StaGor

On 8/12/2022 at 1:26 PM, Guillaryi said:

Thank you folks! I'll let her know that her wait time isn't totally out of the norm and that her expired green card isn't an issue for now.

Have you had any updates on I-90?

Joining this thread. We are also way past the consular processing and at this point already received a green card via mail (IR-5 class).

Unfortunately it contained a mistake (not our fault), so we filed I-90 to make a correction and issue a new card.

It's been 7 months for us and no news quite yet.

If USCIS processing times are accurate, then we have another 7 months to wait; but I am not sure if we can trust those estimates.

If we hear anything, I'll post the update here.

On 1/22/2022 at 1:26 AM, Doris2CA said:

Hi, how was your parents interview went? I still havent heard anything for my mom. I want to do what you did about reaching out to my state senator. I just dont know how to start and how to do it. 

It's a pretty straightforward one, and quite brief. This is assuming the paperwork is in order. Make sure your mom has your birth certificate. Some people don't need it, others do. At the end of the day, it is the main document verifying your child-parent relationship with your mom. I would suggest reaching out to the consulate; although keep in mind that Manila most likely has more applicants than Kyiv.

18 hours ago, Elizabeth Steele said:

We have two petitions approved for the wife and child of our client who was granted asylum in February 2020.  The petitions were approved in July, and sent to NVC.  NVC has created case numbers for them, BUT we have not received a Welcome Letter.  Also, neither of the 797 Notices of Action had a Priority Date on it.  So I don't even know where they are in the processing time line.  At the same time, the file has been sent to the Cameroonian Embassy for processing and they have been in touch with the wife.  However, she cannot access the interview scheduling system to make an interview appointment because we have not received a DS-260 number, which we can't get until we get the NVC Welcome Letter and Invoice.  All of this seems a little out of order in terms of the processing, but that's where we are.

 

Is the lack of a priority date something that would cause NVC to return the petitions for USCIS as I gather they do from time to time?

How do we correct the lack of a Priority Date?

 

I have contacted NVC by email asking about the Priority Date issue and when they responded, they didn't answer the question and simply sent me the Case Numbers for these individuals.  I am concerned that we are lost  in the shuffle because we don't have a priority date.  

 

Any experience or advice about this situation?

Hi there.

I would suggest submit another email to their inquiry team.

This time only place one question > what is the invoice number?

Given that you already have your case number, once you receive invoice number, you no longer will need a formal welcome letter.

Simply log into ceac with using case number and invoice, and ceac should reflect priority date, give you an option to pay fees, upload docs, etc.

Basically what I am saying is, you already have partial information, necessary to find out all the details.

Send them another request, this time not asking a bunch of questions, but just the one about invoice. That way they will have to answer on that question (hopefully🙂)

15 hours ago, Zhenghe said:

Hello, have you got your interview scheduled?

Yes, the interview was scheduled approximately a week after cases were expedited. 

5 hours ago, Doris2CA said:

Hi All,

 

So since DQ’ed on Feb 2020 and I didn’t receive any kind of correspondence, I emailed the US Embassy in Manila to ask for an update and they replied to me saying that they haven’t received my mom’s petition approval from USCIS. Omg, does anyone here has an idea what might have gone wrong and what should I do next? 

Check with NVC the status of the case. Also have you checked visa statistics for Manila? Are they currently processing lots of IR5 cases? 

2 minutes ago, Doris2CA said:

Ours was DQ’d February 2020… not even an email that there is a delay or any type of communication. 😔

I am so sorry to hear this. I would recommend to search in region-specific section of this forum. There are a lot of applicants from Philippines (at least compared to Ukraine), so looking at other people's timelines from Philippines, you can make some estimates.

Also check on Department of State official website. Every month or so they release information about every consular post and visa category to show how many have been issued. That should give you a sense of an overall trending specific to your country (for example are they getting any faster or still slow).

4 minutes ago, Doris2CA said:

How can you make the case be expedited?

Well, in our case, there was a gross technical error when USCIS tried to forward the case to DOS. After 90 days of inquiries from both agencies I gave up and submitted a congressional inquiry with my senator.

It was highly effective cases were "magically" fixed and placed back into the pipeline. I believe this congressional inquiry was a result of cases being expedited, as well as immigrant visas are a priority in Kyiv, Ukraine consulate at the moment.

I did not make any separate steps to expedite the case, but I believe that a lot of people have successfully done so on VJ.

Wishing you all the best!

On 8/20/2021 at 9:15 AM, MARYN said:

How long did the approval process NVC take?

Well I don't know if this is still valid or anyone interested, but here it goes > some 791 days later, both visas issued. Below are the timelines for IR-5 visas, that were hit by the pandemic, Trump immigration ban for 8 months, lost cases between USCIS and NVC, congressional inquiry and eventually cases being expedited:

07-03-2019 mailed out I-130

02-13-2020 I-130 approved

04-23-2020 welcome email from NVC

07-20-2020 DQ'ed

06-15-2021 cases expedited

06-29-2021 interview, went well but pending medical sputum smear tests from Medikom

08-31-2021 visas issued, awaiting for pickup

I must say that USCIS and consulate stage were very smooth. The NVC part was a rough one, mostly due to the lack of mechanism to inquire the status of cases.

Good luck to everyone.

Well I don't know if this is still valid or anyone interested, but here it goes > some 791 days later, both visas issued. Below are the timelines:

07-03-2019 mailed out I-130

02-13-2020 I-130 approved

04-23-2020 welcome email from NVC

07-20-2020 DQ'ed

06-15-2021 cases expedited

06-29-2021 interview, went well but pending medical sputum smear tests

08-31-2021 visas issued, awaiting for pickup

4 minutes ago, MARYN said:

How long did the approval process NVC take?

The approval took 3 months back in summer 2020. But it took a year to schedule the interview in Kyiv.

On 7/31/2021 at 1:55 PM, MARYN said:

Сколько времени занял процесс от оплаты в НВЦ и загрузки документов в НВЦ и до интервью в посольстве США в Украине?

С момента загрузки документов, 14 месяцев.

On 7/20/2021 at 10:21 PM, African Queen_B said:

Hello my mother visa was issue on July 9th now I just need to go pick it up at the embassy. They journey is over and I thank the Lord and this support group. I already paid her immigration fee for her green card to be produce. 

Congratulations!!! Hope you can re-unite soon!

PD: July 9 2019

DQ: July 22 2020

Interview: June 29 2021

4 hours ago, Ewan said:

Just to let you know that I had my interview yesterday. All went smoothly - just waiting for an updated police certificate to be uploaded to the system and then I should be approved. I'll put some more details in the London Embassy Reviews section later today.
But I would say that the most useful thing for me was watching a couple of videos made by the embassy that walk you through what happens on the day. It got me mentally prepared for little things - for example, I had expected to be interviewed in a small room. But the video shows that you get called to a window, where you stand during your interview. But you have a shelf to put all your documents on. That sort of thing helped me in advance to know what to expect.

Congrats! Yeah it may take them a day or two for them to review updated certificate. I also have an update - our cases were expedited to the consulate and my folks had an interview today. Also all went smoothly, but they will have to wait until the embassy will receive a medical exam cert. We're gonna have another bump in the road, since it take 8 weeks to get complete results. The good news are though, the immigration officer took both of their passports and said that cases were looking good otherwise, just pending medical exam.

Good luck on your US journey!

Scheduled both interviews for June 29th. The only thing is my current address has changed, but hopefully an officer will be able to update that in the system. Not my fault NVC took so long.

On 6/14/2021 at 2:15 PM, StaGor said:

Last week got an automated email that my cases (two) interview got cancelled. But we never got it scheduled in the first place. So after talking to NVC on the phone they told me that a generic email of interview cancellation happens whenever cases are being actively worked on. Not sure if that's a good or bad thing given that we were DQ'ed in July 2020. But we are remaining as hopeful as we can.

Well we got an email today for each case saying that an expedite request has been approved and cases are to be transferred to KYIV consulate.

We haven't requested expedite processing, not that I am complaining about it.

On 6/11/2021 at 9:25 AM, StaGor said:

So I called on each case separately and got two different answers about this email.

One person said that the case is under administrative processing and there is no timeline for this.

Another person said that NVC is reviewing a new document. The last time we uploaded documents was more than a year ago and everything was DQ'ed.

 

I've never heard of administrative processing without an interview being at NVC stage, and after DQ.

It is interesting that for both cases, the email came at the exact same time, down to a minute. It is as if it was automated. 

Do you think I should submit an inquiry to NVC? I have a feeling that people who are on the phone are very limited in what they can answer and they don't always know what is actually going on with those cases.

Got the email today stating that the case has been expedited and saying 'In Transit'.

I did not apply to expedite, not that I am complaining about it by any means.

I guess now it makes sense why I had an email about interview cancellation last week.

20 hours ago, ordjnb said:

So two things 

 

1) my mom who was just approved last week got her Embassy interview appointment for July 8th which she can't attend and will need go change. How do I do this? The email just refers to going to the nvc.state.gov site which isn't that helpful 

 

2) my dad was approved months ago yet hasn't had his interview scheduled. Should I reach out about this?

 

Thanks 

So your mom's case just got documentarily qualified a week ago, and she already has a date for the interview?

That is oddly fast, even for pre-pandemic processing times.

Nevertheless you can try and email both the embassy and NVC to get a grasp of where does your dad's case stand at the moment.

Last week got an automated email that my cases (two) interview got cancelled. But we never got it scheduled in the first place. So after talking to NVC on the phone they told me that a generic email of interview cancellation happens whenever cases are being actively worked on. Not sure if that's a good or bad thing given that we were DQ'ed in July 2020. But we are remaining as hopeful as we can.

19 hours ago, Lucky Cat said:

Your case is still at NVC.  Just wait until an interview is scheduled by NVC.

So I called on each case separately and got two different answers about this email.

One person said that the case is under administrative processing and there is no timeline for this.

Another person said that NVC is reviewing a new document. The last time we uploaded documents was more than a year ago and everything was DQ'ed.

I've never heard of administrative processing without an interview being at NVC stage, and after DQ.

It is interesting that for both cases, the email came at the exact same time, down to a minute. It is as if it was automated. 

Do you think I should submit an inquiry to NVC? I have a feeling that people who are on the phone are very limited in what they can answer and they don't always know what is actually going on with those cases.

32 minutes ago, Lucky Cat said:

Your case is still at NVC.  Just wait until an interview is scheduled by NVC.

6 minutes ago, arken said:

It could be just a courtesy email since one year mark is approaching since the last contact. 

Thank you for your responses. I guess I just got confused since they called it as "Cancelled Interview".

Will keep waiting. It seems like a lifetime now.

Hi all.

After 11 months of silence, NVC has sent an email for each pending IR5 case with a topic "Immigration appointment cancelled".

"We previously notified you of the date and time of your immigrant visa interview at the US Embassy/Consulate General in Kyiv, UKR.

Due to unforeseen circumstances, we have to cancel this interview. We will schedule a new interview appointment as soon as possible and notify you of the date and time.

There is no need for you to take action at this time."

What got me puzzled is that the last time we heard from NVC was when both cases got DQ'ed in July 2020 and that's it. IR5 was under ban for almost a year, and we most definitely have never had our interview scheduled.

After looking through Visa Journey I found that last year for some people this same email was sent out in cases of approved expedited request.

However we have never formally requested that.

Does know what that could mean? Case status in CEAC shows "at NVC".

Should I send an inquiry to NVC?

Or maybe an inquiry to the consulate in Ukraine? (but then the case seems to be at NVC...)

Any feedback is greatly appreciated.

7 hours ago, VitaliyMV said:

The same 

Vitaliy do you know by any chance if embassies are scheduling appointments once a month (for the next month), or do they do it on a daily basis?

Just curious because I saw lots of people on VisaJourney reporting that they got interview letters and it all seemed to happen during a span of couple days. And now it has been quiet for a week or two.

So I guess I am trying to understand is that because they schedule in waves (like once a month or every couple weeks) or is it just a constant slow pace at which we are going.

7 hours ago, VitaliyMV said:

In april 41 visa issued ir5 in Kyiv ( this is the best considered visa i think it will be fast)

Thank you, Vitaliy. Spasibo ogomnoe, shiro diakuyu.

On 6/5/2021 at 2:20 AM, VitaliyMV said:

you are assigned an interview by the embassy.  this month you should receive an interview letter with the date of the interview (I think so)

How about IR5 visas? My parents have been DQ'ed July 2020 and still no update... Also in Kiev/Kyiv...