top_secret

My wife was inside the embassy about two hours. The majority of that time was spent waiting for each of the steps. I think that's about typical. Some may complete it in a little faster or slower depending on luck. It definitely won't take all day. I don't think there's much sense lining up at 5:00am. 30 minutes before your appointment would be fine. They will let her in at her appointment time.

I wouldn't actually be concerned myself yet, except the appointment for my wife is this coming Monday and we can't actually see my stepdaughters appointment notice.

Fine with me. All is well with Utah online marriages in the Philippines.

Well, the biometrics situation is becoming rather dubious. My wife has has the whole "ASC Appointment Notice" for biometrics scheduled Monday October 2 in her online documents. My stepdaughter has an identical "Appointment Scheduled.pdf" showing in her online account but of course when you click on it you get "{"data":null,"error":{"developerMessage":"","userMessage":null}}" rather than a pdf. Neither of them have received the notice in the mail although it says it was sent Sept 15. So Monday, my wife will be fine for biometrics with the printed online notice. It does have the QR code and everything. We will pull our daughter out of school and take her along on the basis that we can see an undownloadable "Appointment Scheduled.pdf" in her online account issued at the same time as her moms so a logical assumption would be that maybe it would be an appointment at the same time. I've read mixed results of people showing up for a biometrics appointment without the printed notice in their possession. But at least we can say we made a best good faith effort to attend an appointment we have never received. Luckily the ASC center is only like 20 minutes drive for us. It's really shocking how truly incompetent USCIS really is. I'm quite certain we are as diligent as anyone could possibly be and we have one notice that is available online but clearly never actual mailed, and another that is clearly listed online along with a time stamp, file name, and receipt number, but not actually viewable due to an IT failure. And of course it was never really mailed either even though it says it was.

Congratulations!!! Passports have been going from "Issued" to delivered in 3-5 business days in Manila lately. They are generally being quite fast. I believe the documents come back separately (?) but CFO would take copies anyways and doesn't need NBI Clearance, or Cenomar if you have a Philippine Marriage Certificate or ROM. Mainly CFO just wants copies of the visa, marriage certificate or ROM, your passport and her passport.

The name on the visa will be exactly the name that is in the foreign passport that is brought to the interview, no matter what is on the DS-160.

I would be hesitant to remarry in the Philippines until after recognition of the foreign divorce was completed and 1.5 years could be an overly optimistic time prediction on that. Your ex's lawyer in the Philippines may be legally correct but the question is what happens when PSA goes to register the marriage but discovers the name already show up as married? If the primary goal is to be married and for her to immigrate to the US, I would think a Utah online marriage would be a safer bet. 😁 My thought would be that filing the ROM would present more or less exactly the same risk with PSA registering it. I'm sure the Philippine consulate would accept the ROM no problem and it may very well not be no problem for PSA to register it either. But, if there was a problem, they would still be left with a marriage that is 100% valid for US Immigration purposes and the ROM issue could wait for the recognition of foreign divorce to complete or otherwise working it out with PSA. So it seems the lower risk option if the primary goal is to be married and for her to immigrate to the US.

The entire controversy about the validity of Utah online marriages in the Philippines stems from a two or three month suspension of processing ROM's for them around last November, while PSA and DFA conducted a review of their validity. The results of their review is that they ARE 100% completely valid under Philippine law. As long as a ROM is filed they are acceptable for anything and everything that any other Philippine marriage is. So now that question has been formally put to rest by DFA and PSA. The Philippine Consulate in San Francisco has resumed processing the ROM's normally and is doing so in droves. On some FB groups there are also people giving their first hand accounts of Utah online marriages going through US Embassy Manila without the slightest question in large numbers, probably daily. It seems clear that USEM is now very familiar with them. With or without the ROM is fine for US Visa purposes.

My wife sent approximately the contents of a small warehouse in 5 extra large balikbayan boxes simultaneously. Apparently 5 boxes sent together constitutes "one shipment". The paperwork was accomplished with all the precision, accuracy and attention to detail you would normally expect in the Philippines. I don't speak Tagalog but I surmised the LBC driver who arrived to pick up the boxes was coaching my wife on what she could or could not write down on the paperwork. The short list I saw somehow nowhere near matched the sheer quantity of the boxes. Even I was skeptical that shipment would go through without trouble as it seemed to somehow push the envelope little bit but lo and behold all 5 boxes appeared on the other side trouble free.

There are two ways US Embassy Manila would accept a NBI Clearance in those circumstances. Either as Married, with your name listed on the NBI clearance as husbands name, or as "Single", with her using your last name as an AKA. Even if she has never used your last name in real life. US Embassy Manila is not concerned about the civil status shown but they do want to see your name on her NBI Clearance one way or the other since it is a name she could legally use. My wife was able to get her NBI Clearance as Married, before she completed her ROM, by simply showing her foreign Costa Rica Marriage certificate to NBI.

There seem to be a few glaring omissions. The absence of JFK, EWR, SFO, DFW and others kind of jumps out at you too. I would assume they will be added "soon".

For those who have Global Entry , CBP has released a new mobile app that would allow you to just take a selfie and skip the kiosks all together. https://www.cbp.gov/newsroom/national-media-release/cbp-announces-new-global-entry-mobile-app Android is here. https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=gov.dhs.cbp.pspd.gem

I wouldn't be at all worried just yet. Both USCIS and USPS tend to randomize the delivery of important mail. We are still waiting for the biometrics letter where we can see the 9/15 notice date online.

Was your I-130 a paper filing which provided you an online account number to use with the I-751?

I was thinking think that may basis of the problem. But furthermore it seems it would be an anomaly to have the same case fully accessible simultaneously under three different accounts. I assumed they could access it because their names and info was on the I-130 as beneficiaries but it seems that may not be normal. I am quite certain that none of my info is anywhere in their accounts. I created the accounts for them after they were already here but every piece of info used for the verification was there's not mine. I'm trying to remember how the I-130's got in there and I believe I tried adding them by receipt number and it errored out so I gave up. Several months later they miraculously appeared there without me doing anything more.

Well, I finally got the online accounts mostly working. I gave up on the existing accounts but it would not let me delete them since they had previous case history in them, so I had to change the e-mail addresses and "park" those accounts on some unused e-mail addresses. Then I was able to create new accounts with the online access letters. So yesterday we received extension letters and online access letters. The service center on the receipt notice is National Benefits Center which various sources say means your case is headed for an interview. (?) Now that I have online access, I can see my wife is scheduled for biometrics Oct 2 which is only a little over a week from now. My stepdaughter has an "Appointment Scheduled.pdf" showing in her documents but when you click on it you only get "<"data":null,"error":.....}" Consensus here seems to be to wait a few days and that error will go away. In any case, I assume she is also scheduled for biometrics Oct 2. We have not received the mail notices yet. Under uploads they have very dark and low quality black and white scans of only my photos and a "Transaction Payment Form" for the credit card payment. Nothing more. I have heard many others comment that IOE cases scanned by USCIS only contain a fraction of what people sent in the online account. So, I assume they have access to the rest of it in their own network.(?) I did think it's odd the "Transaction Payment Form" is with the photos, since the photos were in the middle of my packet and I'd figure anything they added would be at either the beginning or the end. So next we are waiting for the paper biometrics appointments to arrive. 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. 10/2/2023 -- Biometrics scheduled.

So I received the extension letters for my wife and stepdaughters and online access letters for both. However, still no online access. When trying to add the case by Receipt number I get the following error and no option to use the online access number. It says. "You cannot add this case to your account because it has already been linked to a USCIS account". What I suspect happened is somehow they created a new account rather than adding the cases to the existing accounts that have their I-130's. I think maybe I could create new accounts with the online access codes they sent but multiple accounts per person seems, not ideal. I sent them a message and see if they offer any solutions. Case status for both is "Case Was Received and A Receipt Notice Was Sent.

Yay! Finally some exciting action.🤣 This Removal of Conditions was getting boring. Informed Delivery just popped up with four letters from USCIS scheduled to be delivered tomorrow. I can already see that two of them are the 48 month extension letters for my wife and stepdaughter. I can't tell what the other two are yet. I'll see tomorrow. 9/6/2023 -- I-751 packet mailed by USPS Priority Mail. 9/8/2023 -- Packet received by Phoenix lock box. Tracking said "Delivered, Individual Picked Up at Postal Facility". 9/12/2023 -- Credit card charged. 9/20/2023 -- Extension letters and other letters from USCIS appear in Informed Delivery

We had almost exactly that situation. A bunch of receipts, pictures, flights, etc, from a trip we had taken. Really high quality, strong evidence. I actually thought I had uploaded it with the original submission, but reviewing it a month later discovered I had not. So I uploaded it to unsolicited evidence a month late. About two weeks after that, my I-130's were approved in record time. I have no way of knowing if the late uploads had any positive impact or if they were even reviewed at all, but it most certainly had no downsides or negative impact on our case.

Yes. Usually it is just an extra one day annoyance if someone answered a question wrong. Costs P3500 additional fee.

My credit card was also charged on the 12th but nothing yet here and no e-notifications or myUSCIS updates either. By USCIS standards you really couldn't call it past due though. I'm not sure if anyone in the September group has actually received the paper I-797 receipt notice yet. Most of those who commented here were seeing the pdf copies materialize in their MyUSCIS account. That does not work for us either, so I assume we are waiting for the online access code letter so we can add the case.

I think lately CFO is playing a game of totally ignoring anyone who does not have a visa on hand. I tend to believe any e-mail that does not have a scan of a visa attached goes straight in the trash. I think they will be much more responsive once you have a visa.

They would only ever apply that requirement to someone traveling to meet a foreign sponsor who is paying for the trip, where there is no petition. They won't ask for it from someone who has a spousal visa.

https://help.cbp.gov/s/article/Article-1671?language=en_US However, the "green card number" is just the A number which is also on the visa itself. So you could probably apply immediately since conditional approval will probably take longer than it takes to get the green card. (my wife took almost 6months to get conditional approval)

I made 3 pages of something like collages, with dozens of all different size pictures from postage stamp size to quarter page. In many cases overlapping in non important areas of the photos. Important ones I labeled but many were just to show us together as a happy smiling family in many different places and circumstances. Anyone could take 10 seconds looking at the 3 pages of photos and see that it is very obviously a real relationship. It worked for us. Many others had great success with a more formal approach too. What you describe sounds just fine.