Ragazza

Hello everyone! We recently received good news! 

My relative was granted a 212(d)(3) waiver and was issued a visa. After waiting for 9 months.

Does anyone know if he needs to do anything else? Like to apply for another waiver at Port of Entry? Or can he just go ahead and travel, and existing waiver/visa is sufficient?

Thank you! Would be grateful for your comments! 

Thank you all for your responses!

Boiler, how can the waivers be expedited?

It's B1/B2 visa

Hello to everyone!

I would really appreciate your comments on the issue below.

My relative filed a 212(d)(3) waiver and supporting documents with the US consulate abroad (to overcome inadmissibility based on criminal conviction). The officer accepted the documents and told him that the documents should be reviewed within the next 2-3 days. However, the case is under administrative review for over 60 days now (since the interview day). We made a request to the embassy to see how everything is going, they just responded that the case is still under review and we need to wait.
Does is mean that they made a waiver recommendation and sent it to ARO in DC? Or not really? Is there a way to know it?
Also, what is the average processing time for such requests? I read somewhere it was 180 days, is that correct? Can it be less, is there a way to expedite this process?
Thank you

Thank you for response, Boiler! I just found this form I-192 on USCIS website and was wondering if it allows to his case since as far as I understood, it is a waiver form for non-immigrant visas?

Good afternoon!

My relative has an issue with B1/B2 visa because he has minor criminal history (punishment was in the form of payment of fine and the issue itself happened 3 years ago).

I heard that there is section 212(d)(3) waiver which might be available for non-immigrant visas.

Does anyone know if there is a special form to use to apply for this waiver? And if yes, can it be applied by anyone or just if recommended by consular officer at your country's US embassy?

Thank you very much!

Oh, actually one more thing. Maybe someone has experience with that?

So if I travel with my CR1 visa and the stamp in the passport before I receive the actual "green card", do I need to go to general tourists line or can I go to permanent residents line?

It is not that crucial, just the second line is usually much shorter

Thank you all for your prompt responses! It is indeed really helpful!

Yes, we paid the 165$ fee even before I left to the US, so it should be fine.

Oh, good news that I can travel, I thought I need to wait for the actual document to arrive

I actually received my SSN several years ago when I came to the US as a student on work and travel program. They say you receive it once for a life-time. I just need to update my last name on it cause I changed it upon marriage.

Thank you again!

Hello everyone!

I am getting a bit nervous and would appreciate your comments on the following.

I entered the US on CR1 visa about 2,5 weeks ago. From what I understood and from what the officer told me, I am now supposed just to sit and wait for my green card to arrive. Is that correct? Or do I need to urgently file any additional applications to notify them that I entered the US?

Also, if I am doing everything correctly, then when is the green card supposed to arrive? How long does it usually take to receive it after one enters the US on CR1 visa?

And the last but not the least - do I uderstand correctly that I cannot travel before I receive my green card? I mean, I can travel but I won't be able to come back to the US without the actual green card. Is my understanding correct?

Thank you. Your comments are highly appreciated.

We had the interview before I completed 2 year home residency rule (there was less than one month left to complete). The consular officer informed us during the interview that if at the day of the interview your 2YHRR obligation is not fulfilled, then there are two options: 1) the case can be put on hold (Section 221G of INA) until the 2 year HRR is fulfilled, or 2) if the amount of time left to complete 2YHRR is rather small (like it was for me), then the consular officer has the right to waive the remaining time.

At first I was concerned that my interview was scheduled before I completed 2YHRR, but it turned out that there are no problems at all, so my remaining time was just waived.

Good luck to you!

Dear Ketsuban, dear Cheezees! Thanks a lot for your responses! I must be worrying too much, just don't want to ruin everything at this point..

Dear Ketsuban, thank you for your prompt response! Do you by chance know:

• Provided everything is fine, will they tell us at the interview that we are fine but for 2 YHRR the visa issuance is postponed? Or will they require anything else?
• What is the process in practice? Will they just keep my travel passport for extra 25 days, so that I cannot leave the country, and then they issue the visa automatically? Or will I have to make an additional request to overcome this 221g that they will separately review?
• Can this 221g possibly delay visa issuance even more? Let's say that if I need to make a separate request for visa issuance and then they will review this request within 1-2 more months.. Can this happen?

Thank you! Much appreciated!

Hello everyone! I really hope someone can give me some advice as I am completely lost at the moment :/

So, I was and still am subject to 2 year HHR under J-1 visa (US funded university program). I will fully complete my 2 years by the end of October 2016. I explcitly stated this information when we were providing the documents to NVC.

My husband (USC) is a petitioner for my CR-1 visa. My interview is scheduled for the beginning of October. My husband will also attend the interview (they said it's not required but recommended). On the day of the interview, I will have to spend in my home country 25 more days to fully fulfill 2YHRR.

I wrote a message to the consular division in my home country and they told me that I can have the visa interview before I fulfilled the 2YHRR but the visa will not be issued up until I fulfill 2YHRR. To be more precise, they wrote that "If the visa is granted at the interview, its issuance will be postponed. There will be no need to come to the Embassy for a second interview."

Then I explicitly asked them if the sole fact that on the date of the interview 2 year HRR was not completely fulfilled can be the reason for CR-1 visa denial. In return, they said "If 2 year HRR is not fulfilled by the date of the interview, the case will be put on hold ( Section 221G of INA) until the 2 year HRR is fulfilled."

I found their asnwer confusing (even though I might be overthinking). Does 221G means a visa denial? Will we have to do all the thing over again? What does "put on hold" mean in this situation? Will it create major complications for our case?

We really don't want to reschedule the interview because at this point I am not sure we can (the interview is in a week) and also we already collected all the documents for that.

Does anyone have experience / ideas in what happens if we attend the interview prior to fulfilling of 2 years? Does it lead to much worse consequences?

Thank you a lot!

Thank you for your nice comments It made me feel much better! I asked the US embassy and they told me that the petitioners are not required but are encouraged to come to the interview. It's not difficult for my husband to come over, so we will go together! I will write about the results afterwards

Thank you for your comments. Hope everything will be fine.

Dear all,

I would really appreciate your comments on the following. We are currently in the process of getting CR-1 visa and my interview at the Embassy is in a month. There are couple of issues that worry us and that I would appreciate your comments on:

1. So, we got married in the US but when I was entering the US and was asked about the purpose of my visit, I just said tourism. I know I should have told the truth but I was too afraid that they would not let me in if I said that the purpose of my visit is to get married. I spent 3 weeks in the US after our wedding and then came back home. Couple months later we filed for CR-1, I never changed my status within the US. Is it a big issue that I was not fully honest about the purpose of my visit? Also, if asked at the interview if I told the boarder control officer about the purpose of my visit, can I just say that I don't remember being asked about that? On several different occasions the boarder control officers really didn't ask me about the purpose of my visits... Is there any way they can check what was my conversation with the boarder control officer about?
2. Do I understand correctly that it should be more beneficial if my husband attends the interview with me, rather than I go by myself?

Thank you for your comments!

Hello everyone,

I apologize if my question is stupid but I would appreciate your comments.

We are in a proces of application for CR-1 visa, recently submitted DS-260 application form. Now we are supposed to send to NVC supporting financial and civil documents.

I have several questions about that:

1) Where exactly are we supposed to send these documents? To NVC in New Hampshire) or directly to the assigned embassy? Do we send paper copies or originals? Or we can submit the documents electronically?

2) At this point we send the copy of our marriage certificate again, the proof of petitioner's income, police certificate. Anything else that I am forgetting? We can deal with vaccinations and medical exam later (but before the interview), correct?

3) The petitioner is currently residing in a third country (not in the US and not in beneficiary's country). Do we need to prove his US domicile? He is employed by an American employer but is on temporary assignment in Europe - will the letter from the employer be sufficient (where employer confirms that he will come back to work for them to the US)? Will we need to provide the confirmation that the petitioner has the US bank accounts for domicile purposes?

4) Do we bring all the provided originals with us to the interview?

Thank you!

Hello everyone! I would appreciate your comments on the following situation.

I was a fulbright scholar and, thus, am subject to 2 year home residency requirement. I have about 4 months left to fulfill the 2 year requirement and I have no problems with that and do plan to fulfill my obligation.

At the same time, my husband is a USC who filed a petition for me, we were previously informed that the process of obtaining CR-1 visa can be initiated before 2 year rule is fulfilled. The only restriction is that the immigrant visa cannot be issued before 2 year rule is fulfilled.

We are currently at a stage of completing DS-260 form. This form has a question - "Are you a former exchange visitor (J) who has not yet fulfilled the two-year foreign residence requirement?"

Frankly speaking - yes, I am, cause I have 4 months more to go. If I answer "yes", then it gives me an option to explain. What is your opinion - if I answer "yes", and then explain that I will fulfill my 2 year home residency requirement by the end of September - will it be good enough?

Or do you think they could deny my visa based on my "yes" answer, and not even bother to look into my explanations? Should we just wait a bit more?

I would appreciate your opinion on the questions above, especially, advice from those who faced similar situation.

Hello everyone,

I would be grateful if you could comment on the following. I am a beneficiary of CR-1 visa and we are currently collecting the documents for NVC. As you are aware, one of the documents is a police certificate. I don't have any criminal background, so it is not a problem for me to obtain it from my country of origin.

At the same time, it is mentioned that if a beneficiary resided for more than 1 year abroad, then he / she needs to provide police certificate from each country. So I resided in the US for 1 year and 2 months on a student visa.

Does it mean that I need to obtain a police certificate from the US as well? Or do they have any methods of checking your background in such case?

If I in fact do need to obtain a police certificate from the US, then to which US authority I should refer to get it?

Thanks a lot! Any advice much appreciated!

PS: we wrote a letter to NVC but they were helpful as usual and just quoted whatever is stated on their website

Hello everyone!

I would appreciate your advice on the following issue. We got our petition approved and our case was sent to State Department. They informed us to wait at least 30 days before contacting the State Department.

So, we waited for 30 days and never heard back. Therefore, we called the NVC and it turned out that they sent our information and all the instructions to the wrong email address (even though we gave them the correct one).

We are not that concerned about the time wasted cause there is nothing we can do about that already. But we are more concerned that our personal information was sent to some stranger and we don't know how it can be used further.

So at the moment we would like to file a complaint with NVC in order to officially inform them about what happened. We understand that they most probably won't do anything about it. But we just want to officially inform them that this happened and our personal information was leaked.

At the same time we are concerned if filing a complaint might hurt our process? Or will it have no impact at all?

Thanks a lot! Would appreciate your comments.

I don't think it will be an issue at all.

If they even ask about this at the interview (which I doubt they will), just answer truthfully: you weren't dating at the time; he was just an acquaintance in 2013.

Thank you so much for your prompt comment and advice. I might be paranoid already, but hopefully they won't ask about that

Dear VisaJourney members!

I would appreciate your comments regarding the following.

My husband has recently filed an I-130 petition for me with all the required documents following the instructions provided on this forum (and I would like to thank all those who helped to create this forum).

However, one issue came to my mind just now. When I filed an application for a tourist visa in 2013, I didn't mention my future husband as my contact in the US, although we knew each other and planned to meet. I did so for two obvious reasons: 1) We were not dating at that time in the normal sense, I mean we planned to meet up but I as well stayed in the hotels and went to some places in the US without him, so I would not say that he was my only contact in the US, and 2) I knew I would have been rejected a tourist visa if I mentioned some guy as a contact in the US.

From our I-130 application, it is obvious that we met before I obtained the US tourist visa.

Could you please advise on how we can avoid our case being treated as a fraud or something like that? At the actual visa interview (for immigrant visa), can I say that I didn't mention my husband-to-be as a US contact because (as I honestly stated) our relationship was not as developed at that time and I didn't consider him to be my primary contact in the US? Overall, do you think it can be a problem at all? I applied for tourist visa in 2013, and we got married only 2 years later.

Thank you and I would appreciate your comments.

Thank you very much for all your answers!

NLR! Thank you so much for your answers! Just a small clarification: we do not have any connection to Egypt, we might be moving to Europe, more exactly to Switzerland. But I guess it doesn't make any difference for the questions asked If the transfer happens, it will be within the same company, so it shouldn't affect the income.

Also, if possible, could you please tell what does it exactly mean "to maintain domicile" for visa process? Does it mean he has to physically reside in the US? Or does it mean he just needs to own a place / has a valid US address?

Thanks a lot again!

Good day everyone!

I have several question about spousal filing and would be glad if you could give me some advice

My husband and me got married in the State of NY, my husband is an American citizen and we would like to file for spousal visa. So my questions are the following:

1) My husband currently resides in the US and has income from the US, so we were thinking it is the best way that he files initial documents while he is in the US. However, in several month he might be moving to Europe for work, and I might move together with him there. Will it be a problem for any other steps of the process? Are there any documents that need to be filed from the US, or is there any requirement to reside in the US for him during the whole process? Are there any requirements for me to reside in my country during the whole process?

2) I have 2-year home residency restriction after J-1 government sponsored master program. I have fulfilled a part of it. As I know, we can start the whole process even when the restriction is still imposed and it will be processed. However, I will not be issued an immigrant visa until I spent 2 years back home. Is my understanding correct? Did anyone have similar experience?

3) I know this question was already asked, but... I have a valid tourist visa that I used several times and always came back. Can I travel to the US while my case is being reviewed? Will it be enough of the proof to the officer at the boarder control that I cannot stay because I still have 2 year restriction and haven't fulfilled it yet?

4) If it happens in such a way that I am issued an immigrant visa but we will plan to stay in Europe for more time: can I just enter the US within 6 months, wait for the green card to arrive and then move back to my husband to Europe? As I understand, for spousal visas there is no need to stay in the US for some period of time and you can travel freely?

Thank you for reading and I would really appreciate your comments!