top_secret

I would not worry. It's still well within the range of "normal". Every time the date updates it means someone at the embassy did something so it at least proves they have not forgot about you. Most of the time cases in Manila get issued within a day or two of a successful interview, but but sometimes seemingly normal looking cases take up to two weeks for no outwardly apparent reason. It will be "issued" soon.

No problems issuing the visas or traveling. AOS I 'think' people have had mixed experiences. I heard of one case where they were asked to repeat the entire medical in the US because they couldn't find a Civil Surgeon in their area who would sign off on only the vaccination by itself. I didn't hear the resolution on that case if they actually really had to do it. I saw one case where they got a RFE for proof of vaccination. In any case it is not any kind of show stopper but it could still come up.

After you marry you can take your spouse's last name if you choose to. Some states would also allow you to change your middle name according to Philippine customs. Some states would not allow you to change your middle name. So it depends on the state for middle names. I don't think there are any circumstances where you can change your first name by marriage. It would require a legal name change by the laws of whatever state you are living in.

For IR2 and other immigrant categories I believe Saint Luke's is now issuing blanket waivers due to unavailability of vaccine and that more or less settles the issue once and for all as far as immigration is concerned. You step son should be fine. What's different for K1 and K2 is Saint Luke's can kick the can down the road so the visa gets issued and the applicant can come to the US, but vaccination requirements for adjustment of status is a separate issue.

Saint Luke's will waive it so no problems as far as the visa is concerned. You may still have to get it later in the US to complete adjustment of status.

Many couples choose to do an online marriage and then later have a renewal of vows religious ceremony in the Philippines to provide a big event for family and friends to witness and celebrate the marriage. It can be a big church wedding like affair but if already married online it cannot be a second formal civil marriage. It would be HUGE mess for immigration purposes too. Worst case is the embassy could make you annul the second illegal marriage before they would issue a visa, which would take years and cost lots money in the Philippines.

I would also add that "Courtly" is merely acting as an officiant for an ordinary Utah online marriage. They charge $499 plus government fees for the service. Alternately, The Utah county clerk offers online marriage ceremonies for $35 plus government fees if you go straight to the source rather than dealing with a middle man. https://www.utahcounty.gov/dept/clerk/marriage/ceremony.html

You are fine. The US will recognize a legal Japanese divorce. It is not necessary for it to be reported to or recognized by the Philippines.

If you have a two page marriage certificate then the US needs both pages. Number of pages in and of itself is meaningless and no big deal. But the US absolutely requires "all".

Green Cards arrived by surprize today. Of course USCIS status had not updated to shipped, but oddly even the normally reliable USPS Informed Delivery did not detect the incoming Priority Mail until after they were actually delivered to our mailbox. An interesting but inconsequential detail is that the expiration dates on the cards differ by three weeks between my wife and stepdaughter. My stepdaughters card expires 05/01/2034 which correlates with the I751 approval date and is the expiration date one would expect. However, my wife's card expires 04/10/2034 which is good enough for us but I can't think of anything that date would correlate to. It does not match the approval notice or any USCIS activity that I am aware of. It is a seemingly random expiration date. 4/10 is 2 days after we returned from traveling in the UK and Schengen area if maybe that generated some kind of activity??? But hey, we are happy with it. Just odd the date difference. Both of their "resident since" dates are the same and correct. We successfully updated Global Entry with the new expiration dates online. Previously trying to enter the extended expiration date of the expired cards did not work online. Though they had successfully entered the US through Global Entry with expired cards, extension letters and a brief stop with a friendly CBP agent. Final timeline: 9/6/2023 -- I-751 packet mailed by USPS Priority Mail. 9/8/2023 -- Packet received by Phoenix lock box. 9/12/2023 -- Credit card charged. 9/21/2023 -- Received extension letters and online access codes. 9/30/2023 -- Received notices of biometrics appointments. 10/2/2023 -- Biometrics appointment date. 10/2/2023 -- Wifes case status changed to "Actively Reviewing" 5/2/2024 -- I-751's Approved 5/2/2024 -- Status "We are producing your new card" 5/10/2024 -- Status "We produced your new card" 5/13/2024 -- Both cards arrived Next stop N400 at the end of July.

$60 for mom and $35 for each kid included with moms application to reacquire Filipino citizenship.

Newark/New York City https://www.rathburn.net/visa/usa/usa.html

It would be a line item on the receipt about $28.XX-ish (P1620 converted to dollars at whatever rate they used). Whether it is included or not would depend on how you bought the ticket. Note, that on mixed reservations including Filipino residents who are subject to the tax, and foreign resident passengers who are NOT subject to the tax, it is best if it is NOT included and instead paid at the TIEZA counter at the airport. Because, typically airlines would either include it or exclude it for all passengers on the same reservation. So, if I were included in the ticket then the non residents on the ticket would be paying it unnecessarily. If paid at the TIEZA counter then only the Philippine residents pay. Also, once your family members immigrate to the US they are no longer subject to the tax on future visits. But they still have to go to the TIEZA counter and show their green card to get their exemption.

The other big question, assuming there was a custody case (??), is how cooperative and helpful is mom inclined to be? Assuming the children were born after mom naturalized and lost her Filipino citizenship(??). If mom were to reacquire her Filipino citizenship she could also include her children in the application making them Filipino Citizens.

If you are the non-Filipino, non-Balikbayan, US Citizen parent, who is living in the Philippines, (if I figured that out correctly????) then what is your visa status in the Philippines???? Most Philippine resident visas would allow inclusion of minor dependants. If you are living there by extending tourist visas I 'think' the children would need to do the same.

How did the embassy tell her this? It's not a requirement on their normal pre-interview checklist. https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/us-visas/Supplements/Supplements_by_Post/MNL-Manila.html#pre_interview_checklist I would try and pin down exactly where and how the request came from the embassy with much greater specificity. I would be inclined to wager that upon closer review it turns out someone on Facebook, TikTok or YouTube said that the embassy requires a copy of the completed i-129f. Although, with the long road ahead dealing with USCIS it is a really good idea to keep copies of absolutely everything you ever send or receive from USCIS.

Yea, the US doesn't really have an equivalent to Filipino middle names, so it all goes as given names. Your example is correct.

I think you are right. It's possible the IR1's I saw were recent CR to IR conversions and had missed the mass expedite. I give up on trying to predict what USEM may do next but I kind of have a feeling the mass expedites are over though. Looking at today's interview letters it seems they didn't make it all the way to the end of August. July was mostly covered by last month's letters so it seems that they only made about one month of progress this time which is a little disappointing. I think in March(?), NVC interview letters went out in two batches on two consecutive days so it would not be unprecedented to hope for another round of interview letters in the next day or so.

NVC just sent out a big batch of interview letters. DQ dates in July and August 2023. I haven't personally heard of any September DQ dates so far but not I'm not sure how far they made it. CR-1/2, IR-1/2 and IR5 all seem in sync by DQ date..

If it's an issue with rona-vax specifically, I think many are getting that waived now due to unavailability in the Philippines. Her LGU health unit would probably certify they have no rona-vax available. If it is a religious opposition to ALL vaccines I have not personally heard many I-601 success stories out of the Philippines. At the very minimum it is a substantial delay without a guaranteed outcome.

For the last three months there seemed to be some sort of pattern of NVC scheduling going out early in the month like the 7th to 10th-ish. Excluding the mass IR1 expedite, it more or less seemed that all CR and IR, including IR5, were in sync. It might not be unreasonable to speculate that a round of NVC interview letters might go out this coming week. If so it will be interesting to see if they clear more than a month of backlog since last month. It seems they cleared June and July 2023 last month. Can they clear August and September 2023 this month???????

Make them an authorized user on your credit card accounts. That will get their credit file started and get their name and social security number into the system so it is the number one best thing you can do to start them out. Call the bank that just denied the secured card, explain the circumstances that they are recent immigrants and ask if there is any further identification or proof of income that might get them to reconsider the denied application. If they have a local branch that you have been banking at, you can try going in and talking to someone in person. They might or might not reconsider but there is no harm in asking and sometimes it's just as simple as showing them a physical social security card, state ID or signing a release for them to directly verify a social security number. There are now these hybrid fintech banking products out there like Chime, cred.ai etc, that more or less function like a deposit account with a debit card but report to the credit agencies as a credit card. Those also have the added advantage that they will create the account without a hard credit pull.

I'm sorry to hear about Greece. I have heard they can be difficult. Someone else here recently reported a denial by Greece with pretty much the same level of rudeness for his wife with a Filipino passport. We recently completed our Europe vacation. We applied through the UK and Germany. Of the two I would say that the UK was a lower level of frustration and the higher value visa and vacation destination. I would not say that the UK visa was frustration free but at least it was 100% online and biometrics was at our local USCIS Application Support Center. The UK visa application seemed to be heavily focused on financial documents which we have and not focused on plane tickets, hotel reservations and detailed itineraries. It was mostly "show us the money". For Germany we ended up having to drive to Los Angeles twice which is 3 hours each way so two days off work and we had to take our daughter out of school for a day since her appearance was required even though she didn't have to do biometrics or anything else except sit there silently. Biometrics and application submission for Germany is with "BLS" which we found to be an even sketchier operation than VFS. My wife had previous Schengen biometrics from Netherlands too and they would not reuse them although they were supposed to. In the end, the UK granted them both 6-month multiple entry visas and Germany granted them visas with a whopping 17 days of validity. If you do apply for another Schengen visa, one thing we learned it to keep the application very simple. Submit an itinerary for only the country you are applying, listing whatever their top 10 tourist attractions are. They do not like to see country hopping on the application even though you can freely do so with a Schengen visa. For Germany we submitted an itinerary sightseeing around Berlin for a few days with hotel reservations that had penalty free instant online cancelation. That way we didn't have issues with having to show intra-Schengen plane tickets etc. After we had the visas, we changed our minds and flew to Munich, spent 2 days, rented a car and drove to Austria, snow skiing in the Alps for a few days and then we flew off to Greece for the remainder of our trip.

Previously we never received any e-mail or sms notifications at all, despite the fact we included a properly completed G-1145 E-Notification form as the first page of our application. But this time their email notification system kicked into overdrive and my wife received 2 duplicate notification emails and my stepdaughter received 4 duplicate notification emails, all simultaneously. We still have never received any SMS messages whatsoever. So we count USCIS's e-notification system as a little iffy at best.

Thanks Both receipt notice and approval notice came from National Benefits Center.