top_secret

You will have no trouble at all in the Philippines. With USCIS being as slow as they are, a significant number of Filipino green card holders are traveling with an extension letter. Anyone at NAIA who deals with US bound passengers is seeing extension letters daily and knows all about them.

Don't feel bad. We DID include that form and have not received a single text message. So to us it seems kind of like it doesn't make much difference if we sent the form or not.

In September it was about as normal as it has ever been. I think theoretically they may still have the eTravel QR code requirement (???) https://etravel.gov.ph/ so probably good to fill that out. But functionally, no one cared or checked in our two entries and exits in September.

Everything is transmitted to the embassy electronically. Saint Luke's only gives a sheet listing listing vaccinations. The embassy doesn't even need that but hang on to it because your children will probably need it to enroll in school in America.

It cutting it close but should be ok if everything goes well. Theoretically results are transmitted electronically the same day, or the next day if Saint Luke's doesn't get around to it right away. There is always the risk that someone gets tagged for sputum testing and I'm not sure if the IGRA test shortage has been resolved yet or will have been resolved by then for the children younger than 15.

The biological mother is deceased. The biological father is applying for a visa for his child. Although he was not married to the mother, he is still the biological father.

Well if they scheduled it for today, then today would be the day. If everything goes well she should have a completed medical by the end of the day.

In the case of my friends wife they already had scheduled it for the following day at the time she received the referral. What were your fiancée's instructions when she got the referral? Isn't there already an appointment date?

A friend of mine had his wife go through that a few months ago. In her case she completed the first day normally. However on the second day she was given the referral for the "personal evaluation" instead of vaccinations. She was instructed to come back at 7:00am the next day (a third day), pay an additional P3500 and do the "personal evaluation". That took all day and finally at about 4:00PM they cleared her and sent her up for vaccinations. So she made it out of there about 5:00PM the third day with a fully completed medical. Below is the paper referral she received. If you fiance got the same, that is how it recently played out for someone else.

That is typical. Ours has ONLY the photos we sent and some kind of payment form they added. All of our other evidence is absent online. Since allot of people experience similar, yet people are still getting approved, I am assuming they have the rest of it somewhere in their system and it is not a problem. It is a little annoying though.

I don't think it would be a problem(?) Usually the psych referral is pretty much just a formality at SLEC. Just go along with it, do what they say and they will clear her. It does not usually result in any kind of problem or delay.

Yes it is standard in that situation. It is probably the "Personal Evaluation". She will probably have to pay an extra P3500 for it. It should probably be a whole day affair like 7:00AM to 5:00PM. If she has psych records she should bring them. She should just be confident happy and normal and she would pass easily. It should not be a problem.

ROM and CFO are Philippine Government requirements. The US government does not care. She is very unlikely to get out of the Philippines with an immigrant visa in her passport without CFO. If you are going to Taiwan it would be safest if you met in the Philippines and departed together. If traveling together and she DOES NOT have an immigrant visa in her passport yet, she might get sent to secondary by Philippine immigration but she would probably be fine to go without CFO. Just get to the airport early and don't be surprised if that secondary interview happens. But she should pass. Traveling by herself to Taiwan would introduce a somewhat greater risk of being offloaded than if you were together, depending on a number of other factors. There are cases of people getting CFO without filing a ROM but expect to be given a hard time from them. The tourist CFO workaround you mention is no longer an option since they have entirely stopped doing CFO for tourists. If she wants to take your name it very much simplifies things if she changes her Philippine passport before her interview and that would require a ROM. How were you married in the US. Was it a Utah online marriage,some other proxy marriage or was she actually here? The requirements mentioned for the ROM seem more complicated than usual. It varies depending on which consulate handles wherever the marriage took place but using the Utah online marriage as a common example, you can order an Apostilled Utah marriage certificate online and the Philippine Consulate in San Francisco has relaxed it's requirements for original documents and is now accepting photocopies of birth certificates and all but one of the notarized copies of the ROM. You could do the notarized copy in Taiwan or she could mail a notarized copy of the ROM. PhilPost is 'probably' reliable enough for that and costs like $3 Ph to US.

The US Government most likely mailed you the Social Security Number. That is a good place to start. By law you are required to have some sort of health insurance and they would probably mail you something from an insurance company. If your fiancee added you as an authorized user on credit cards, those would be mail from a bank. If you are driving at all your fiance should add you to the car insurance even with a still an overseas drivers licence. That would be more mail from an insurance company. A lease certainly works too.

My theory goes like this. If you are serious about the whole thing then the kids ARE going to have to adjust. As children, the younger they are, the faster and more completely they adjust, with the least amount of effort and hardship. Therefore, you are running against a clock that is constantly ticking towards more difficult adjustment. Ease of adaptation and adjustment is VERY age dependant. Young children adapt way faster than older children and teens probably have an even harder time. So ANYTHING that prolongs it is making things harder on the kids. If it is something they are going to have to do no matter what anyways, then going all in, all at once, at the earliest possible time it the easiest way for the kids.

They have rescheduling of biometric appointments in the USCIS online account. We didn't actually reschedule ourselves so I can't speak from first hand experience but just clicking through it, we were presented a calendar of available future appoint dates to choose from. It looked about as straightforward as it could possibly be. "Previously planned travel" is listed as one of the valid reasons to select for rescheduling. https://my.uscis.gov/accounts/biometrics/overview (must be logged in)

Well the most obscure and 'rustic' airport I ever flew into was ODY which would be the airport in Oudomsay Laos (or Muang Xai depending on who you ask). It was almost 20 years ago when I went through there, but it really doesn't look like they have upgraded the facilities in the interim. https://maps.app.goo.gl/fqNwSZyChzf6VQdN9

The US Embassy has advice online here. https://jp.usembassy.gov/services/marriage/marriage-in-japan/ Probably a significant percentage of American marriages that take place in Japan involve service members stationed there. So the Military has information available as well. While it may not all be directly applicable to civilians, probably much of it is the same. https://www.usarj.army.mil/Portals/33/cmdStaffs/sja/doc/Marriage_in_Japan.pdf Legal Capacity to Contract Marriage (LCCM) is a Philippine thing rather than a Japanese thing, however it seems unclear if it gets included under Japanese laws that the the persons marrying must fulfill the legal requirements of whatever country they are citizens of??? The US partner only needs an affidavit notarized by the US Embassy. It seems unclear if an affidavit notarized by the Philippine Embassy or a CENOMAR would suffice for the Filipino partner. Since the Philippine Embassy specifically says they only issue LCCM's to Filipinos who are resident in Japan, maybe it would be most helpful to ask them if they how how it works for non-resident Filipino partners. If the main goal is just to get married, a Utah online marriage could be done while in Japan, and is fully recognized by both the US and the Philippines. That would certainly be much simpler and involve far less bureaucracy if there are no other reasons to go through the Japanese government..

I wouldn't worry about it yet unless there is an immediate need. Recently some notices have been taking 3 + weeks.

Yea. I noticed that after the fact when I followed up on a few timelines. Apparently a glitch in visa journey's timeline feature???? Apparently it's not so clear to search recent I-751 approvals here for NBC. I don't see where USCIS is clear on it either. It seems conventional wisdom is that NBC is a preparation zone for cases that will transfer to local offices for interviews for I-751 or N-400. We are at NBC and N-400 how I see our case eventually settling.

I have heard of people paying agents in Viet Nam to get visa extensions. I think to some extent money can still buy some flexibility of visa privileges in Viet Nam. I have also heard of people doing multiple visa runs with a quick turnaround within a neighboring country. Any reason Viet Nam in particular? Several other countries in the region have easier resident or other longer term visa options. I'm pretty sure in Cambodia you can very easily get one year renewable visas.

We are at NBC too. Looking at recent approvals here is seems they are all over the place but quite a few just a little over a year. https://www.visajourney.com/timeline/liftlist.php?op6=National+Benefits+Center&op1=5&op2=&op3=&op4=1&op5=5%2C9%2C10%2C11%2C12&cfl=0

I believe the "unsolicited evidence" upload section is a new feature for I-751's with IOE case numbers in the last few months as they are moving to electronic processing. We plan to use it to submit new tax transcripts, additional bank statements etc as more evidence naturally accrues during our wait. Since it is apparently a new feature for I-751's there not much actual experience on how it might affect a case positively or negatively, but I'm guessing it is a good thing. As per others, the poorly scanned .tif file of our paper submission is missing most of the the evidence and includes only the photos we sent and a "transaction payment form" they filled out. I thought it was odd that a payment form they filled was included with our photos since it seems logical that any thing they added to our package would go at the front or the back. Not randomly in the middle where the pictures were when we sent them.

Turkish Airlines would be another major airline from the Philippines. Though undertaking such a trip at this time seems not particularly wise unless there were very good reasons and very detailed planning.

CFO used to be a simple little annoyance where emigrants and OFW's had to go down and attend their seminar after they got their visa. In the grand scheme of dealings with Philippine Gobrnment bureaucracies, it was probably rated about a signal 2 at most. During the period of time when the entire nation lost its mind over Chinese-rona-virus, CFO somehow morphed itself into some tyrannical gatekeeper of the nation. It extended itself way beyond anything it was ever intended for. Earlier this year as hysteria subsided and overseas travel resumed en mass, CFO kind of collapsed under their own weight and was thrashing around with no clarity at all what the hell they were even supposed to be doing. People were noticing appointments were scarce, dates were getting pushed way out into the future, Filipino tourists were getting offloaded, the whole thing was melting down. It seems with the most recent developments they are more or less going back to their original mission of being a simple little annoyance where emigrants and OFW's have to go down and attend their seminar after they get their visa. So hopefully things are settling down and getting back to normal so it is going back to being no big deal again. Young teens? As far as I can tell, running down to the store to buy beer, some smokes and a bottle of Empi is generally a task delegated to 5 or 6 year olds.😉