suzannepecak

Yes! I got my interview date today: September 24.
Dweehls, guess you wanna update your spreadsheet.
????????

Ok people, a new fresh week. Keep yur fingers crossed and your brain positive!

Hi there, you can absolutely do that. There's no rule or law against it. You are free to travel, even if you are in immigration process. I have visited my hubby a three times in the States and he had visited me a couple times in the Netherlands. He had absolutely no problems whatsoever traveling abroad.
What do the reps say when you call and ask. It's friggin' ridiculous you have to wait that long....

Hi there,
2 months is a bit long. It can take up to 3 or 4 weeks though.
You can email them: nvcinquiry@state.gov
Make sure you follow these instructions :
The Department of State's National Visa Center (NVC) is committed to the protection of personal information of visa applicants and their petitioners. To ensure the confidentiality of visa files and to prevent the unauthorized release of personal information, the NVC requires that the following information be provided with each inquiry:
Name of the person submitting the inquiry
NVC case number or USCIS receipt number
Petitioner's name
Principal Applicant's name and date of birth
My experience is really bad though. It can take them over 2 months to even reply....
Also, if you have Skype, you can put credits on your account. It doesn't cost much but it makes you able to call NVC yourself, against a really low rate. The reps are usually very friendly. Keep calling until you get through. With the time being six hours later in Germany it's quite convenient to call nvc, and they are reachable until midnight. So six in the morning for you!
I can imagine your hubby has other things on his mind now and you need to be his rock and be assertive.

Hi Jose,
I've been reading your question and wondering why you want to translate your birth certificate. It needs to be in English OR in the official language of the country in which you are applying for a visa, which is Mexico right? I am assuming your birth certificate is in Spanish? And that is fine.
Also, you can't do the translation yourself, it needs to be done by an official translation bureau. Check the link below for info on this on the NVC website. Hope this helps.

http://travel.state.gov/content/visas/english/immigrate/immigrant-process/documents/Supporting_documents.html

The ds260 needs to be filled in by the beneficiary, the one who's immigrating, not the you, the petitioner.

Hello there,
Ofcourse this whole visa process is very stressful for each party and thus straining on the relationship. I experience it too and especially during the beginning of the process my husband and I were fighting a lot. I felt he wasn't doing his best to quickly gather all documents needed and he felt he wanted to do it thoroughly so we wouldn't get an RFE or make mistakes filing in the documents. We were just on a different page. Not blaming each other and keeping an open communication is very important. Also, talk about other stuff than the process. Learn to get to know each other. You CANNOT hold each other, so you HAVE to talk. See it as the perfect situation to dig in each others brain and find out each others likes, do's and don'ts, past memories and future plans.
we rarely talk about the visa process, only when absolutely needed and we still tend to get agrivated discussing that topic.
Do NOT go radio silent on each other. Even when you're mad at the other person. You have to decide for yourself: do you want to be right, or do you want to be happy?
So even if you think the other is to blame for that particular fight, decide if you wanna stay mad or do you wanna say sorry first.
May I ask how long you are in the process? We are at nvc now and at this point we've been in the process for 10 months, starting at NOA1 by uscis on August 11 2014. I already accepted that the given estimated processing times are bs. So instead of being agrivated about it, I make up my own estimate and make sure I built in enough time so it can only be better when my Case Complete arrives sooner. ☺
If you get thru this together, you know you can take on the world. For now it is just another hurdle to be together.

Hello there,
Ofcourse this whole visa process is very stressful for each party and thus straining on the relationship. I experience it too and especially during the beginning of the process my husband and I were fighting a lot. I felt he wasn't doing his best to quickly gather all documents needed and he felt he wanted to do it thoroughly so we wouldn't get an RFE or make mistakes filing in the documents. We were just on a different page. Not blaming each other and keeping an open communication is very important. Also, talk about other stuff than the process. Learn to get to know each other. You CANNOT hold each other, so you HAVE to talk. See it as the perfect situation to dig in each others brain and find out each others likes, do's and don'ts, past memories and future plans.
we rarely talk about the visa process, only when absolutely needed and we still tend to get agrivated discussing that topic.
Do NOT go radio silent on each other. Even when you're mad at the other person. You have to decide for yourself: do you want to be right, or do you want to be happy?
So even if you think the other is to blame for that particular fight, decide if you wanna stay mad or do you wanna say sorry first.
May I ask how long you are in the process? We are at nvc now and at this point we've been in the process for 10 months, starting at NOA1 by uscis on August 11 2014. I already accepted that the given estimated processing times are bs. So instead of being agrivated about it, I make up my own estimate and make sure I built in enough time so it can only be better when my Case Complete arrives sooner. ☺
If you get thru this together, you know you can take on the world. For now it is just another hurdle to be together.

I don't want to be a party pooper, but also at the nvc it can take months and months.? I'm at the nvc for 3 months now and looking at at least another 3. A few lucky ones are done within a month but a lot of time lines I follow are 5,6,7 and sometimes 10 months at nvc! Nvc is dealing with an overwhelming amount of approved petitions from uscis and their website isn't working correctly.? Just saying, don't get your hopes up?
I know it is shocking to hear, but after a little simmer, try and find back the positive attitude to get you thru, confused999.

Hello there,
Ofcourse this whole visa process is very stressful for each party and thus straining on the relationship. I experience it too and especially during the beginning of the process my husband and I were fighting a lot. I felt he wasn't doing his best to quickly gather all documents needed and he felt he wanted to do it thoroughly so we wouldn't get an RFE or make mistakes filing in the documents. We were just on a different page. Not blaming each other and keeping an open communication is very important. Also, talk about other stuff than the process. Learn to get to know each other. You CANNOT hold each other, so you HAVE to talk. See it as the perfect situation to dig in each others brain and find out each others likes, do's and don'ts, past memories and future plans.
we rarely talk about the visa process, only when absolutely needed and we still tend to get agrivated discussing that topic.
Do NOT go radio silent on each other. Even when you're mad at the other person. You have to decide for yourself: do you want to be right, or do you want to be happy?
So even if you think the other is to blame for that particular fight, decide if you wanna stay mad or do you wanna say sorry first.
May I ask how long you are in the process? We are at nvc now and at this point we've been in the process for 10 months, starting at NOA1 by uscis on August 11 2014. I already accepted that the given estimated processing times are bs. So instead of being agrivated about it, I make up my own estimate and make sure I built in enough time so it can only be better when my Case Complete arrives sooner. ☺
If you get thru this together, you know you can take on the world. For now it is just another hurdle to be together.

Just a quick update.
my husband called nvc yesterday, the special phone number they give for the technical issues. We patiently waited for over 10 days, still can't access ds260. The rep put our names on a spread sheet, to case specifically solve our problem. He said to check this Friday to see if anything is resolved, if not call again.

I agree with TeJoBG's advise. Wait until june 13. That's when NVC is done wit manually putting all the IV cheques in the system (from all the people who couldnt pay online). If you send a checque now, you'll just end up in the pile of cheques.
I can also see that they are making progress with the system error. My IV bill shows up in the system now. Before it just said $0,-- after clicking on "pay now". Now it finally says the amount of $325. But we already paid by cheque so we can't use that link now, we don't wanna pay that fee twice. We are "patiently" waiting untill our cheque will be manually processed and then we will be able to file ds260.
And yes, IV and OAS package: just send it in asap.

These extra ten days make no sense. This is an existing problem for a month now. At the bottom of their message they say that if after ten days you're still not able to acces ds260, theyl will put you thru to a software geek. Why not start doing that now?! As NVC states themselves: there's a large number of applicants.........

Omg, absolutely not useful, huh!
I guess it's obvisious our cases don't have an emergency need.
thank you for sharing though.

Hi there, fellow vj-ers.
I know it is very frustrating. One vj-er called and the rep said the problem needs to be fixed in Washington. Who cares! Just fix it!
I saw threats from 2011 and people were experiencing the same issues back then.
you start to wonder if they're not fixing things on purpose. I bet that they have a team of very clever IT geeks that surely know how to fix it.
my husband's in IT and he said this problem can't be to difficult to fix.
and I agree that NVC has to find another option to file ds260. They found a different solution to pay the IV bill: plain old fashioned cheque. My guess is that the online portal for the IV bill being paid and the ds260 link are linked together. So when IV bill says "paid" on your screen, ds260 should come available.

Ok. It's been six months today and no news.

>>>>> rant start ...

My husband has called three times and has been brushed off in all thore three attempts to get any hope or information. We are dealing with robots that want to accountability for being quoted saying anything that might help our case.
He is calling again today. In queue as I write this post. I am so frustrated and angry, I have had trouble sleeping. I don't know where would I be if I didn't have a job, I would be losing my mind.
I travel to DFW this week-end but this time I can't join him in SF. We are considering him moving out of his brother's place so that we can have a place I can come to.
>>>> end of rant
Do you think it will hurt our process if I come in as a B2 - lets say, in a couple of months - and stay for the length of the i94 permit? (usually 6 mos). The way I am seeing things, we are in for a LOOOOOONG wait until I have to be back in Mexico and interview.
Thanks!
UnaMexicana