top_secret

It seems the first one misunderstood adjustment of status.😆🤣. If Vegas person wasn't willing or able to sponsor her in the first place, I assume she is now overstayed and is, as they say in the Philippines, "TNT" (tago ng tago). Living constantly in hiding due to her overstayed visa. In all, it is a pretty good outcome for a scammer case. The advice given by others is probably most critical. Time spent together in person is most important for both for USCIS and for actual relationship building. USCIS understands that anyone can fake anything online and even in person for a few weeks. There is a bit of wisdom in their mindset.

We (Philippine and US Citizens) got married in Costa Rica and could highly recommend it as having very easy laws for non resident foreigners getting married, pretty generous visa free entry, and it was just a great place for a honeymoon too. As others have mentioned, my wife flew from the Philippines on Turkish Airlines. Manila-Istanbul-Panama-San José. All visa free transit on her highly challenged Philippine passport.

It's impossible to know without knowing the foreign nationality involved. Because there are so many different variations of foreign nationality laws and different foreign laws regarding names. It could range from losing their old citizenship altogether, to not even recognizing a US Passport obtained by naturalization and everything in between.

YouTube has some decent videos with follow-up type questions if it was something like "Have you ever voted in a Federal election? No. Why not? Because that would be illegal....." Apparently, beyond the basic reading and writing test, USCIS is supposed to ask follow-up questions if they suspect the person has merely memorized the correct simple one word answers but doesn't understand the English meaning of questions. My own wife was going through some of the follow-up question videos and did not do as well on some of the English comprehension as even I would have thought. She found the YouTube videos covering that scenario to be helpful.

My wife recently took a new job that required a thorough background check. She had listed her high school and a 2-year associate degree on the application. Both from somewhat obscure schools back in the Philippines. The college degree was in a field of study not related to the current job and was not a requirement. To my surprise the company doing the background check actually did directly contact her high school and college back in the Philippines. In neither case did they request any grades or transcripts. They simply confirmed that she had indeed graduated in the years she had listed on her application and that her diplomas were authentic. They apparently tracked down the schools' contact information on their own since my wife had only provided names of the schools and dates of graduation. I always had the idea they never actually verify high school graduation but apparently they do sometimes. If a particular degree is a core requirement for a job, then I imagine they will want transcripts, foreign credential evaluation, etc. If it is just information that is asked on the application but not a strict requirement then I would just fill it out accurately but not worry too much about it.

Assuming they have a US Passport, that would be the main thing.

Just thinking out loud, and not claiming any knowledge on the subject, but if one card is "correct" according to all actual circumstances and the other card is not, shouldn't the incorrect one be returned to USCIS with a letter pointing out their mistake? Just because USCIS makes a mistake does not absolve the beneficiary of the mistake.

Have you double checked spam, that they have the correct e-mail etc? I think Feb 12 should have got one. I haven't seen many complaints of exceptions. If you wife got an interview date and your stepdaughter did not, then definitely request and expedite for your stepdaughter. The embassy would almost certainly correct an oversite like that.

I cannot remember any specific cases here on VJ where anyone was ever successful getting the meeting requirement waived. Even some cases with very difficult medical situations and a lot of cases affected by rona-virus travel bans were unsuccessful getting meeting requirements waived. USCIS would not even consider difficulty arranging child care as being an extreme hardship.

It seems like this batch made it up to about the 3rd week of February 2024. I saw a report of a February 20 DQ date receiving an interview letter and a February 21 DQ date not receiving one yet. It's at least promising that they seem to have made more than a months progress in the last month but they still have a long way to go to reduce the backlog.

Interview the same day as my wife, plus @raizujukishi too. San Diego isn't bad but Honolulu seems nicer. Congratulations!!!

You can ask the embassy to reopen your DS-260 Go to https://ph.usembassy.gov/visas/immigrant-visa-inquiry-form/ Choose from "Topic of Inquiry (Dropdown):" select "Form DS-260 (Application for Immigrant Visa and Alien Registration) Access" . Fill out the rest of the information and just put a note like "Can you please reopen my DS-260 so I can update it before my scheduled interview.” They would typically reopen your DS-260 and reply in 2 or 3 work days. Or, you also have a chance to ask them to update the DS-260 at the pre-interview document check the day of the interview.

Some people had success by opening the document in Chrome. Then from Chrome's menu select "print" and from Chrome's print menu select destination "Save as PDF". Then try uploading the resulting new pdf. Some others said that worked for them.

In the Philippines it would be a TIN from BIR. If you never worked in the Philippines then most likely you dont have one and are not required to have one. So the answer would be "1." However, aren't you a US Permanent Resident now??? W8BEN generally would not apply to US Permanent Residents so it seems your B of A app might have gone down the wrong path somehow if they are asking for one.

Keep watching the CEAC status. When it changes to "issued" that is the first movement you will see. Most cases go to issued within a day after a successful interview. Some take longer. A week is not uncommon. 4 to 6 weeks happens now and then. It doesn't necessarily mean anything and no one knows why. If they told her everything is good, it probably is. Patience is required. Also, Monday, Columbus Day, is a holiday for the Embassy. Tuesday is most likely you next chance to see movement.

Divorce decree goes under the "CIVIL DOCUMENTS" tab. Under optional documents click add a document and on the list of types they have an option for "PETITIONER'S MARRIAGE TERMINATION DOCUMENTATION"

1: I once wandered into Mexico accidently leaving my wallet in my car parked on the US side and leaving me with absolutely ZERO ID of any type. CBP took it extremely well. The first officer basically played me a game of 40 trivia questions about my life and let me in without even sending me to secondary. YMMV. We have a Mexican-American guy here at work who is of the hard headed personality type who likes picking fights with authorities for his amusement. It's like a game for him. He is a US Citizen but goes down to Tijuana all the time intentionally with nothing more than a "federal limits apply" CA driver's licence just to see if they will challenge him coming back so he can argue with him. They usually dont. I feel fairly confident that if someone belongs in the US, CBP at the land border will vet their story to a reasonable extent and based on experience and judgement let them in fairly drama free once they feel confident they actually belong. It happens all the time. 2: The airline totally could do that if you can get them to. It's totally up to the airline if they will even try and up to the carrier liaison if they would approve it. All you can do is ask.

You can delete and reupload before submitting. After you submit a document you could still upload and submit a new copy but the original copy will remain too. If you are waiting to become documentarily qualified an new submission might reset your wait clock. There is no specific advantage to uploading but not submitting a document you know you might change since NVC doesn't review anything until you submit everything.

10/25 5:00PM is the deadline for online voter registration in Utah and presumably the deadline to be registered in time to receive a mail in ballot. Though you could register in person up until election day. https://secure.utah.gov/voterreg/index.html

I think ours was ~120 pages and fit comfortably in a sturdy USPS Priority Mail flat rate envelope. I just sent the big stack of papers held together by nothing but the envelope. However, a medium size flat rate USPS Priority Mail box is page sized and 6" deep so that does kind of set a goal post to aspire too.😁 As the ads say, "if it fits, it ships".😁

You probably should have started complaining earlier since it seemed to get results.🤣😂

US Embassy Manila has developed quite a backlog of CR/IR cases waiting for interviews. I think the most recent batch of interview letters NVC sent out included cases that were documentarily qualified up to about December 2023. So currently the backlog of CR/IR cases waiting for interviews at US Embassy Manila seems to be about 10 months. Hopefully that might improve going forward, as US Embassy Manila reduced their interview backlog for a number of other categories but guessing what the Embassy will do next is pretty impossible because they have been extremely erratic with scheduling lately.

I feel there is a significant change of mindset for what is best dealing with electronic processing. Tabs and dividers are probably incredibly helpful for USCIS to find what they are looking for with giant stacks of paper in a file on someone's desk. But they aren't much help at all where they have multi-page scanned .tif files on a computer monitor to work with. Probably the table of contents and description of the evidence in the cover letter would be most helpful for easy reviewing. I would also be in the camp of those who recommended reducing the number of pages too. Maybe quarterly bank statements rather than every last one? The risk of submitting to much sheer quantity is that no one will sit there and actually go through all 700 pages in giant .tif files one by one. They would probably chose some random points, look at a page here and there, and formulate their opinion based on what they saw. It would be better if your other quality evidence was highly likely to be what they looked at too rather than being overwhelmed in a sea of repetitive bank statements.

With almost 100% certainty, virtually ALL I-751's filed after Q1 2023 are scanned, receive IOE numbers and are processed electronically. So the USCIS advice for simplifying scanning definitely applies to I-751's.

USCIS has posted updated advice for paper submissions and a lengthy list of things NOT to do. https://www.uscis.gov/newsroom/alerts/recommendations-for-paper-filings-to-avoid-scanning-delays