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I paid my wife and stepdaughters immigrant fees from my USCIS account and then never could get the green card creation case number added to either my account or accounts created for them. But I was still able to track the green cards on the regular USCIS case status site with the new IOE numbers from the "Pay.gov Payment Confirmation: USCIS Immigrant Fee" e-mail. (NOT the same IOE case numbers from the I130)

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Was the children's SS benefit included in the original I-864? It seems like it would be "household income". In any case if a joint sponsor is truly impossible , ideal or not, the next intermediate step would seem to be responding to the 221g with any and all additional proof of income you could possibly come up with and see if that helps.

As was mentioned 13 years ago in this thread, US Citizens, and in general citizens of any country other than the Philippines do not require CFO. That hasn't changed since 2011.

I'm not aware of any legit web site that lists a "spouse tourist visa". There certainly is not an actual visa that goes by that name. What web site is this?

P3200 Manila to AC seems fairly normal-ish these days. Maybe you could get slightly less but not by much. Verify that includes NLEX toll and if are they taking the Skyway in Manila. In Angeles the new blue meter taxis seem more or less ok and have their own hailing app. https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.bluetaxi.customer.app That's not an unconditional endorsement but I haven't personally got a rigged meter or had to argue with a driver so far.

Assuming you are talking about CR or IR - 1 and 2, currently US Embassy Manila has largely scheduled all cases DQ up until somewhere around mid January. No one but a very few expedites DQ'd since January has had interviews scheduled. So the present backlog is pretty precisely, "since mid January". There has been no recent discernable new scheduling activity for several months now which is unusual. There seems to have been some sort of temporary pause in scheduling. So as of now one could say US Embassy Manila is up to mid January, haven't released many new interview letters in several months, so one could speculate there would be a large batch of new scheduling due to occur "soon". DQ in February in theory shouldn't be waiting to much longer. However no one knows for sure when they will send out the next batch since they have lacked consistency lately. All of the above applies only to CR or IR 1 and 2 at US Embassy Manila. All categories other than CR or IR - 1 and 2 have totally different backlogs.

Probably one of those issues that varies from state to state. I know there are minimum Federal requirements to get Real ID but state requirements and how it is implemented seems to vary greatly.

As of 3 weeks ago CDC even further updated "Technical Instructions for Panel Physicians" with very substantially loosened guidelines for rona-vax on immigration physicals. Basically applying the same standard as any other vax. ie, give any due shot of the series, including even just the first, of any WHO EUL vax if Pfizer or Moderna are not available (even China-vax but possibly not sputnik) . "Insufficient time interval between doses" blanket waiver applicable for other missing doses. It seems a rather huge change. https://www.cdc.gov/immigrantrefugeehealth/panel-physicians/vaccinations.html#covid-19-vaccination

I have a friend who had kind of a similar issue signing up for CFO. In their case they got a very noninformative "Error 500" pop-up message and much of the data would not save. The problem in their case turned out to be that they had entered a phone number as +631234567890 rather than 091234567890 and the presence of a non-numerical "+" character in that field totally blows up CFO's web server. Maybe that is something to check????

I don't know anything about Casablanca but US Embassy Manila has a similar message in an autoresponder somewhere in their system that hasn't been updated since 2020 and has been sending out incorrect auto-responses ever since.

It might be because ANYONE can peruse someone's highly detailed personal CFO information at https://manila.cfo.gov.ph/GCP_Online_Manila/ with nothing more than an e-mail address.🙄 Such as, there is no password or even unique username. Type in the e-mail address of a CFO participant and you are in with zero security whatsoever. That definitely applies to Manila face to face CFO. Not sure if it's the same with online only

Your insurance is fine. California DMV simply wants to see an insurance policy for the car. Not that it's required for the test but if she is taking the driving test, it means she already has a learners permit which has a DL# and everything else needed to add her as a named driver on your insurance.

OK, well I have to walk that statement back. So my friends wife submitted all her documents by e-mail to her counselor. She didn't hear back for like a week, and then her counselor called her phone and yelled at her for signing up for both online and face to face. (she had originally clicked the wrong signup link by mistake) So now my friends wife is fearful of her CFO counselor based on the phone call. Everything is up in the air anyway since the counselor only yelled at her for signing up for both online and face to face but did not lay out any path forward or requirements for actually completing CFO either now or later, online or in person. My friends wife has decided that she would rather take a 14 hour bus ride each way to Manila and back for the face to face appointment in July rather than risking any further contact with her ill-tempered online counselor. It has really blown up into something quite ridiculous. She has an appointment at Saint Luke's in 2 weeks and is in contact with some others who had recent first hand experience getting their medical done without a scheduled interview by signing a waiver, so they are pretty confident that won't be a problem.

If someone actually wants to, and intends to change their name, it is certainly very advantageous to get their name changed on their passport before their interview rather than immigrating to the US with a visa, social security card and green card that does not have the desired name, along with a huge mountain of new US documents they will very quickly generate after arrival. Anyone who actually wants to change their name but puts it off until after an immigration visa is issued, simply because they somehow think it will simplify the immigration process, will seriously regret that when they are now trying to change names on a mountain of US document rather than just one foreign passport.

Travel tax is not the same as terminal fee. Terminal fee is included in the ticket now at NAIA. Travel tax can either be bundled into the ticket or they may have to pay at the TIEZA counter. It's entirely up to how the airline ticketed it. Some airlines automatically include it, some airlines give a choice to include it or not, some airlines don't include it by default. You can look at the line item taxes for a P1620 or ~$29ish tax, or if you really can't tell if it's paid or not the airline check-in agent will send them to the TIEZA counter if it wasn't paid.

Not so much English in either country. Make sure you are familiar with Google Lens visual translating. It works well in Japanese or Korean and is a HUGE help. Google maps works amazingly perfect on Japanese trains and subways which is a huge help getting around. Korea not so much. In general I would say Japan has a bit more to see that's reasonably accessible by western tourists. Pre-rona they had built up a huge tourism infrastructure there. I wouldn't put Korea down in any way because it's a great place to visit too, but if I had to choose, it would be Japan. As Chancy mentioned Filipinos need a tourist visa for either country, but such visas are attainable by Filipinos and either country would typically be an almost automatic approval for a Filipina traveling with a US spouse. There is no interviews or in person appearances required and both countries process tourist visas through accredited travel agents in the Philippines, but you would still need to plan ahead since it could take a few weeks to get a visa.

The message very clearly says "we sent your case to the Department of State for visa processing" A missing e-mail would be very different from a denial.

I very recently helped a friend complete an I864 for NVC in the same position. (DoorDash driver) While I realized they are self employed, I was still rather surprised how poorly DoorDash documents drivers payments. I figured there would at least be some sort of regular statements. Apparently not. In the case of my friend, he submitted last years 1040 with all schedules, forms and 1099's included in the filing. There was no transcript available and his previous years transcripts were no help. Then for current income he literally submitted screen captures from his phone of weekly pay and tips. We had considered bank statements but his bank statements were kind of a mess for unrelated reasons so we figure the screen captures were the most easily understood evidence he could come up with. We included all that along with the letter below and that passed muster with NVC . That was an I864 for a spousal visa rather than an I134 but I assume the requirements are similar.

While not directly applicable to Immigration, Social Security quite specifically does not care about middle names so that at least gives you some idea about the US Government's general attitude towards middle names. https://secure.ssa.gov/poms.nsf/lnx/0110205120#:~:text=A middle name or suffix,shown on an SSN card. Also, for the sake of argument there is no "Middle Name" field on a US Passport or US Green Card, while there IS a separate "Middle Name" field on a Philippine Passport. So, I suspect that the "Surname" and "Given Name" fields on your Philippine Passport and your US Document are identical but the Philippine Passport just carries an additional field of information that does not have an exact equivalent in the US.

My wife actually got a new passport photo done in Peru since that's where we happened to be on vacation together when her I-130 was approved and we were preparing embassy paperwork. It was very easy. I think we paid 20 Sol to a passport photo photographer in a mall to take the picture and give us five 2"x2" prints plus he sent the .jpg copy to my wifes WhatsApp. By default he wanted to do European size photos and we had no luck explaining 2"X2" but he finally figured out "Americano" size photos. Someone suggested later that we should have just asked for 50mmX50mm but in any case we worked out the size issue. Back here I tiled the digital photo six each on 4"x6" prints uploaded to Walmart and now we have a lifetime supply of expired passport photos for like $1.50.

After all the rona lockdowns, travel bans and with all the recent renewed publicity of offloading cases in Filipino news media and social media, CFO seems to have morphed into something far beyond what it was originally. A big percentage of would-be Filipino tourists are now afraid to go near an airport without a CFO certificate. All of which is resulting in backlogs. Probably the difference between when Chancy went through in 2021 and now, is that then they were taking people in the order they applied, and now they seem to have have introduced a "triage" step. It seems they are only accommodating people who are travel ready and planning to travel immediately. Which sucks for planning but I suspect they are still taking people in the immediate short-term future if they actually have visa on hand. My friend’s wife hasn't head back yet after submitting her documents minus the visa. She submitted her DS-260 barcode page in lieu of a visa. We'll see how that flies, but it sounds like she will be asked to come back when she has a visa. Even if that is the case, by signing up now, she has established communication with her assigned counselor so hopefully it would just take an e-mail with a visa to get it prioritized and moved to the front. Plus, although she did it by accident, it did let her book an in-person appointment in July AND online-only and at least so far there doesn’t seem to be any consequences from booking both so she does also have a confirmed appointment in Manila in July.. On doing Saint Luke's before one has an interview letter, they got first hand confirmation from someone who went through this week that they are indeed still accepting waivers and it was no problem to complete the medical without a scheduled interview other than the risk of it expiring.

Thanks for the update. I have a friend who is not on VJ, whose wife is at the same stage waiting for an interview date, and she just submitted her documents to the counselor yesterday. They haven't heard back yet. I suspect it may be totally at the counselors descension. Prior to her signing up for the online-only CFO she had signed up for in-person CFO in Manila by mistake and was given a July appointment date and instructions that very specifically mentioned applicants without visas. Upon realizing she wanted the online-only CFO, she was able to sign up again from correct link but her July appointment in Manila apparently still stands too. So, it seems online and in-person CFO are separate operations and in-person seems to specifically allow applicants without visas according to their instructions. My friend’s wife has applications pending in both, so the July in-person appointment in Manila seems like a backup. (???) I’ll update whenever they find out anything.

I was getting SSSS inbound from the Philippines like 6 or 8 trips in a row. It's really meaningless from there since immigration and the airline are checking boarding passes but security doesn't. I assume it may have been due to frequent short trips??? US Immigration does not care at all. TSA would only be an issue if you got it on a connecting flight in the US. Back in the old days purchasing a one-way ticket was a risk factor towards getting SSSS. I believe that is no longer the case in the US but who knows what criteria they use in other countries.