Dan C

10 hours ago, DE CS said:

Hi @Dan C,

 

I see on your timeline that your visa was issued. What was the timeframe from when your visa changed in CEAC to Issued and when you received a notification that your visa with passport shipped from Montreal? My CEAC status changed to Issued on February 3 but it still shows "Current Status: Appointment" on usvisa-info.com.

 

Thanks for your time!

We never actually checked CEAC but we got tracking information on the 3rd and it arrived at the pick-up point on Monday. Our impression was that if they take your passport during the interview you're more or less already accepted, so we had entirely shifted our focus to move planning.

WOW that's terrible! Did you pay the first three courier fees with a credit card? Might be able to charge back.

I kinda want to say at least they let you pay the fee but that's such a low bar.

Interesting. That makes a lot of sense. Also unfortunate and not at all surprising.

No kidding. I guess when you get paid through taxes and you're only beholden to the law, you don't care as much about customer satisfaction.

Which is a little strange, the NVC support people I've talked to have been great. But then, you can actually get them on the phone.

2 hours ago, DE CS said:

That's good to hear! Even though you had them reclassify your case as K-1/non-immigrant, did you register the appointment on the immigrant (/iv) or non-immigrant (/niv) part of the website?

The Immigrant side. They also had us register a brand new account with a different email address.

I also just got an amazingly unhelpful response from the consulate that sums up to "it's the website's problem" and "you better be ready for your interview"

omg it worked

It seems the key thing is having them classify your Case number as K-1, rather than Immigrant.

Yeah, for sure. If this fixes it I'll see if I can get some guidance from them about others asking about the same issue.

That sucks about the courier fee. 

Minor miracle. We've already heard back from them about zeroing out our "DS-260" number. Something else I bet you saw, that your registration says its a DS-260 rather than a DS-160.

Still throwing an error saying "this applicant already exists." Seems like they're really on top of our case, at least.

43 minutes ago, DE CS said:

First, we tried registering with the non-immigrant part of the website, but it also did not prompt us to pay an application fee. Tech support then zeroed out the account and sent my fiancé the following e-mail:

Second, we tried again on the immigrant visa part of the website (/iv) using the K option. Also, there was no prompt for an MRV fee.

 

So I believe we tried every combination. There is not much one can do after that. At work, I have been involved in far more complex filings so it would be funny if something like a visa fee would be out of my reach. 🤭 🤪 Almost every consulate has a cashier to pay UCS fees and deal with basic cash services for employees. Whether they're working the day of the interview is another story.

Yeah, we're in exactly the same spot. The P4 instructions having the non-immigrant visa link got us as well. 

I have news though. We just got an email from the website's tech people that our case was manually changed to a K-1 visa type. The email has instructions that we need to re-register with a new account, with a new email as well. They forgot to zero out our DS-160 number though, so we haven't been able to finish. Par for the course, I guess.

Hopefully this fixes it.

10 hours ago, DE CS said:

Hi Dan,

 

I had exactly the same issue and also had a back-and-forth e-mail with tech support (the MRV payments team e-mail address). When I spoke to us-visa.com customer service on the phone, they said that they were having issues correcting my online account and that I could pay the cashier at the consulate. I wonder why they gave you different advice.

 

There is no NVC fee for K-1. NVC fees are only for IR1 and CR1 visa applicants who get a green card on arrival. In this case, they must upload all of your documents and have them approved by NVC before getting an interview slot whereas the K-1 applicant supplies hardcopies at the consulate interview. The K-1 visa requires a MRV fee (aka visa fee).

 

Best,

Damian

 

Well, one of the customer service people said we could pay in-person if all else fails. So we did get that same advice from one person.

Packet 4 is pretty clear that we need to have paid the fee before arriving at the interview. From what the NVC told me, the consulate also can't accept payment directly so I'm not sure why the people from this website would suggest that we could pay in person.

Hopefully that title isn't too confusing.

We're in a weird spot. Our interview is scheduled for Feb 1st. On this ais.usvisa-info.com website, our appointment is registered. We were never prompted to pay the fee.

We've gone back and forth in email with the tech support for this website and had a few calls with their customer support. This morning they told us the visa was misclassified as an 'immigrant visa', despite us picking the K-1 option while registering. They said we should contact the Consulate and have them sort it out with the NVC.

I called the NVC this morning and had good and long conversation with someone there who explained how it works, this is supposed to be an immigrant visa and there's nothing wrong with what they sent this website. They even went over some recommended next steps for talking to the website people and then to the consulate for last-resort stuff.

So, a few questions. I'm mostly wondering if anyone else might be running into similar issues.

• Has anyone had this issue where they just can't pay the K-1 interview fee?
• Is there some other way to pay it?
• Finally, I'm trying to email the consulate at montreal-iv-dv@state.gov to ask for their take but I'm not getting an automatic reply. Which tells me they haven't actually gotten my email.

So it is! Well now I feel extra silly. Thanks Mike

Feels kind of silly asking this but we got our interview date, which is "2/1". We're not sure if it's the US' m/d or Canada's d/m date format though.

So... Feb 1st or Jan 2nd?

3 hours ago, Darin&Priyanka said:

We are about the same timeline:

NOA1: 2020-07-06

NOA2: 20201-03-09

NVC Recieved: April 1st

Case assigned: April 13

 

Montreal is majorly backlogged. We have a FB group if you’d like to follow timelines and get much needed support during this time. Have you travelled Stateside while waiting for K1?

Neither of us have traveled but now that vaccines are available (and now that we know about this backlog) we're starting to make plans to.

NOA1 :    2020-07-07
NOA2 :    2021-03-26
NVC Received :    Mid April?

Here's hoping Montreal works through the backlog quickly.

Ours is sitting at the NVC now too.

We got worried about not hearing anything from the NVA yet so we called and got our case number. The guy on the phone said we only get notified when they send the case to the Consulate, which surprised me.

Oh, perfect. Thanks powerpuff!

Hey Everyone,

Both my fiancée and I have moved (within our own countries) since I filed the I-129f petition. I did USCIS' change of address thing for me but it's not clear if I need to do that for her as well? Is there some other way I'm supposed to update her address? I'm assuming the consulate will need her address to mail her stuff for the interview.

We recently submitted a reply to an RFE so I'm kinda expecting to get a NOA2 in the next few weeks.

Yeah, we're sure. The only stamp she has is for a crossing in 2017.

Thanks Stella and Julija.

Our biggest issue is we have a lack of photos, hence asking about affidavits. We have also a ton of trips but not a whole lot between them. We're not big photo takers, she drove almost every time she came here, and because it's Canada and the US travel insurance was included with her CC and we just didn't get passport stamps. The financial records I think will add a lot though, especially since she spent a whole summer here one year.

2 minutes ago, JFH said:

USCs don’t get an I-94 record. But your fiancé should be able to access hers via the website. Do you have financial records that place you in her hometown (and her in yours)? ATM records, credit card usage, etc? 

Wow I didn't even think about financial records. Yeah, I should have plenty of those. Thanks!

Apparently not. When looking myself up on i94.cbp.dhs.gov it says no record found. The most recent one for my fiancée is in 2018, which is for one of the few times she flew here. I can get travel history for my fiancée though, and it shows every arrival but not every departure. Could still help though.

Ok, so the affidavits are bit flexible. Any idea if they need wet signatures? I'm guessing not if they don't need notarization. Would certainly make things faster if they don't.

Thanks Steve!

Hi All,

We could use some advice on what evidence to give, specifically affidavits.

We have a ton of visits over the time period but unfortunately we didn't plan ahead well enough and there's not an abundance of evidence to submit. We visited each others families for Christmas 2019 and got just two photos with more than just us in them, which is more than can be said of the other trips, so we figured that would be the trip to focus on. Canada/USA crossings don't typically get passport stamps and for this Christmas trip we drove across each way so no airline receipts either. Because of the lack of stuff, we included our Google Timeline histories in the packet which show us traveling together for the whole trip of almost two weeks. We're thinking USCIS didn't really know what to do with the Google Timelines though, 'cause they sent us an RFE.

In hindsight, we could've done a better job of presenting the evidence. The Google Timeline screenshots had her name and email but mine didn't. The photos where in the packet but didn't have the date and place info handwritten on them (though the info was typed elsewhere in the packet, referencing the page with the photos.) So we're fixing what we think needs it but we also want to add a bit more, specifically affidavits from our families saying we were there. I haven't been able to find much additional info on what's needed for affidavits though. Most of the info I have is from the RFE packet itself, which has some decent info on what the affidavits should contain but doesn't say anything about how they should be structured.

Anyway, these are the questions I have.

The RFE says affidavits are, "Written statement sworn to or affirmed by two persons, other than [yourselves]..." Trying to not take it too literally, it sounds like we should have one affidavit signed by everyone at a particular event. So we'd have one affidavit for Christmas with her family and one for Christmas with mine. Having one affidavit for everyone involved is not what we should do. Does that sound right?

Looking up the definition of 'affidavit' it sounds like they need to be notarized. The RFE doesn't mention notarization at all though. Is notarization necessary?

Any other comments or suggestions are totally welcome.

Thanks everyone!