.

John

I was wondering about this too...

Do you need to submit form G-1145 to get the email? Or will they do it anyway?

I sent mine express courier and it was received on Monday, but haven't received any email. I didn't file form 1145.

I'm worried there may have been payment issues like you had. How are you solving paying the fee in the end?

Edit: Found some other threads, sounds like my mistake was to miss the G-1145 form, so I might still be okay. But trying to get a US cheque organised from overseas was not easy, so hopefully there are no issues with it.

I thought it would be faster - if not will definitely give it a miss. Thanks for the help!

1. no more dcf for OZ, sorry, but

1.a. Petitioners who file from overseas, from those places that used to have DCF available, get into a special queue at USCIS, where the I-130 petition is approved within 30 days or less - when it's clear that the Petitioner is living overseas by the way the paperwork is filled in. Keep this is mind when yer prepping yer I-130 to send off to the lockbox address in Chicago. There's further action to do at NVC after, but I think you can go fast at NVC, if'n you study LingChe in the wiki space here.

2. Although you claim to have read and done research about the K-3 - you are still asking the basic questions that everyone has had about it; can you read through about 90 topics in the K-3 forum, for a bit? The answer for you, today, is the same answer for the other fellas within the last 2 years.

Good Luck !

Thanks Darnell. Looking at the LingChe wiki it looks like it might be doable if we do everything just right. We are going to apply for special permission to file locally with our consulate and see how that goes.

Everyone here seems to recommend avoiding trying to get the K3 at all. Sorry for the newbie questions - we are just learning and it's information overload, we only found out this was in the pipeline a few days ago! So we should definitely just skip the K3 then?

Thanks for all your help, the LingChe link was very helpful. Will keep reading through the forum!

Cheers,

John

Hi everyone,

I've been doing some reading up on this forum and been interested to read about the K3 effectively being a 'dead' visa and actually delaying you from getting a real CR1/IR1 visa, so I just wanted to check up on this and how it applies to my circumstances.

I am a US citizen living in Australia, and I have been married to my wife here for two years now. I have just been offered a job in the US and am keen to take it as soon as possible. However I did not realise how difficult it would be to get my wife over. Adding to this complication is that she is pregnant, and would not be able to fly anytime after 4.5 months from now.

My original thought was to apply for the K3 visa, because it was marketed as a 'faster' visa and I seemed to find some people completing it in 2-3 months, although now that doesn't seem to be the case? So if I do file an I-129F, will that slow down my IR1 if the K3 is closed?

Also reading up on here it looks like most timelines are in the order of 9 months, although I know people locally who filed for CR1 and K1 visas who got theirs in 2 months and 4 months respectively. Are we completely out of time on this?

If we're not out of time - is it worth hiring an immigration lawyer or anything to help or is it fine to just apply for everything ourselves?

Finally does anyone know how we're meant to pay for this in Australia? The Melbourne US Consulate lists AUD payment information, but it seems that was for when you could file locally and it is now out of date (many of the phone numbers on their website seem to be out of date now too). Is it possible to get a money order or something from Western Union or some other mechanism?

Thanks very much for any help.

John.