jesserz

2 hours ago, NovaSprings said:

I would agree with calling ahead.  My husband and I have done several transatlantic cruises to Miami and we have found that CBP coverage at the terminal can be a challenge.  It depends on things like, how large your ship is (ie number of passengers), other ships arriving at the same time, when in the cruise season you are arriving (it seams like every cruise season they start with a new group of officers).  My only advise, be prepared for a wait, just clearing during a normal disembarkation can take hours.  If you need to travel to another city after you arrive, I would not make any travel plans for that day, you don't need the additional stress of worrying about making a flight.  Book a nice hotel in Port Everglades/Miami for a night or two so you can take a breather, enjoy and celebrate.  I would also spend time educating yourself as much as you can on the process, documents needed. etc.  Print out everything that you can on the process, just in case you need to help the CBP agent.   Main thing is to breath and enjoy your new life together.  Congratulations and good luck!

We were originally going to dock at 8am and then catch a train at 3pm, but I don't think that's enough time, so I think we'll stay a night. But it's New York and not Florida that we'll be coming in to. Any experience there?

We haven't bought our tickets yet, since, you know, we're still in process, but the cruise in question is definitely a Southampton-NYC trip. Staying in New York is ridiculously expensive, anyone else notice that? Last time I was there I swear it wasn't so bad.

Thanks everyone! 

I definitely plan to call ahead. I think I'll have my mother call them the day before as well (since there's no communication technology at sea). I can just see the looks of shock and confusion now. 

"you want us to do what? A who visa? I gotta make a phone call." 

It's totally legitimate though I'm assuming. Land, sea, or air as they say. 

I'm surprised no one in the recent memory of this site has done this. 

1 minute ago, Alabamak1 said:

I don't really have answers just questions, but it is interesting and will follow your post here. This sounds like a challenge when immigrating. Good luck. 

It does sound like a challenge! But it also sounds fun at the same time. We're all about making the most of this whole process.

1 minute ago, Alabamak1 said:

Are you coming by Sea all the way from Russia? 

From Southampton, England. 

I know, the official motto is "by land, sea, or air." Well, we want to do it by sea. To the Manhattan Cruise Terminal in specific. Has anyone done this or have any official links with pertinent info in their arsenal already? My links all lead to 404s. I called the terminal and the phone just rang endlessly so that's a promising start. Sent an email after that. Got a new phone number. It's a wild ride.

Yes, I have used the search function of this website, and it seems no one has had anything interesting to say about this on this website in 10 years. 

Many thanks to all!

3 minutes ago, ayazk said:

Apologies for my duplicate post,  but I didn't get a response in a different thread. hopefully you guys can give me some insight

 

Looking for some advice/input here.

 

Paid IV & AOS Fees: 05/25/2018 (Processing currently)

 

I wasn't expecting the case number to come so early. I want to get an August interview date, but I feel like if I upload my documents next week, I'll end up with a July interview date, which conflicts with our travel plans (bad idea, I know.) We are a PIVOT Case. Do you guys think I should delay uploading my documents? Just  a little lost what to do here.

 

Thanks!

 

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We have a similar situation with travel plans in July. You can reschedule an interview. They say "this may incur significant wait time" though, and I truly wonder what that means. A month? 2 months? 3 years?! Such a vague process... 

But, you can totally wait to upload your stuff until later if you'd like. There's no telling anything. The only way to be SUPER sure that you won't be scheduled until August would be to send your documents in August I guess.

1 minute ago, ramesesthe2nd said:

For submitting documents to NVC, all my wife's documents are in Dutch but they are international documents and have everything labeled in English and several other languages. I am attaching an example. Will this work or should we get them translated in English? I don't want to give NVC any reason to delay our application.

Our certificate of marriage is the same way except in Cantonese and English and I haven't had any troubles. I know that's not an official answer, but maybe it'll be helpful.

7 minutes ago, Anna Rock said:

could you send me the url? it seems that paris (PRS) is not pivot then...

Well, I saved that picture a while ago, and it used to be on this page: https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/us-visas/immigrate/the-immigrant-visa-process/collect-and-submit-forms-and-documents-to-the-nvc/step-6-submit-documents-to-the-nvc.html

Going there now, I see that it is missing. (It was right under "method 1") I guess this is because of the "new system" and how more embassies are making the switch. Sorry to say that I have no clue about the Paris embassy. Je suis desolée!

My mother just brought my dog to the US last week (from Germany) and it's a pretty simple and straight forward situation. Here's some info straight from the CDC: https://www.cdc.gov/importation/bringing-an-animal-into-the-united-states/dogs.html

2 minutes ago, LandK said:

Thanks! Just curious how you know which embassies are PIVOT? Since posting, I went back through this forum and saw that someone said they’re a London PIVOT case. 

Oh well it's possible London has made the switch. As other embassies are switching constantly. I've just been using the state.gov website. And, well, what I've heard others say for the rest.

But things change.

3 minutes ago, Blueberry23 said:

Hi guys, 

Any idea if US Embassy in Abu Dhabi, UAE is Pivot or non pivot? 

 

Thanks! ☺️

Yes, it is.

1 hour ago, LandK said:

 Does anyone know if the London Embassy is pivot? We received our case number yesterday and it is assigned to the Abu Dhabi Embassy, which is pivot, even though I have contacted NVC several times to tell them that we have moved to the UK. I am so worried that we've waited all this time for a case number (NVC originally received our petition on Feb 26, 2018) and now we're going to have to wait even longer if the embassy in London is still mail processing. Ready for this journey to be over...it's been 426 days since we submitted our I-130!

They won't change a single thing until you get that first case number. I wrote them the same email every 4 days for 8 weeks to get my case number changed and just kept hearing "We have your files in the building, but there's nothing we can do." I had to wait to get the wrong case number. 

Also, no, London is not PIVOT, just as Norway (the user, not the country) suspected.

426 days is so long! I wish you a speedy rest of your journey!

Just now, Virprincess said:

What is pivot means? And do u have already your date for the interview @jesserz ? And how long takes after u got your number from nvc to they got your fees? @jesserz

PIVOT means that you submit all your documents online and don't mail anything in. It depends on the embassy whether or not it's PIVOT and I don't know about your embassy. I don't have an interview date yet, I just submitted all my files last night. And I was able to pay my fees as soon as I got my case#. We paid them that day.

So it goes:

Case#

Fees

Submit (mail or email or through the PIVOT program)

Case Complete

Interview

Just now, Reqahmed said:

Is it pivot ?

Oh it is, yes. Good point. @Virprincess might not have to wait as long as I did.

34 minutes ago, Virprincess said:

Hey people! I’m so worried about my case , im venezuelan and my wife is from chicago our case it was sent 35 days ago to the nvc and they said that they got my case 25 April ! Now they say it will take 8 weeks and we have almost 5 but is too much already ! My lawyer said that we can get the letter from them by June 20 is that real? We have to wait one more month just for them send us the confirmation and my ds260 to fill out??? This is like a torture i need to live my life with her and we got the approval 1 month in a half ago but nothing from the nvc ! I’m in my country since 1 year doing all this process ! So now I need to be with her and they are taking so long for this is so sad .

Unfortunately, yes, it's true that you just have to keep waiting. It took us 8 weeks exactly (okay, 7 weeks and 6 days) to get our case number from the NVC. I called them every single day. It's a long road, I know!

7 minutes ago, Norway said:

If you have the option I would just upload it again. Just so you don't get put on hold because they don't want to take 5 seconds to flip it. And just put in a comment.

I would be ok with that! I'm having my interview in Sweden and they don't seem to be very busy as there aren't many applicants going there so I hope I can get an early interview. Haha yeah I know I've tried to estimate all the things in this process but I've been horribly wrong most of the time so I've just given up! For example totally thought it wouldn't take them 8 months to approve I-130, and then 9 weeks to give us the case number, but then they surprised us with clearing the fee in only 2 business days so you never know with this process.

2 minutes ago, kendraf said:

💯 Reupload if there is a spot to do it with the note. I accidentally uploaded our marriage certificate with another doc attached in the PDF (grrr hehe I didn't get a chance to double check things before hubby hit submit) ...I noticed and did it right away and when we got approved there was a note that I had to fix something but then you could tell a minute later they saw that attachment and sent a second note saying all accepted and approved. There is a section for comments. If you don't they have been rejecting for page orientation from what I have seen which may add a week+. I am so glad I did the additional upload fix. We almost died when we saw that happened.

Consider it re-uploaded with a note. You're both right, it's probably better to have both than risk them adding a week of nonsense. I added a comment too. So now I should be able to relax (yeah, right). That's pretty cool that they accepted your straight away after your re-upload, kendraf. I wonder how the whole thing works. Are they just logging in and rooting around and I could very well be logged in at the same time as them? Such mystery.

13 minutes ago, Norway said:

Haha yes wouldn't that be wonderful! I hope they get a log for how many times we login everyday and bump us to the top There was so many papers so I just hope I didn't mess something up!

Yes! That sounds perfectly logical. 

I already did mess something up. I just noticed my birth certificate is upside down (I'm the petitioner, not the beneficiary so it isn't a required document, but I uploaded it anyway) I wonder if I should just upload it again right-side up... Hm...

3 minutes ago, kendraf said:

My prediction for you both is cc end of next week but three more weeks for interview date ....if my theory is correct ....haha which would mean my interview date notice will be end of next week....I feel like this is a baby pool sometimes haha guessing the date and weight hahah

I'll gladly take that. It is so much like that. It's a visa pool. And the prize is relief. Can you imagine what the relief is going to be like when it's finally finished? 

Are we one of the first "generations" of the PIVOT case system? Because I can't find very much info on it when I search visajourney. 

31 minutes ago, Norway said:

A little update on our case. We got our case number on Friday the 18th after we had called and gotten the answer that they didn't know when we would get our case number. Payed the fees immediately and they cleared on Monday from our bank. On Tuesday the 22nd at night the fees got changed to PAID and we could submit our documents but we weren't expecting them to open up this fast so we didn't have the papers from our joint-sponsor all finished. Submitted everything this morning before NVC opened. Crossing my fingers for a quick CC and an interview so I can be with my husband on our anniversary

We got all our stuff submitted before they opened this morning, too! So I am pretty much exactly right with you.  Hopefully they look at our cases today and CC lol. I know that won't happen, but I'll be logging in 15 times a day to check anyway.

Congratulations!

No it doesn't matter, actually. Unless the jobs you have now are going to transfer immediately with you to the US when you  move there, then they don't care about it. You'll tell them that you're employed and where and all that, but the money is as good as non existent unless the job is going with you. We have the same thing, as we both live abroad. You'll need to get a joint sponsor that already lives in the US who can prove they make enough money to support the immigrant and their household. Oh and also, the US citizen will have to "prove intent to re-establish domicile" meaning that they can prove they're going back to the US. Maybe still having a US bank account? That's a good start.

But, also, yes, the US citizen should have filed taxes regardless of being in Australia, so there are those tax transcripts to submit as well. 

45 minutes ago, alloy-K said:

Just an update on our case: Called NVC, they said they received our documents(AOS/IV) May 21. Said to allow 6 weeks for them to review.

 

USPS delivered our documents May 17.

NVC said they received them on May 21.

 

So, that's 2 days (not counting the weekend) for them to acknowledge they received our documents. I'm hoping it'll only take 1 week for them to review our documents, not 6!

They certainly don't like to keep us informed! They just sent me an email telling me about something I found out on the phone a week ago. Ah well. 

Good luck and a speedy review! 

3 hours ago, kendraf said:

That matches everything I did! I know how you feel lol I check here obsessively because it gives me so much hope it is getting closer to the next step lol oh yes I love Colorado so much!! My husband moved here about two years ago so I have been visiting a lot (here right now) and there is so much to see and do!

I'm glad I'm not the only obsessive lurker!

Enjoy the sunshine! 

1 hour ago, kendraf said:

I have seen this debated a lot. I uploaded my passport photo I got taken ( they emailed me a copy so it is just the one single pic ) but other people think it should be your relationship pictures (several pages, four to a page with captions) ...like what you sent with your original package. I uploaded those as 'additional' docs to be safe..I don't think it was needed. Either way you will be bringing both of those things as originals. I got approved having both.

 

Also congrats and good luck!!!

Well thank you!  And thanks for the advice. So you just uploaded the one passport photo cropped down under "photographs?" That makes the most sense. Since, you know, computers can print multiple copies. I have added the cutesy relationship photos in the misc as well to be safe. I love hearing people say "I got approved" makes me feel like we'll be there soon. Congrats on that!!! (BTW I'm from CO so if you weren't 100% aware, you're (or your spouse is) moving to a beautiful and awesome state.  )

Oh  my goodness, you guys, it worked! In a shockingly quick success from the NVC, it only took 4 hours for the "fix this" ticket to successfully fix my case# and all my fees show up as paid!!! I can now do what I've been training for for 10 months.

What do they want the intending immigrant to upload when they say "photographs" though? Passport sized? Two of them?