top_secret

I know for sure that Philippine Airlines will allow pregnant passengers to fly at up to 8 months as long as their OB-GYN will sign a simple form that states they are fit for travel. As far as the 221g, the best course of action is to give the embassy whatever they ask for as quickly as humanly possible, wether the applicant should have needed it or not.

There are statistics for B visa refusal rates and the Philippines has ~31% refusal rate. (~69% approval rate) https://travel.state.gov/content/dam/visas/Statistics/Non-Immigrant-Statistics/RefusalRates/FY25.pdf But the ~31% refused for B visas are probably mostly the same demographic as allot of typical K1 visa applicants. I don't think there are any refusal rate statistics for K1 visas but US Embassy Manila has a reputation for being one of the easiest in the world for K1 approvals. I think that almost all denials going through Manila involve some glaring deficiency in requirements or very blatant ineligibilities. Any genuine case should sail through there pretty easily if the paperwork is in order.

I never noticed how much I tend to wear the same clothes when traveling until I started going through a bunch of photos from a number of different trips looking for evidence. 😅

My wife and stepdaughter traveled to the Philippines several times while they had extension letters. You should be fine. Every day NAIA probably sees dozens of US Permanent residents traveling with expired green cards and extension letters. Everyone from check-in agents to Philippine immigration knows all about extension letters. It's common and no big deal. Amongst the handful of Filipino green card holders who have had any trouble with US Immigration recently, I think they all had criminal history in the US. (no matter how minor or long ago). "Ordinary" Filipino green card holders are traveling trouble free.

If you are staying in the Philippines it is possible to process a ROM at the DFA ASEANA office in Manila. https://consular.dfa.gov.ph/report-of-marriage/ It still gets forwarded to the relevant consulate for processing but it can all be handled with an in person visit to the DFA office in Manila. I believe they will also provide a certificate of filing too which would make CFO happy.

There's a reasonable chance it would make it through NVC as is and if not, the worse that would happen is they reject it and then you would have to fix it anyway. So there is not much downside to submitting what she has. It would probably get documentary qualified. However, US Embassy Manila is generally much more strict than NVC about NBI Clearance names. So even if it sails through NVC just fine, she almost certainly needs to get a new updated one before the day of her interview. It MUST include your surname. USEM would accept it as "single" including her married name with your surname listed as an AKA. OR as "married" listing your surname as "husband's name". Even if she never used your surname and never plans to, USEM still requires it in the NBI Clearance.

I don't know of anyone who has actually, really, been denied exit by CFO but I have seen very significant delays, hassles, hardship etc created by CFO. They can be very difficult so it is often easiest to appease them and just file the ROM. The NBI Clearance must include your surname as either "husband's name" OR as an AKA, wether your wife ever used it or not, because under Philippine law she is entitled to use it if she likes. As a legal name she it entitled to use it must be included on the NBI Clearance somehow. A ROM for a Utah online marriage is filed with the Philippine Consulate in San Francisco and can be totally filed by mail from anywhere in the world that has functioning mail. https://pcgsanfrancisco.org/civil-registry/

NVC and US Embassy Manila should be fine without a ROM. Her NBI Clearance is ok as single but it must list her married name, including your surname, as an AKA. Not filing a ROM is not an issue for US visa issuance but you can expect very significant blowback from Philippine CFO which their immigration requires to exit the country. Unless there is a very strong legal or philosophical reason to go against the Philippine government, the path of least resistance is to get one filled. Additionally, while there is no requirement that she ever uses your surname, if she ever does want to use your name it will be a thousand times easier if she could change her Philippine Passport BEFORE her interview and that would require a ROM.

If your wife naturalizes in 2026 one could argue that if the MIL had any immigrant intent at all, she would just have your wife sponsor her immigrant visa. Since she hasn't and doesn't want to, it is evidence she only intends to visit. In any case, a change in your wife's citizenship is a "change" in her mother's overall life circumstances. Parents with kids in the US do seem to have better odds for B2 visas than most in the Philippines. Having a US based kid does defacto make them well off by Philippine standards. Factors like age or if MIL and FIL are still together might make a difference (???)

As far as dual citizenship. It is very easy for her to reclaim her Philippine Citizenship at a Philippine consulate in the US. In her case that is probably something she should look at. As far as money, my primary concern would be how much she really understands financial matters. Sometimes people who have not grown up exposed to managing money become easily exploited in the Philippines if they suddenly fall into having a big chunk of assets to manage. I would tend to trust US institutions to offer a little more protection then Philippine institutions. Maybe consider putting something on autopilot with Schwab or Fidelity and let her access it with an ATM card. Put some kind of checks and balances in place though. Educating her in financial matters may be important too.

If she is in the US, all Philippine passport renewals require an in-person appearance at a Philippine consulate or at a consular outreach event. Appointments must be made online here https://passport.gov.ph/ . If she married in the US they would also expect her to file a Report of Marriage. This could almost certainly be filled concurrently with the passport renewal so she could be counted as married and use her married name if desired on her new passport with only one trip to the consulate.

www.PSAHelpline.ph is a private contractor officially sanctioned by PSA (under threat of lawsuit) so they are legit and depending on the provence and how reliable her address is for delivery they would generally take 1-2 weeks. They deliver genuine PSA certified copies. Christmas and New Year's may cause some delays.

The Philippines requires you to have an onward or round trip ticket. Philippine immigration never checks, but it is the airline from the US you will have an issue with. If you have a one-way ticket the airline will almost certainly request to see your onward or round trip ticket at check-in in the US and would deny you boarding if you don't have one. If you really don't know your return date so don't have a return ticket yet, one solution for onward ticket is the morning you check-in buy a ticket online for United Airlines, Manila to Guam. Present it to the check-in agent as onward ticket when requested. Cancel it as soon as you have your boarding passes. It's cancelable online without penalty for 24 hours. No need to worry about immigration in the Philippines. You just need to make it past airline check-in in the US. Once you are in the Philippines it is easy to extend your stay as long as you need by paying the fee for visa extensions. You could extend you stay up to three years.

Well I figure I'd come back and update the timeline on this thing since although it was approved on July 28 we still do not have the citizenship certificate yet. After the July 28 approval, the status changed again on August 19 to "Oath Ceremony Will Be Scheduled'. Although at 12 y/o she does not need to do an oath so I assume that would just consist of showing up and being handed the certificate. No further updates until October 10 when the status changed to "Oath Ceremony Notice Was Mailed" and then the following day a pdf copy of the notice appeared under the documents tab with a scheduled appearance at the local USCIS field office October 29. So from approval to printing and handing over the certificate is an additional 3 months. So final timeframe is 7 1/2 months. The State Department completed essentially the same task issuing her passport in less than 24 hours for 1/6th the cost. Looking at USCIS's Facebook page is seems that in previous years they try to make some kind of USCIS Halloween costume party for children receiving certificates of citizenship at the end of October so we will see about that. Honestly, it seems a bit odd tying Halloween and citizenship together somehow.

The total scheduling meltdown and 1 year+ appointment scheduling delays at US Embassy Manila for CR/IR cases after becoming documentarily qualified have apparently improved quite a bit more recently. Be careful that you are looking at very recent cases for any accuracy guessing appointment backlogs.

USCIS has access to expunged and other hidden records, but CFO does not. Never volunteer anything more than is specifically asked.

In my opinion, if you do want to change your name then you should go all in to change it to exactly what you want as soon as possible and if at all possible get it changed on your foreign passport BEFORE your interview. Then you automatically start your whole new life in America with all your new US documents automatically coming with your desired name from day one with no further effort. If you find yourself with multiple names on your green card, social security card, state id, banking, employment and everything else, it's a huge hassle that can follow you around a very long time. I have no idea how hard it is to change a middle name on a Canadian passport but it costs at least $415 and can take over a year to change a name in a US green card once it's been issued in a non-desired name. Plus every other document and ID issued while waiting for the green card change. I could guess a Canadian name change might be faster, easier and cheaper. I would at least look into it and putting effort into going that way if at all possible. It is not easy after you get to the US.

OFW's should have already completed CFO-PDOS. If they return to the Philippines and receive a fiancee or marriage visa from US Embassy Manila, they should "upgrade" to CFO-GCP to pass Philippine exit immigration the first time with the new visa in their passport. If they receive the new visa from a US Embassy outside the Philippines and use it without first returning to the Philippines then it is irrelevant. No one cares except Philippine exit immigration if someone has an unused fiancee or immigrant visa in their passport.

Hasn't there always been a requirement to file an I-90 (for free) in most cases when a LPR child turns 14??? I would think normally that would satisfy even the new registration requirement (????) Is it possible they are requiring the G-325R in this particular case because the I-90 was not filed in a timely manner???? I'm just trying to understand it better myself.

On the bright side, if the sputum test results had been positive they would have contacted her early. "Late" results implies it's negative and that everything must be just fine. Do proactively follow up but most likely its just bureaucracy that will easily be resolved within a day or two.

DFA has no CFO requirement to change a name on a passport. Whoever told you that is incorrect.

My wife and stepdaughter both had US passports on hand in well under 48 hours from her oath ceremony. She also had her Naturalization Certificate returned by hand at the same time, which is way better than waiting a month for it to be returned by untracked mail. You can make an expedited passport agency appointment online here. https://passportappointment.travel.state.gov/. If you want to just browse appointment availability you can start an appointment with any date and you would be able to view available appointments on a calendar before having to commit to anything. In the case of my wife she preemptively made an appointment for the day after her interview so she would be ready if she got a same day oath and she could change it if her oath was delayed.

We have a fairly simple power of attorney which delegates most of the responsibilities of guardianship for my stepdaughter to me, and explicitly defines exactly the wishes and directions of her mother is for any reason she was not able to care for her child. The idea is that we do not expect to need it at all and it certainly does not offer any permanent legal guardianship but if anything unexpected were to happen it would at least give me some legal authority to independently care for and take whatever steps I needed to act in the child’s best interest until such time as a more permanent custody arrangement could be settled by the relevant courts and it clearly expresses my wife’s wishes for her daughter in such circumstances.

It covers marital union in the USCIS policy manual and the definition seems fairly straightforward. https://www.uscis.gov/policy-manual/volume-12-part-g-chapter-2 So to me it seems that if you actually resided together overseas that 100% counts as "marital union".

Turbotax and probably just about any other tax preparation software has an amend return option whereby you just go through the whole guided process for your return again making whatever changes that need to be made and at the end it spits out a PDF prepared 1040X ready to print and mail. Generally super easy if you used tax preparation software and potentially quite a significantly greater additional return.