top_secret

I think almost all of our evidence was "other". That's pretty normal for an overseas spouse.

We are in the middle of the UK visa process right now trying to pull off a tourist trip. VFS cleverly tries to lead you into costly "added-value services" that are not required or even helpful in many cases. Read the fine print and chose the "free" (well included at no extra cost in the $152 visa fee) free biometrics at a USCIS Application Support Center, and free self-upload of documents, and pay for and print your own UPS return label and mail it off to New York City. Or....... I could pay $82 extra and drive 2 1/2 hours to Los Angeles to unnecessarily pay them for the "added-value service" of VFS scanning and uploading the documents for me, rather than me just uploading them from my PC. The application is all online, the only required fee is $152. The only required appearance is biometrics at the same USCIS ASC they got biometrics done for removal of conditions, the only required interaction with VFS is the free self-upload option, and you pay round trip UPS to send in the passport to VFS in NYC and prepay UPS for a return label..

We recently looked at Greece. They seem to often be considered fairly easy to approve a visa but frequently give single entry and EXACTLY the time you say with little or no leeway on dates. We fired off an online UK tourist visa application just this week for my wife and stepdaughter as Green Card holders. Biometrics is at the local USCIS Application Support Center which I assume means the UK Home Office and USCIS are on really friendly terms. After biometrics with USCIS the rest is online and mail their passports off to New York, hopefully to come back with visas. I cannot comment on how successful that endeavor will be so far, but I can update whenever we get a decision from UK. Their biometrics are this coming Tuesday and we will mail off the passports immediately after the appointment. If in Florida the Japan Consulate is Miami but they still take applications by mail https://www.miami.us.emb-japan.go.jp/itpr_en/visa_temporary_visitor.html

I would recommend Japan as both an easy visa and a fantastic tourist destination. Also note that generally Taiwan will admit anyone with a used Japanese visa into Taiwan visa free regardless of their ordinary visa requirements. https://www.atlanta.us.emb-japan.go.jp/itpr_en/visitingjapan.html and search "Applying by Mail" (but make sure you choose the correct Japanese consulate for your state.)

In our experience, traveling with my wife on her "challenged" Philippine passport before we were married and before she had a green card, Japan is hands down the easiest first world G7 "visa country" by a long shot. There are no biometrics and in the US I believe it could all be done pretty easily by mail. For Schengen she was denied a visa by France, so we went embassy shopping based on statistics that the Netherlands was the most generous towards Philippine passports and she was approved by the Netherlands. (and then we went to France) For the OP though be aware that the Netherlands is definitely friendly towards Filipino passports but that does not translate into most friendly towards all nationalities passports. I seem to recall them having high reject rates towards Muslim and African county's passports. Chile was a kind of easy visa for a Philippine passport and I was really impressed by that country. Korea allows US Permanent Residents who are in transit between the US and a third country to enter Korea visa free for up to 30 days. IE if you took Korean Air from the US to Singapore via Incheon you could stopover up to 30 days visa free in Korea and no visa required for Singapore either. Korean visas are pretty easy too if you just wanted to go straight there.

Any Filipino adult that successfully made it through a visa interview at the very minimum has a passport and a NBI Clearance for ID.

US Embassy Manila in 2023 apparently subverted the expedite system as a back door way to allow self scheduling of ordinary cases. They had a so called "mass expedite" in mid January 2023 and then a second "mass expedite" the last week of January 2023 where they essentially cleared out all backlog whatsoever in CR1/IR1 cases. IE, a case that became documentarily qualified January 20, 2023 got an "auto-expedite" and was able to self schedule on January 27, 2023. However, then there was NO regular scheduling at all of newly documentarily qualified CR1/IR1 cases until the last week of June 2023 at which time there was another so called "mass expedite" encompassing all cases documentarily qualified up until mid May 2023. There has been no regular scheduling of CR1/IR1 cases at USEM since. IE, if you were a documentarily qualified CR1/IR1 case the first week of May 2023 you got an "auto-expedite" and could self schedule since the last week of June 2023. However, if you became documentarily qualified the last week of May 2023 you are still waiting for scheduling to this day. Various people are speculating that since they did two of these so called mass expedites in January 2023 then they would probably do it in January 2024 but there is really little to base that on. It is a fact that cases documentarily qualified the second half of May 2023 and later are still waiting for scheduling so the backlog is at least 7 months and has not moved for at least 6 months. That is historically long for spousal cases at US Embassy Manila so it seems something would need to happen "soon". There have been a handful of IR1 cases recently that had converted from F2A cases when sponsors naturalized and therefore had unusually old DQ date, that were scheduled by NVC for IR1 interviews in Feb 2024. They are unusual cases but being the only IR1 cases to see regular scheduling recently and NOT being so called auto expedites it could be seen as indicating a return to regular NVC scheduling. Anyone who says they know what US Embassy Manila is up to with CR1/IR1 interviews is merely speculating because all that is certain is they are being erratic. They have cleared huge backlogs in K1's and B1/B2's and are making good progress clearing huge backlogs in various family based categories, but at the same time USEM developed a new backlog of CR1/IR1 cases that did that did not previously exist even during the rona-lockdown days.

The way I've seen people get it recently is about every tracking method there is finally "goes live" like the night before she can actually pick it up. Like LBC receives it, inputs it into their system so it starts tracking and then they deliver it to MOA like 4 hours later and she can pick it up. So it really doesn't give you much to track. The "Issued" status is your best early notice that all is well.

I would say it is probably the holidays. Mid January flight is risky but is probably still doable. If she has to go far to say goodby to family, traveling to or from the provinces is rough for like a week after New Years in the Philippines. She also has to fit CFO in there somewhere once she gets the visa and I could guess they may be holiday affected too.

J.M.'s answer is probably your best advice. Calling the LBC hotline might get more timely results than e-mail. You can also try checking on https://www.ustraveldocs.com/ph/ph-niv-passportretrieve.asp or you can get an automated response by e-mailing passportstatus@ustraveldocs.com with just the subject and body of the e-mail containing the passport number. Just about everyone I've heard of recently got it really quick like 3-4 days if they sent it to MOA, with the tracking email coming the night before the passport was ready to pick up. But remember the Philippines almost totally shuts down for Christmas and New Years so results may vary wildly because it 'tis the season.

The US would recognize and accept a divorce that is legally completed in accordance with Norwegian laws. There would not be anything required in the US other than showing a Norwegian divorce certificate if you ever had to prove you are divorced.

Since maybe about May of this year pretty much all I-751's have been receiving IOE case numbers and are being scanned for electronic processing by USCIS. Allot of people, ourselves included, have been finding poorly scanned .tif files in their online accounts that only contain a tiny fraction of the packet they submitted. In our case it has the photos we submitted in our packet and an unrelated payment form USCIS apparently inserted, and nothing else. Consensus is that they obviously do have the rest of the packet scanned into their system somewhere and everything is probably fine. It's probably some widespread IT quirk in their system. But what most folks find scanned into their online accounts does not reflect all that they actually sent. But since it apparently affects almost everyone. It must be normal and OK(???)

With my wife, her status changed from "Case Was Received and A Receipt Notice Was Sent" to "Case Is Being Actively Reviewed By USCIS" about 4 hours after she completed her biometrics appointment. So there is a strong correlation and almost certain causation of the data entry of the biometrics being the "active review" in her particular case.

Yea. So if you look there and see that Nebraska is processing I-129F's in 5.5 months, that is how long they are taking to reject I129F's from K3's that people filed along with their spousal I-130's. A totally different situation from I-129F's filed for K1's so it's a deceptive comparison.

Where you do see I-129F processing times for other centers they are most likely from K3 cases that people in the hopes of speeding up their I-130's. All those I-129f's get denied but probably skew USCIS processing time statistics is strange ways.

CFO has been undergone all kinds of wild changes this year but they seem to have somewhat emerged from the total meltdown they were having in like June and July. As far as I can tell, at this time there is no way you can find out when you could get an appointment before you actually have the visa on hand, but people who do have visas no longer seem to be having difficulties getting appointments in the reasonable short term future. As far as I can tell they only do in-person GCP now. The online option seems ended. Take your choice Manila, Cebu, or Davao whichever is most convenient.

If you haven't received the Green Card after three months I wouldn't even worry. USCIS is slow. If you haven't received the SS card after 4 weeks, it's time to go down to the SS office. SS is usually either fast, or else nothing at all. If it took that long probably something got missed and it needs intervention.

You could print what you want them to see on the website. They will look at paper copies of websites.

Ordinarily I think one would apply for the child's Philippine passport at the same time they filed the report of overseas birth with the consulate. The consulate should be able to process both simultaneously. Also, are you sure the PCG in San Francisco is the correct consulate? Just asking because your profile says you are in San Antonio and if the child was born in Texas then only the PCG in Houston can process the ROB.

Since pretty much all I-751's since about May of this year have been receiving IOE numbers and are being scanned for electronic processing, it seems predictable that in the future frequent changes of service centers may become more common. Also, since all these new IOE cases have not started being processed or approved in large numbers just yet, it would be difficult for anyone to predict what impact electronic processing will have. But it is predictable that things will be "different", once all the paper cases start working their way out of the system. So predictions about how new cases will be processed based on how older cases were processed may not be valid.

I have seen several instances of various agents mistakenly following procedures for someone who is "in the US on a visa" because they see a visa in a passport and don't know any better. What has to be explained to them is that it is no longer a visa at all, it is a temporary I-551 Green Card. So they must follow whatever the procedure is for a green card because it is NOT a visa, it IS a temporary I-551 Green Card.

No chance whatsoever you could register your marriage in the Philippines. Any ROM would be rejected. It is no issue at all for US immigration purposes.

Apparently she decided to fight after about shot number four. Mom had to hold her down for the last two. She was fine once it was over. It was six shots in our case. Some of them contain more than one vaccine. In the Philippines they routinely vaccinate children with a shot they call "Penta" which combines 5 vaccines all into a single shoot. I'm not sure why SLEC doesn't just use that rather than going one by one.

Ouch is correct. My 9y/o stepdaughter got SIX shots. Two in each arm and one in each leg. My wife only got four shots.

Yes. The existing history will update with the social security number whenever a creditor reports the information in the future. My wife even had one where she was an authorized user 6 years earlier and I had closed the account 4 years before she got here and she was even using a different surname. Somehow the credit report agencies still put two and two together and correctly attached the old closed account to her credit report. She arrived with a 760ish FICO score.