CelloLover

I wrote to the office in Frankfurt and explained our situation. The reply reply did not mention the possibility of expediting for Ukrainians.
I wrote to my congresswomen with the suggestion that the medical be waived for Ukrainians. After all, the Border Patrol is releasing 10s of thousands into the US every month with no medical exam. This suggestion was forwarded to the Frankfurt Consulate.

Cello - have you considered having her go to the border and asking/applying for humanitarian parole?  My ukrainian significant other other is looking at doing this in a couple of weeks.  If yours is already in Canada, has she researched this (humanitarian parole) and decided not to pursue it?

Montreal has a reputation for being slow

Wow, so you're saying if you had initiated the medical appointment scheduling process on Tuesday, the earliest appointment you could've secured would've been June 29? That's about a 2.5 month delta.
 
 

My NVC expedite for I129-F has been accepted by the US embassy in Frankfurt and I wanted to communicate with the consular officer to request to allow my fiance and her kids to get the required medical tests done in Warsaw, Poland. In connection to that I have emailed to IRCFrankfurt@state.gov (For Public Affairs) but there is no response whatsoever and it has been 3 days now. Does anyone know what would be the right email address to reach the visa section directly?
 
Secondly, do we need to fill the DS-160 form before the US embassy in Frankfurt contacts us to schedule the interview or have to wait for the direction from the US embassy in Frankfurt? Only people who have gone through the process answer as I want to keep the guess work out. Thanks!

My NOA2 is March 17. I don’t know when NVC received my case - when our legal rep reached out to check on it and confirm the transfer request, we found out it was already in transit to Frankfurt. It will take several weeks to receive and process.
 
I don’t have an interview date yet - from what I know, Frankfurt is a self-scheduling embassy so you can pick a date via USTraveldocs. Besides Frankfurt has this option for ukrainians:
 
I will try to have the medical in Paris since I’ve been in contact with them and they were willing to find a free spot when needed.

Our friends were let in through Niagara Falls pedestrian bridge. However, they were heavily questioned why they don't stay in Canada which let them in on an emergency visa. I've also read in telegram that some people were turned away. 

Just wanted to post and update for anyone who was interested. I left the U.S to be with my fiancé in Wroclaw Poland, where she fled after the war started. We were together there for about 3 weeks while waiting for results from our expedite request (still waiting, although I'm pretty sure we have to do things differently now).  We both decided to try to cross the Mexican Tijuana border after a family member got in contact with a pastor who was in the news for his church helping Ukrainians cross. We joined a telegram group full of Ukrainians who were asking questions about the process and those who have already crossed. After some discussion about how things work and if we could feasibly make the journey, we started to book our tickets. This part wasn't easy due to travel restrictions and other details that aren't so important. On March 26th until the morning of March 27th, we started booking tickets for March 28th to get from Poland to Tijuana. Not everyone booked there tickets the same way we did, but we took the advice of the telegram group which was to book round trip tickets, and a hotel room in Cancun. The reason we did that is for when we had to talk with Mexican Border patrol at the airport, we could show we had a plan to be there and a plan to return. We chose to go to Cancun like many others because at the time there was a risk if flying directly to Tijuana, that we would be denied entry. Apparently the thinking was it will be more believable to fly into Cancun "for vacation" first. I'm pretty sure this is no longer the case, and it is possible to fly directly to Tijuana (But I can't be 100% sure).  After about 1 day worth of layovers in different airports and about 1 day of flying we arrived in Tijuana at about 5 pm. We were met there by members of different churches who were working together to organize transportation to the border. People with children were prioritized, especially with younger children, and also pregnant women. At around 10 pm, after a few groups before us were transported to the border, it was our turn. We had the option to either wait at the border, or try to arrange a hotel and private transportation the next day, because it was highly unlikely any of us would be able to cross quickly. We chose to go directly to the border and not risk doing things differently,  which could have possibly resulted in an even longer time at the border. The situation at the border was shocking to say the least. I don't know what I was expecting honestly but it was an eye opening experience. The organizers and even some locals did there best to provide food and blankets for people, but people were crammed into this small narrow building that had 1 bathroom without a door handle on it. The floors cement and hard to get any sleep on. I can go into much more detail but will not to keep this long story as brief as possible, just know the situation was far from good or comfortable, and in my humble opinion, borderline inhumane. I can say that it seemed like more supplies were coming as time went on, and they were doing their best to make the situation as comfortable as possible (Children's comfort was also prioritized and most Ukrainians worked together to ensure everyone had what they needed). After staying overnight and waiting about 14 or 15 hours, the group we were assigned to was chosen to go next. We walked out of the refugee camp for lack of a better term, and made our way directly to the border. Here we were chosen in small groups within our group of 30 or so people to interview with the 3 border guards assigned to handle Ukrainian cases. We waited at this border entrance for around 8 hours while many other people were entering in front of us for normal immigrations purposes during this whole time. Finally after so many hours and such a long journey, my fiancé was able to interview with a border guard, while I had to cross through a different area like normal U.S citizens. After about 30 mins of waiting for her, she was granted humanitarian parole and crossed over. We were met by more Ukrainians and church members who helped us arranged 2 nights with a host family so we could avoid spending more on hotels and transportation to the airport. We arrived in my home state of Maine a coupled days ago and are trying to get settled in. We will look into acquiring the services of an immigration attorney soon to see what our next step is to allow her to legally stay here permanently, as I'm pretty sure our current K1 application will no longer be valid. Anyways I'm sorry for such a long post, just thought I'd share some of our story and the information gathered along the way for anyone who was interested. Good luck to anyone attempting to get to the U.S through this method and to everyone who is currently waiting for their cases to move along.

Do you need to first have an NVC case number before filing for expedite?
 
 Can you expedite a k1 case?

Both got emails

Thanks for the reply! 
 
How did they contact you in 2018?

USCIS recieved my I-129F mid-July of last year. According to current USCIS case-processing times, it was on track to being reviewed some time between August-September.
 
I called USCIS to expedite processing of our application a couple weeks before the war started and our request was denied.
 
I called again to USCIS last week to re-request expedited processing. Today I checked the stauts of our case and saw not that expedited processing was approved, but our I-129F was APPROVED.
 
Wow.
 
Next step is NVC, which is known to be slow as well. Can this step be expedited as well? Also, I would like to route our application to an embassy in Canada. Who should I contact to do this? NVC?

USCIS recieved my I-129F mid-July of last year. According to current USCIS case-processing times, it was on track to being reviewed some time between August-September.
 
I called USCIS to expedite processing of our application a couple weeks before the war started and our request was denied.
 
I called again to USCIS last week to re-request expedited processing. Today I checked the stauts of our case and saw not that expedited processing was approved, but our I-129F was APPROVED.
 
Wow.
 
Next step is NVC, which is known to be slow as well. Can this step be expedited as well? Also, I would like to route our application to an embassy in Canada. Who should I contact to do this? NVC?

USCIS recieved my I-129F mid-July of last year. According to current USCIS case-processing times, it was on track to being reviewed some time between August-September.
 
I called USCIS to expedite processing of our application a couple weeks before the war started and our request was denied.
 
I called again to USCIS last week to re-request expedited processing. Today I checked the stauts of our case and saw not that expedited processing was approved, but our I-129F was APPROVED.
 
Wow.
 
Next step is NVC, which is known to be slow as well. Can this step be expedited as well? Also, I would like to route our application to an embassy in Canada. Who should I contact to do this? NVC?

Submitted a second request for expedited processing of my I129F and was approved! First one was submitted a few days before war started 2nd one I submitted 2/28 and just received the email it was accepted. Now the problem is that there is no way to obtain a police report. Police said they can't provide this due to the war. I am hoping USCIS will allow Ukrainian's to do without the certificate. 

No B visa. We would attempt to fly into a US airport without visa and say that she is here to apply for asylum status.
By telling people at the outbound airport that we are flying to US to seek asylum status due to war back at home.

No B visa. We would attempt to fly into a US airport without visa and say that she is here to apply for asylum status.
By telling people at the outbound airport that we are flying to US to seek asylum status due to war back at home.

Couldn't we tell the airport official at the origin airport that we are going to the US to seek asylum?

No B visa. We would attempt to fly into a US airport without visa and say that she is here to apply for asylum status.
By telling people at the outbound airport that we are flying to US to seek asylum status due to war back at home.

The list of reasons the representative read to me over the phone are exactly the ones listed on the official USCIS webpage titled "How to Make an Expedite Request". The reasons are listed in bolded text. At the time of this writing, there are 5 reasons beginning with "Severe financial loss..." and ending with "Clear USCIS error".

I called USCIS to ask to file an expedited processing request. The representative gave me a list of reasons to select from and I chose "national security interest". The representative took down my email and told me that I would hear back within 7 days. I got a response by email today and it was a rejection. They said "Although your situation appears serious, the information you have provided is insufficient to establish that your expedite request meets the following guidelines." The information I provided was that I wanted to expedite due concerns of imminent war with Russia.

I called USCIS to ask to file an expedited processing request. The representative gave me a list of reasons to select from and I chose "national security interest". The representative took down my email and told me that I would hear back within 7 days. I got a response by email today and it was a rejection. They said "Although your situation appears serious, the information you have provided is insufficient to establish that your expedite request meets the following guidelines." The information I provided was that I wanted to expedite due concerns of imminent war with Russia.

Thanks for following up!

I applied to Warsaw for B2 visas for my Ukrainian in-laws based on 2 reasons: 1) this page on the US Embassy of Poland's web page which implies that non-citizens of Poland can apply for B1/B2 visas in Poland (as you also mentioned in your post) and 2) this was an option suggested by my friend who is an immigration attorney. One point about #2: she did ask me to verify with Warsaw before applying, but I didn't do it because of #1.

Another member did mention in a prior response to this thread that "non-citizens Poland" may be limited to only citizens of Belarus of Russia based on information in this page which states
 
A B1/B2 visa isn't an immigrant visa but the statement above does cast some doubt.

I've raised the concerns of this post to the US embassy of Poland and will post their response as soon as I get it.
 
I have not yet secured an interview spot in Warsaw. I've been refreshing the portal every day starting ~2 weeks ago. I was told by the embassy that more spots will open up "at the beginning of the year" (whatever that means).


 

Thanks for following up!

I applied to Warsaw for B2 visas for my Ukrainian in-laws based on 2 reasons: 1) this page on the US Embassy of Poland's web page which implies that non-citizens of Poland can apply for B1/B2 visas in Poland (as you also mentioned in your post) and 2) this was an option suggested by my friend who is an immigration attorney. One point about #2: she did ask me to verify with Warsaw before applying, but I didn't do it because of #1.

Another member did mention in a prior response to this thread that "non-citizens Poland" may be limited to only citizens of Belarus of Russia based on information in this page which states
 
A B1/B2 visa isn't an immigrant visa but the statement above does cast some doubt.

I've raised the concerns of this post to the US embassy of Poland and will post their response as soon as I get it.
 
I have not yet secured an interview spot in Warsaw. I've been refreshing the portal every day starting ~2 weeks ago. I was told by the embassy that more spots will open up "at the beginning of the year" (whatever that means).


 

Have your fiance's parents attend the B2 interview in Warsaw.  Since the system let them register and apply, they should be able to interview there.  I believe the wait time over there is about 35 days.  You or they van select their interview date for sometime in Jan or Feb.  They will need to abide by any travel restrictions for Poland/EU.
 
As others have mentioned, the MRV fee is nontransferable to Kyiv.
 
BTW, Krakow might have been a better location for the B2 interview.  Easier to get there by car, train or bus.  It's no real difference when flying, however.
 
If somehow they are not allowed to interview for the B2 in Poland, Kyiv is currently showing August 2022 dates for B1/B2.  A month ago we scheduled our nephew's B2 for Aug, then checked each day to see if we could reschedule to earlier.  Last week a day in May 2022 opened up (I guess someone cancelled or rescheduled).  Now he will interview in early May.