Ren & Osas

I agree with others. This doesn't make any sense and if you don't enter on your immigrant visa before it expires then you have to get another visa but most importantly you all need to find a good immigration attorney fast. Check out McBean Law. They handle complicated cases and can request all records for you all's case. Hurry as this is an urgent matter. Additionally, I know people that have waited months before flying to the US with their immigrant visa. It has nothing to do with that at all. That's why it has an expiration date. As long as you get here before then you are good based upon the law. I hope that everything works out. 

Matt,
This maybe true. It's a gamble but at this point everything immigration is a gamble. If they choose not to do it, it's certainly a good thing that the foreign spouse has a B2. At this point, we are talking about 1.5-2 years minimum before you all will receive an interview. The biggest advice is not to wait to file. However, if you all so choose to try the K3 visa, make sure you have everything ready at the same time for the I-130 and I-129 Petition. The process is to do the I-130 wait for proof of receipt and then do the I-129 providing proof of receipt of the I-130. Then, it's time. If, the I-129 gets approved before the I-130, then you're in luck. Otherwise, you will have to wait for the I-130. I hope this helps. 

The chances of a K-3 being approved are close to 0%.  In 2019, there were 5 approved world-wide......and fewer in 2020,  The K-3 is essentailly dead.
 
https://www.fickeymartinezlaw.com/immigration/consular-processing/k-3-visa-2019-fiscal-year-the-ever-diminishing-visa-option/

It's about a year turnaround time. So, maybe July/August. 

My wife was denied a B-1/B-2 visa while we were dating, probably BECAUSE she had one of her sons already living in the USA.  He came on an employment contract, married an American citizen lady and got a Green Card.  But the fact she was denied a B-1/B-2 visa had NO effect on getting the K-1.  They did ask about her son at the AOS interview, however...

Thank you so much. Is there a way for me to find this information or a website I can check to see where Lagos is in the Visa process?

I know that IR1/CR1 got ILs on Wednesday and Thursday of this past week. Several people received them that were DQ'd October and November 2020. 

You can see the positive side: if they visited him it means your case is moving. Hopefully you'll receive good news soon.

Good point.....movement is a good thing....

unfotrunately our news is focused on the negative but reading the report from Rice University it says the following:
 
According to Rice University research, Nigerian Americans are the most educated group in the United States.[21][22]
According to the 2008-2012 American Community Survey conducted by the U.S. Census Bureau, 61.4% of Nigerian Americans aged 25 years or older hold a bachelor's degree or higher, compared to 28.5% of the total U.S. population.[2
 
So,  when he comes , encourage him to excel and just love what the 2 of u an accomplish together

Omg….. we honestly had no idea that this happened. That is so infuriating and sad. Definitely not part of any scheme. Just in love and would like to start our family soon. 

i had just read about this on the following site about Black Axe crime syndicate:
 
https://therecord.media/us-arrests-33-bec-scammers-linked-to-nigerian-crime-syndicate/
 
they are using dating sites like Plenty of fish and match.com
 
will USCIS come to visit u?    I doubt it    unless they have reason  to believe u are part of a sceme
(it would be Department of Homeland Security and they should have ID and give u a card with all info on it)
 
Does it mean case is near the end?    who knows for sure -  surely none of us is privy to that information
 
 

Hey, has anyone received any news about interviews happening in Lagos or received an interview date?

I think this is an immigration question, she wants to know how to get him deported.

You can always choose not to fly then. People's paranoia doesn't give them the right to force a medical treatment on me or my family in order for us to travel.

I don't want to fly with a tube full of unvaccinated people, but to each their own.
 

Word is Biden wants to impose a vaccine mandate for anyone who wants to fly US citizen or not. We are planning a trip to visit my wife's family next year or as soon as the Philippines lifts their covid restrictions. She hasn't seen them in 5 years and they have never met our 3 year old but if vaccines are gonna be required we aren't going I guess.

If an ITIN wasn't available then why does the IRS have acceptance agents located in foreign countries.   You received bad info.

It doesn't work that way. My husband filed in February 2018 and my status was automatically updated to IR1 by the time my case got to NVC (December 2019) because my marriage was 2yrs by then (Got Married in December 2017). I got a 10yrs GC when I came to US. 

I just wanted to say thanks to @pyridine for posting this thread and your original on using the Exceptional Circumstances route.  I was told that my wife would have to use the lockbox and wait 18 months to get her IR1 visa, which would mean that I would have been separated from my family for an unacceptably long time.   In the end we got it in about 2.5 months (that's with a 10 day national holiday in Japan; without golden week I think we could have done it in 2 months).  I would not have been able to do it without the information on this forum.
 
Our Timeline:
March 18th - I got my offer letter and contacted the Embassy in Tokyo the same day.  They make you go though a third party customer service provider who has no knowledge of exceptional circumstances.
March 20th - I get a response from the third party customer service provider providing me  the contact email of the immigrant visa section at the embassy, I contact the embassy the same day and they replied (the same day) confirming that ISCIS had authorized State to process my I-130 and set an appointment for my I-130 petition interview.
Late March-Early April - Thanks to the advice from @pyridine, I was forewarned that I need to start getting documents in hand, so we applied for police certificates in the 3 countries we had lived in.  The longest of these (the PRC), took about a month.
April 8th - I-130 petition interview
April 11th - Wife completes medical check
April 17th - I-130 is approved and we are given instructions on completing the DS-260 online.  We completed the DC-160 on the same day, and request an appointment.
April 18th - Receive my wife's appointment for her IR1 visa interview, which is scheduled for May 28th (they say this is the next available date).
May 28th - My wife has a brief interview and her visa is told her visa is approved at the end of the interview.  They take her passport and our pre-addressed express envelope and we are told we will have the passport back in less than 7 days.
 
 

We just completed a similar process. Many thanks to @pyridine for posting all the details of your experience - you saved us a lot hassle! (more on that later!)
Background:  I am the child of a US expat living in Sweden. In April, I applied for a job in the US (a very good job with a "famous" US employer).

Our timeline:
 
May 1: receive employment letter, with start date July 1. May 2: email US embassy asking for instructions how to apply for exceptional circumstance DCF at Stockholm embassy. May 2: (half an hour later) embassy replies, telling us to mail in I-130, a copy of the bio page of petitioner's passport, completed G-325As with passport-style photos for both petitioner and beneficiary, as well as a letter explaining our claim to exceptional circumstance (short relocation for a job) and evidence for this. The embassy also informed us that all this will be forwarded to USCIS London. May 3:  Mail in the required documents. May 14: Email embassy asking if they'd gotten our docs. May 15: Embassy replies, confirming that they'd received our mail, and that they'd just sent a follow-up enquiry to USCIS London to find out what was happening. May 16: Embassy tells us that USCIS has given permission to do DCF, and that we need to send in a money order of $535 for the I-130 filing fee and a copy of the bio page of the beneficiary's passport. May 18: Embassy receives money order and copy of passport. May 21: Embassy informs my wife that they've approved the I-130, and sends her the checklist for the interview. May 24: We inform embassy that we've collected the required documents and that the medical has been scheduled for June 7. May 25: Embassy says that June 12 is available for an interview, if it is suitable for us. June 12: Interview at embassy in Stockholm. Everything goes well. Wife gets 221(g) pending medical results. In the embassy checklist, under the instructions for the I-864, the embassy writes "If the U.S. Petitioner has no current U.S. income, he/she will also need to either need to provide proof of assets or find a financial joint sponsor who completes an additional Affidavit of Support with supporting documents."
Thanks to @pyridine, we knew about this at the beginning of May, which allowed us to make preparations! Since we are quite young (mid-to-late twenties), we didn't have the assets directly available. However, my future employer gave me a large advance, which, combined with our savings was more than enough assets.
We made up 2 AoS (the first counting this advance as income-which was more than enough, the second counting it as an asset). The embassy didn't want the income one.
The Stockholm embassy has been really helpful throughout the whole process! All our emails have been quickly answered.
 

This isn't an expedite at all so make sure not to use that terminology with the consulate. An actual expedite is extremely difficult to get - this is not that (which I think caused some confusion from others claiming definitively this was impossible), it's just doing the filing of the I-130 in another location not ordinarily approved for non-DCF countries but usually approved if you have any of the listed circumstances, that happens to make things much much faster than the normal route. You can find the official list of exceptional circumstances maybe earlier in this post or my earlier one, but it merely says a "short notice job relocation or new job offer".
 
I asked our attorney what constitutes "short notice" and she said there's no clear definition but that 3 months, which was what I had before needing to start, most certainly qualified. Beyond that, I guess it's getting more uncertain but any realistic offer will start well before Chicago lockbox would go through so it's always worth a shot trying this. And 3 months was quite far out too, I pushed it as far as this company would allow and it's definitely not standard, they wanted me in more like 1 month but too bad, I couldn't do that.
 
You don't need to prove anything about financial loss to company or about specialty of your role. I only submitted the job offer letter and attorney made it sound a bit dramatic how important the company's work was and my role at the company in the letter, very briefly, but I tend to doubt that was necessary. 
 
I will say she also expounded on the fact that I'm pregnant in the letter as well and the hardship to be caused by being separated from my husband, which is a second exceptional circumstance, but I didn't send anything proving that. You just use whatever you've got, but our situation was definitely such that I wasn't going to go for this job and would renege on the offer unless we could do DCF because it just wasn't worth it. He's now trailing me going by 3 weeks and I'm glad it's not any longer since I'm already getting a bit disabled by pregnancy. 

It is good to hear that you didn't waste money on this lawyer.  Yes, VJ is great for those able to do things themselves, and it is always good to get stories like yours for those that come after.

Thanks! And yeah - the attorney assistance was provided to us by the company hiring me. I would have blown my brains out if I had actually paid for her advice myself. Sometimes it's easier to just figure things out yourself (and hopefully my story here can provide a bit of that for those who can't afford an attorney). She did provide a bit of early assurance that this DCF thing was possible though, although she misunderstood the details of the entire process in general. And she helped us figure out how to proceed despite missing one of the key documents up until well, the day it suddenly came, in one form or another. But we're done with her now that the visa is being issued!

you are incorrect Sir/ma. it does not matter when they filed, what qualifies him for 10yrs card is if at the time he was admitted into the country the marriage is 2 years or more and if it was less than than 2yrs at the time he was admitted into the country he will only get 2yrs card. @Orafu LAWRENCE it was a mistake from USCIS