Russ&MaryAnn

Finally got our NOA2! 
NOA1 4/15/19
RFE 7/22/19
evidence received 7/31/19
NOA2 9/09/19
 
received notice in the mail, neither website updated, no apps updated

Finally got our NOA2! 
NOA1 4/15/19
RFE 7/22/19
evidence received 7/31/19
NOA2 9/09/19
 
received notice in the mail, neither website updated, no apps updated

Finally got our NOA2! 
NOA1 4/15/19
RFE 7/22/19
evidence received 7/31/19
NOA2 9/09/19
 
received notice in the mail, neither website updated, no apps updated

Yes you can.
 
E-mail: NVCInquiry@state.gov

Subject line:  USCIS Receipt number from your I-797 Notice of Action (NOA)

Body of email:   "Requesting case file number"   (plus include below required information)
 
REQUIRED SECURITY INFORMATION:
(You are required to provide the following security information with each inquiry to receive a case specific response):
 
* USCIS Receipt Number from your NOA-2  (Place in the subject line of the e-mail).
* Petitioner's name and date of birth.
* Beneficiary's name and date of birth.     K-1 are processed like an immigrant visa, but are NOT immigrant visas, so they fall into a completely different class of their own.

K-1 visa:  1-603-334-0888 Operator assistance is available Monday through Friday from 9:00 AM to 9:00 PM (Eastern Time) . 

What to Prepare Before Calling:
 
You will need the following information before you call:
– Name and date of birth of the beneficiary
– Name and date of birth of the petitioner
– Receipt number from your NOA-2

First of all, take a deep breath and don't be rash about leaving the country.  If you abandon status now you might regret it later.  People receive RFEs all the time and are approved with no other problems.  You can only submit what you have, so don't worry about not having credit cards and utility bills. 
 
If you sent incomplete documents, send the complete versions of what you already sent (ALL pages, even blank pages, if they see anything missing it looks suspicious), you won't get in trouble for submitting more complete versions of what you've already submitted.  
 
If you don't have utility bills do you have any mail addressed to both of you received at the address?  Failing that, some mail addressed to you and some addressed to your spouse both showing the same address.  Health insurance statements, other kind of bills, student loan documents, anything like that. 
 
You can request tax transcripts for free from the IRS to prove you've filed jointly since you married, get those for every year you've filed jointly.  
 
Include the recent change in health care coverage because it helps your case.  
 
It sounds like part of the problem is you didn't have enough evidence starting from the date of the marriage, so include bank statements starting from as soon after the marriage as possible.  "Outdated" documents from earlier in the marriage are also good to send: old lease agreements, old car insurance documents, anything that has an earlier date on it even if it's no longer up to date/valid. 
 
You can also highlight things on bank statements even if you don't have other hard copy proof of them, such as paychecks being deposited, grocery shopping, charges for internet service at your address, etc. 
 
Other forms of evidence you might not have considered:  birth certificates of any children, pet adoption papers or vet records in both names, any memberships or loyalty cards in both names (gym, Costco?) rental insurance in both names, car insurance documents in both names retirement account documents proving beneficiary status, life insurance documents proving beneficiary status, phone bills in both names.  

Yes you can get the case number by calling, and yes you can schedule your interview online (you can't schedule by calling as they will want to verify you got the letter from the embassy) .. BUT  the embassy has made it clear that they do not want you scheduling the interview until your case file is at the embassy (CEAC status READY).   I know of two cases where the couples got their MNL# over the phone and scheduled their interview before their case file was at the embassy and CEAC status showed READY, they ran into issues with the embassy .. the embassy required them both to reschedule.      The time difference between calling or getting the letter/email can be just a few days .. but there is no real advantage.
 
Up until last year calling was SOP for getting the MNL# .. get the number, get the interview scheduled ASAP, complete the medical (didn't need the NVC letter)  ...   bing*bang*boom!    Then the embassy got grumpy ... 
 
Giving guidance to complete the visa process with minimal issues as quickly as possible to me is better than telling a person to "roll the dice", play it fast and loose .. hoping they don't run into a snag.
 
The guide is nothing more than a kindly suggestion ... sort of like the pirate code      If it doesn't work for you, then don't use it  .. no harm, no foul.

If the USC is also a former Filipino  (even dual citizen)
 
CERTIFICATE OF NO MARRIAGE (if applicable). Applicants who are single and have never been married (18 years and older) are required to obtain a CENOMAR from the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA). The request for a CENOMAR is a standard measure adopted in Manila to ensure that a visa applicant does not have any concealed, unterminated prior marriage to anyone, which would eliminate his / her claim to the single status of the visa category sought. To request a CENOMAR be directly submitted to the US Embassy (recommended), you may do so here: https://www.ecensus.com.ph/Secure/Terms.aspx
 
 A CENOMAR is also required for a petitioner who was born in the Philippines and lived in the country for at least one (1) year upon reaching the age of 18.
 
 
https://ph.usembassy.gov/visas/immigrant-visas/family-based-immigration/the-interview/

Visa Category: F2A-F21 I had my interview yesterday in USEM. And for me it was great experience. my schedule is 8:15am but I decided to fall in line by 6:30am just tell the guard especially if your applying for immigrant visa. they will allow you to fall in line to check your ds260/etc. first they get my passport and put it inside the ziplock case. and gave to them my ds260 confirmation page. theyre going to attach a sticker to your ds260 confirmation page. then you proceed inside the USEM first they will check your luggage. no electronic devices! and Iv'e seen other people they allowed them to carry backpack. and keys for your cars/motorcycle. then after that you will proceed to waiting area. The guards will announce you code(the sticker attached to you ds260 confirmation page).who can go inside the processing room/center.  after the guard called your code. you can proceed inside the processing room/center. but you need to undergo to another security check again. like xray machine for your belongings and metal detector. after we were seated and they will just call the applicants to fall in line to for intial interview. Prepare all your original PSA documents such as birth certificate,CENOMAR,marriage certificate and NBI clearance after 20 mins its my turn for intial screening greet them good morning! and gave all my PSA documents and NBI clearance. he asked my name and birthday and how do I met my wife. he asked for other documents like form I-864,form I-864EZ,ITR's, and W2's. actually I already uploaded my PSA documents to CEAC. thats why I finished my intial interview for only 5mins. after that proceed to fingerprint scanning. first she asked for my name and birthday and put my left 4 fingers to scanner and my other right fingers to scanner after that put your both thumb to scanner. after you finsih it. they will tell you to proceed to final interview. you need to fall inline again same as the initial interview process. so its my time for final interview. the CO asked me this following questions: 
When did you meet?
how did you meet? 
how do you do? 
Do you have relatives in US?
my wifes work?
My profession? - after I told the CO that Im a nurse by profession he didn;t asked for more questions. instead his face turned/mood changes suddenly to be more accomodating. 
then he returned my PSA documents and other documents aswell. he said we already have a copy of your documents in our database. and I'm going to approved your visa. and gave me a phamplhet about domestic violence and to get a peace of paper on how to get your passport and documents from ustraveldocs.com. after the interview gave him a thanks and told him have a nice day. he replied same to you. 


Important tips: 
1. make sure you have your ds260 or else your going to have a faith like my seatmate he doesn't have his ds260 confirmation page and wet outside again to print a pay a hefty price of 400 pesos.? 
2. Always smile and greet them GOOD MORNING!
3. most of the applicants inside the USEM is serious type of person or maybe theyr'e just nervous about their interview. to overcome it. just talk to your seatmate(I'm a friendly person and sometimes talkative.) after sharing your ideas and experiences to your seatmate. as the time goes by all my nervousness were gone. 
4. Make sure you have a complete documents. especially CENOMAR. im going to share you guys my experience from PSA you can request a CENOMAR to PSA and it will took normally 2 to 3 days before you can have a copy of it. in my case. I went to PSA 1 day before my interview and I badly needed it. I don't have an idea that I also need a copy of CENOMAR for my wife. before paying the cashier I told her that I badly needed it for my interview tomorrow in USEM. I gave them a copy of my interview confirmation. she told me that she needs to talk to her supervisor first if she can do it. and her supervisor told me that just take a seat after you paid for CENOMAR and im going back at you. after 10 mins he went back outside and told me that YES they can release me a copy of CENOMAR for 1 day.(for emergency purposes only like mine I need it badly because my interview is scheduled tomorrow. he just change the date and time that was hand written on my receipt. and proceed to releasing area. just wait for the scheduled time and gave your receipt to 1 of the counters and they will release your CENOIMAR.
5.make sure to register your mailing address to ustraveldocs.com so they will know where they should mail your passport together with other documents.
6. Always pray and think positive! 

thats all. Im just sharing my personal experience to help my fellow applicants. 

 

I used an app called imazing. They have a free version or trial that accesses your iMessages from a laptop. Then you can print them. Also you can do screenshots on your phone and either access the images from a laptop or email them to yourself and print them.
 

I suggest talking to your husband about how you feel. He could help by steering conversations in a different direction. If he knows how you feel hopefully he’ll understand and make adjustments.
hope it goes well for you 

I suggest talking to your husband about how you feel. He could help by steering conversations in a different direction. If he knows how you feel hopefully he’ll understand and make adjustments.
hope it goes well for you 

Wedding pics! Well pic but still works. 
@Greenbaum as promised! 😁😁😁

I suggest talking to your husband about how you feel. He could help by steering conversations in a different direction. If he knows how you feel hopefully he’ll understand and make adjustments.
hope it goes well for you 

You’re talking about VJ notification? That’s just an estimate based on VJ timeline recent averages. You’re NOA1 is 5/29. It’s not out of USCIS normal processing time yet, that’s about 6 months 

I wanted to provide an update on our case as I believe it will help others in the future. First and foremost my wife got her visa!   Here is the original thread:   https://www.visajourney.com/forums/topic/713710-issued-a-221g-letter/page/4/?tab=comments#comment-9815399     Summary - US born Indian married girl from India on first visit/meeting. We had been speaking for 5 months over Skype/WhatsApp/etc. Met through family friends. She was issued a 221G letter because the officer was not convinced of our marriage, mainly because I was born in the US. He did not ask to see any proof at her interview. She was asked my name and how we met before being denied.   After being given the 221G letter, she provided pages and pages of our WhatsApp log, Skype chats, and Facebook posts. The entire process moved fairly quickly. Here is our timeline:   Married 8/31/2018 I130 Petition Package Mailed 9/22/2018 NOA1 Received 10/3/2018 Fee Deducted 10/2/2018 NOA2 Received 2/9/2019 NVC Case Created 3/28/2019 AOS and IV Fees Processed 4/1/2019 Sumbitted DS and I-864 4/26/2019 Interview Confirmation 6/13/2019 Interview - Issued 221G 7/24/2019 CEAC Created - AP 7/24/2019 221G Documents Submitted 7/29/2019 Documents Returned and
Passport Submitted 8/5/2019 CEAC Updated - AP 8/7/2019 CEAC Updated - AP 8/16/2019 CEAC Updated - Ready 8/29/2019 CEAC Updated - AP 8/30/2019 CEAC Updated - Issued 9/3/2019 Visa In-Hand 9/6/2019   My suggestion for those who may be in a similar situation: the US citizen should also go to the interview! I believe if I was there, she would not have been given the 221G. Who knows though - I have heard that in India almost everyone is given the 221G letter. Also, during the DS260 stage, I provided ONLY what was asked - so no chat logs, etc. This was a mistake. My thinking was that since they are not asking for proof of a bona fida marriage besides certificate, I do not need to provide photos, logs, etc. as it may look overly suspicious. I figured my wife can just show this at the interview. I think this was a big mistake. If additional proof was provided, it may have been seen before the interview.    All in all, my wife got her visa and I will be going to get her soon =). Thank you to everyone on this site and best of luck to everyone else!       

So today 189 days after it all began... our interview was a success !!! Mike Pence was even visiting the embassy today !!!❤️❤️ Thank you for your help and support !

I feel your frustration. I got an RFE dated 7/22. I submitted the evidence very quick. They received it 8/1. 9/5 now and still no update. We were hoping for visa being issued in October. Looks like it could be later. Very frustrating 

Thank you, the last few messages are on point. I know what is the right thing to do now but need to summon the courage to do it. Hopefully sooner rather than later. Wish me luck! Thank you everyone for your help and advice! I'll post an update when things settle down for me or let you know of any "interesting" updates.

Hey guys,
 
I'm currently visiting my spouse whilst in America (still waiting on NOA2 FYI) and one thing we decided to try and do was open a joint bank account to help out in evidence for the process and also cause it would be useful to get my name in the system etc. right now.
 
I obviously checked here and saw lots of conflicting info so wanted to give my experience:
 
First - we visited Chase. Chase sucks when you're an intending immigrant and they will also not be very friendly to you on arrival. So don't bother.
 
We instead visited Bank of America and we had a whole bunch of help and a smooth ride in setting up our accounts! 
 
All that was required was a passport and Driver's license for the US citizen (but any normal ID would be fine too including utilities and stuff. And for the non-US citizen, your passport, and a secondary form of ID, which could even be a Visa/Mastercard from your home country.
I quizzed them on why we could open it with them when we didn't have success with Chase and they said this was fine as the US citizen essentially acted as the "anchor" in our joint account and the person helping us mentioned that Visa/Mastercard is a good secondary ID as they're global so the bank can access some kind of record on you. This also allowed me to apply for a US credit Card (approval is pending so we'll see on that!).
 
So just wanted to share that opening a joint account in the states is possible whilst going through the process for anyone who wants to get it done! 

Guys I just checked the status again and it changed to ISSUED!  My fiance and I both are very happy. We're still waiting for their email confirmation though.

I was going to use regular mail but was at the post office to weigh it and it needed extra postage as I expected. So I decided to send it priority with signature confirmation. It worked fine, took 2 days from Texas.

Finally, a comment on this thread that I can actually agree with.  We received a K1 visa because I (the sponsor) make over the 125% poverty guideline.  I'm a couple thousand dollars off of the 250% guideline which means if I applied for this later,  we  wouldn't have gotten the visa.  This is insane to me, since we are living with no issue on my below 250% salary.  It is just a way to keep more people out of this country and I am amazed to see so many supportive comments on an IMMIGRATION forum.  Immigration is already expensive and hard enough, I am totally against making it EVEN harder for people who are working their ### off for this already.
 
 

Oh god ours just got approved!! 

OMG. Posting here really works!
we got approved today! 😭
 
NOA1: April 24
NOA2: August 5
 

We've been approved!!!! Clearly posting on this forum is magic!
NOA-1 04/10
NOA-2 07/29
 
We saw the the mail on USPS informed delivery on Aug2.
Old website and new website didn't update yet.
 
Good luck everyone else, hang in there yours will be coming soon!!