top_secret

Once you are already in their system you are unlikely to get a second shot with a different counselor. The best bet is to appease them and just give them what they ask for and get it over with. You could argue that you had to show a police report to get the 13A visa or if you still have a copy of that. If you are there and it is not easy to get a police report from the US try a NBI Clearance on yourself. Show whatever you showed for income on you Affidavit of Support on the immigration case. I think the most common outcome when they decide to hassle you like that is you throw them a few token replies, they dangle you for about a week and then still have to let you go.

Do be aware however that your wife may also face some blowback from CFO about not having the ROM filled. She could say you just filed one and they said it would take 6 months and show the Utah marriage certificate. They may hassle her a bit on that topic but ultimately they still have to let her go.

Congratulations!!

I wouldn't try it that close. Staying over the weekend sounds like its almost certainly required. It is 'almost' always two days minimum. Under the new policy the embassy might still let her complete her interview but give her a 221g for incomplete medical and that could cause a significant delay in the visa being issued.

They will also formally take walk-ins if you have an interview scheduled within 7 calendar days. https://slec.ph/#announcement (see the September 16, 2024 announcement)

The scheduling site has some kind of very low limit on how many times you can log in a day. I 'think' you probably exceed that so it gave you a 24 hour ban. Probably nothing you can do but wait until tomorrow and try again. It's ridiculous and that site is really awful but that's what the embassy has.

The 30% refusal rate is misleading because a not insignificant number of the approvals are simply lockbox renewals of existing B2 visas and therefore have a very high approval rate. The refusal rate for first time applicants is undoubtedly significantly higher.

Since you list your city as Honolulu you may be in luck because there is a local LBC Express office there. LBC is by far the best, cheapest, most reliable way to send documents to the Philippines. They could probably deliver to her airbnb or hold it at an LBC office in Manila.

More than likely a couple of decades and some less than perfect record keeping works to your favor.😁 You are probably good. But it might be worth ordering your Advisory on Marriages just out of curiosity to see what kind of tabs PSA has kept on you.

Social Security will want to see the Naturalization Certificate. That is pretty much the final word with them. If the naturalization certificate came AFTER the marriage certificate then they are no longer interested in the marriage certificate. There is no online option. Either you checked the box on the N-400 to have USCIS handle it (and it worked?) or else you must go in person. Depending on the office you may or may not need an appointment. We recently dealt with this exact topic with Social Security and at least our local office was as bad as any indiferent, almost hostile, government office I have dealt with in years. They make USCIS look like saints.

When I was 16, me and my buddies used to drive from San Diego into Tijuana just about every weekend because 16 year olds could buy booze and get in all the 'most exciting' bars back then. I had a drivers licence. Im sure my buddies often had no ID at all but never had any problem coming back because they just looked obviously American

When we went to TJ we just walked in. There was a Mexican immigration guy playing on his phone while hundreds walked in past him. Driving to San Felipe we drove in at Tecate and although not strictly necessary we did stop at the INM office and complete FMM's and got stamped in properly just to be cautious. A FMM is free by land for a trip less than 7 days. For the trip to Ixtapa-Zihuatanejo in two weeks, Tijuana Airport is immediately adjacent to the border and they have a bridge from San Diego, literally directly into the terminal at Tijuana airport so we cross the bridge, get a land FMM in Mexico and fly a domestic Mexico flight from Tijuana to Ixtapa-Zihuatanejo.

That was before she had her green card. She never wanted to visit mexico again but after she has been here in San Diego a year she finally decided to try Tijuana for the afternoon. There the local TJ police hassled us very aggressively on the street. I'm used to that and know how to handle those guys but yet a second bad Mexico experience for her. More recently we drove down to San Felipe, hired a panga boat and caught an absolutely ludicrous amount of fish so she's happy now. In two weeks we are flying from Tijuana to Ixtapa-Zihuatanejo which is super easy from San Diego. We'll see how that goes. Should be fun.

Traveling with you she should be fine but do bring an actual printout of hotel reservations. Traveling alone on any kind of visa and with a Philippine passport she better have at minimum bank statements, credit cards, atm cards and a stack of US $100's. Mexican Immigration is dead serious about proof of funds for holders of challenged passports.

That was in August 2020 during the Philippines non-essential outbound travel ban. We expected trouble from Philippines BI and were well prepared for that. They detained her and interrogated her for an hour but eventually let her go. We weren't expecting so much trouble from Mexican immigration since at that time they were soliciting tourism and touting themselves as the only open destination during the rona-travel bans. She had to fly Manila-Istanbul-Frankfurt-Mexico City. I flew Tijuana to Mexico City to meet her. She got kicked back to Frankfurt. I re-booked her Frankfurt to São Paulo Brazil and we went to Rio de Janeiro together from there. Going back to Manila she flew São Paulo to Addis Ababa Ethiopia to Manila. Good times traveling under rona travel bans.

Well, we had experience with my wife being refused entry to Mexico with a 5 year multiple entry Japan visa in a Philippine passport. But even in that whole debacle there was total consensus between Mexican Immigration, the airlines and my wife that the Japan visa was absolutely a valid substitute visa for Mexico. Rather she was refused entry based on Mexico's "we reserve the right to refuse entry to anyone for any reason or even no reason" policy. She was never given a reason and thrown out on the same plane she came in on. Sent to Germany, where we re-routed her and went on vacation to Brazil instead. Our experience is that valid visa or not, Mexican immigration treats Filipino passport holders very differently than they treat US passport holders. In the case of the MIL, if she is coming from the US, traveling with you, with a valid B2 visa in a Philippine passport she should be fine. Have round trip ticket, hotel reservations and available funds very well documented for the entire stay. Mexican immigration is very strict about that. Be aware that it does NOT reset her I94. The US sees it as a side trip during her allowed stay in the US. Her entire round trip to Mexico must fit comfortably within her allowed stay in the US. If Mexican Immigration sees it as an attempted "visa run" she would be denied entry for that. IE, if she spent 5 1/2 month in the US and flies to Cancun, they would deny her entry because her US stay was about to expire. If she is arriving alone or directly from the Philippines and using a US B2 visa to enter Mexico rather than from the US and traveling with you, she is still fine to enter but will face a lot of scrutiny and should have a very high level of preparation.

Yes it takes a lawyer and a court case. The relative handful of cases I heard of successfully getting recognized seemed to be about a 2 year time frame and maybe P100k plus. Like all things court related in the Philippines, the cost and timeframe may have an inverse relationship and individual results may vary and be negotiable. In terms of US immigration it is not really important since the US does not require Philippine recognition of a divorce that is otherwise legal in the eyes of the US. Recognition of a foreign divorce is mainly only important for dealings with the Philippine government.

She also should sign the return.

That is frustrating. Even in their e-mail response they clearly mention the policy that it is a CENOMAR or an Advisory on Marriages and the purpose is only to show that there are no undisclosed marriages. If you have not yet, maybe do get the ROM going as a last ditch contingency. Maybe re-submit the CENOMAR along with a detailed letter of explanation that you have ordered an Advisory on Marriages from PSA and they provided the CENOMAR and say it is the correct document by PSA's records? I'm wondering if you got some trainee counsel who does not yet have a basic understanding of Philippine laws or if this new VAC has introduced a layer of non-thinking check-box checking staff. Ultimately they cannot make an Advisory on Marriages specifically into a hard requirement because doing so would amount to a total ban for a number of otherwise fully qualified couples. It's clearly confusion on the part of the embassy but obviously a difficult situation to deal with. Just double checking. You did upload it to CEAC too?

Check on https://ceac.state.gov/CEACStatTracker/ It definitely has some status. For the Philippines if that status is "Ready" then you can and need to self-schedule.

It varies from person to person. The Embassy is incredibly inconsistent. Probably a majority of people see CEAC status changed to "Issued" within a day or two and receive their passport with visa within a week. But there is also a sizable number who inexplicably take anywhere from two to six weeks with no explanation or outwardly identifiable differences from those who got issued in two days. Hope for the best but don't make any difficult to change plans until you have the actual visa on hand.

It is extremely common that the e-mail is never sent. Don't wait for an e-mail that may never arrive. You don't need it. If the case's CEAC status is "Ready" then you may proceed create an account on https://www.usvisascheduling.com/ to self schedule the interview. The embassy will not be scheduling your interview.

Detroit might be drivable and give you allot more options on Delta than Cleveland would. If meeting them on the ground at the POE is the issue. If you are traveling with your sons then just choose whatever POE gives you the best connections.

Since we are right at the beginning of the year. Unless there is any issues or significant changes from last year's work patterns and annual gross income, I would just stick with that any leave calculations of hourly wages and overtime out of it.

Passport can be gotten in 2 weeks in the Philippines. Pay the nominal expedite fee. She just needs the ID and PSA documents to satisfy DFA. USEM will cancel the interview on a no-show. No-show is not a problem at all, just keep trying until you can get a new appointment. Lawyer probably can't help at all in any way. Medical and everything else is fine with a new passport. It would all be easily worked out during the pre-interview document check. Getting a new passport is the only issue. It's not a huge problem.