cmw+mhs

Do you mean the administrative processing time after his interview at the embassy? His interview was back on Dec. 9. Once they finished looking into the travel info, they just contacted us and asked him to send in his passport via Aramax -- he did not have to do another interview or even go back to the embassy.

Or do you mean the timeframe between submitting the paperwork online and getting the interview scheduled? That was from August 11 (paperwork completed), notice of interview received on November 13, interview scheduled on December 9.

Hope this helps, and good luck!

Thank you for your replies. About a day after posting this, I also received confirmation from the embassy that his forms were electronically submitted and thus no package necessary. What a relief!

My husband is Egyptian and a few days ago finally received his IR1 visa. (His interview was back in December, but was placed in Admin Processing until roughly a week ago. I live with him here in Cairo.)

We are obvisouly thrilled to have the visa, returned to him in his passport by the local Aramex delivery service. 

However the state.gov website mentions this "sealed packet" supposedly delivered with the passport/visa that we have never received.

We are trying to figure out if this is something we should still be waiting for, or if not getting a packet sometimes is normal. Of course inquiries to the embassy itself are just answered (so far) with links to FAQ pages on more state websites that tell us nothing!

Did anyone else have this happen to them? Are we good to start making travel plans, or do we wait for a packet that for all we know may or may not come??

Thank you for your responses. I feel better about not having received notices by mail, since I did receive the email notification.

As for the establishing domicile requirements, to be honest we haven't gotten that far yet. I've been doing my best to file taxes each year I've lived abroad, but the financial stipulations are the other part of the process that is a big question mark for me. I have been assuming we will most likely need a cosponsor. But if you have any insight regarding this process, I am all ears! Thank you.

My husband and I are living in Egypt. I filed the I-130 to Chicago lockbox, and received email confirmation it was received September 1, 2017. The email has the receipt number, and I’ve been able to check the application status online with that number. (When I check with the ISCIS website, it just says my case was received.)

By December, 2017 I still hadn't received the official receipt (I 797) via post the September email indicated I would receive. Because mail to Egypt is notoriously unreliable, I emailed USCIS about resending I 797 to my parents address in the US. USCIS replied in January 2018 that the I-797 confirmation form would be re-mailed to me at my parents' US address. As of early March 2018, that receipt still has not been received, neither to our address in Egypt nor to my parents' address in the US.

Did anyone else filing from abroad have this problem receiving mail? What did you do?

I see the option on the USCIS site to update an address for those who have moved. I'm not sure if I should do this or not. If I update my address to a US address, yes, maybe mail could be received more reliably. But, since neither I nor my husband actually live in the US, nor have we moved, I don’t want to create a problem by updating my address to one where I don’t actually live.