kiwipete

@kiwierin I was just in the process of making the same post 😂 ours just came through as well. Congrats! Crazy to think it's really happened after all this time.

That was the feeling I got as well so nice to hear it from someone else too. Oh thanks! Not sure how I'd missed this one. I have 'Administrative Processing' from 25 May. One more website to obsessively check 😂

@kiwierin sorry to hear that - it's tough being so close then back in the waiting game. That I-864 is a tricky form (I found it to be at least). Our joint sponsor is my stepfather (US citizen) because we were expecting to need a joint sponsor. The officer said everything else looked good, so hopefully it's just a case of waiting for them to review again. Hopefully keeping the passport is a good sign and we're not back in the 60-day review period! Wish the process was a little more transparent, but I guess that's the deal. Good luck! FWIW my overall case is just showing "Your case is currently at: Auckland", and the re-submitted I-864 is showing as "Submitted" (but the summary section for the joint sponsor still shows "Accepted"). Not sure if that's helpful and/or where the overall case status would change.

We've been through there a couple of times recently, once on a visitor visa as a family, and my wife and son recently (both US citizens). Immigration was straight forward, and lines in my experience a bit shorter than SFO (I lived in SF on a work visa previously, so went through immigration there a few times). The SFO lines vary a lot depending on which long-haul flights arrive at the same time/before you. For HNL the issue (from what I remember) is it's a bit of a hike between the international/domestic terminal, so you just need to factor in that time + immigration time if you have a short time between connections. This is mainly relevant if you're booking something like NZAA-KHNL-KOAK - my wife did this recently with our son and they just made it through customs etc. and to the domestic flight. If my visa's approved, I'm planning to go that way (NZAA-KHNL-KOAK) but going to try and book the domestic flight separately to get a longer connection.

Had the interview last Wednesday, but got caught out by a missing field on the I-864 form (affidavit of support). Our joint/financial sponsor is retired so selected retired and didn't fill out the Annual Income. We are doing it based on income as opposed to assets because he still has some income from his business, and thought tax returns would be easier than getting all the proof of assets together (possibly not at this point). Silly mistake I should have caught, oh well. Fortunately the Consular Officer said everything else was good so they held on to my passport and asked me to resubmit the form. Resubmitted the same afternoon, and now we wait (at least we're getting good at that part!). Unfortunate timing with them being closed on the last Friday of the month, and then Memorial Day yesterday. Hopefully that's the last thing that needs to be sorted -- been apart from my wife & 2 year old for 2 months now, so hopefully not too much longer 🙁 ... or at least I get my passport back so I can visit them.

@chevin thanks so much for posting the follow-up. It's very informative, but also so nice to have a recent experience posted for knowing what to expect. An update from me. Yesterday I had the medical exam at CityMed (9am) and dropped off the documents to the Consulate before (8am). I'll post a detailed recount -- never know which little piece of info someone might find useful (like I have - thanks everyone!) Rescheduling medical: I originally had it scheduled last week, but my flight to AKL was canceled. Rescheduling with CityMed for this week was no problem, but they mentioned the US immigration medical can be one of the trickier ones to schedule because they need nurse, doctor, and radiography appointments to be available all together. That said, I got the day I wanted. Time required before interview -- they use digital forms. Everyone advised that it takes about 2-3 days for the test results to come back, and for them to be sent to the consulate. My (rescheduled) medical was 8 days before my interview; everyone seemed to think that would be more than enough time. Accommodation, etc: I stayed at the Rydges on Federal Street. Price was OK, ~170 NZD. I joined the 'PriorityGUEST' rewards club when I booked on the website. It was free to join, got me a few $ off the booking, and 20% of food/drink (although the meals at the hotel were a bit spendy so I didn't end up going there). I caught the SkyDrive bus. $17 each way. Goes from the Auckland Airport domestic terminal to the Skytower (2 blocks from the Rydges). Can book ahead online (same price) or the driver has an EFTPOS machine and most people were just paying by Paywave as they got on the bus. Double-decker bus, lots of room for people & bags, very comfortable. There is an NZ Post (for the oft-mentioned courier bag) on Wellesley St West. It doesn't look like it from the street (esp. with construction) but it's there. You go down an alleyway - if you're on Wellesley St West looking at the Wellesley Centre, it's on the left. Go down the alley and the shop is on the right. It's small, but has the bags. Dropping off documents: Arrived early, about 7:45am. The security guard was there but no-one else. As you turn left out of the elevator, there are 2 drop boxes against the far wall - one for immigration documents. I think this is probably where you drop the documents, but I wasn't sure (and didn't want to put the pack with all the original certificates etc. in the wrong place!) so I asked the security guard. He just ended up taking the packet, scanning it through the x-ray machine, and saying he'd sort it out. Easy drop-off. Medical: Got in ~20 mins early to fill in paperwork. The paperwork was just a general CityMed registration form, no extensive background questions at this point. Handed it back and they said to go to Waiting Room 1. Appointment was scheduled 9am, got seen ~9:10am. First stop was nurse #1: Passport Quick eye test (I normally wear glasses but asked to try without, we went to the second-from-bottom row and he called that a pass). Took height, weight. Took a urine sample. Bit awkward because you have to walk through the waiting room to get to/from the bathroom, but what are you gonna do. Trickiest part was washing hands while trying not to drop the tube. I think this was where I got the test forms to take to each person (some wanted them, some didn't). Nurse sent me to Dr. Donna: Wanted to see record of vaccines - couldn't accept the print-out from MyHealth because it didn't have my name on it. I logged into MyHealth on my phone and showed her it matched up, that was fine. I had printed test results for Varicella that I got a few weeks ago because I had no proof of having had chickenpox. This did have my name on it and was fine. I also happened to have my Plunket book with vaccination records in it - she got reception to photocopy it and write my name on it. Apparently they have recently received an update about COVID vaccines. Her understanding was only 2 are required, but offered me the 3rd booster (was behind). I have a flu vaccine from July 2022 (so within the year) but they wanted a current one. Fortunately (at least in this case) I'm an asthmatic so these were both free. Asked some medical history questions - mainly concerned with gonorrhea, syphilis, TB, and mental illness as far as I could tell. Asked about smoking, not much about family history. Controlled asthma was fine. Physical test - stripped down to undies (a sheet was offered). Pretty brief, maybe 3 mins. Poked some organs, checked pulse, ears, eyes, tongue. No jumping jacks or anything like that. Back to waiting room #1 Nurse #2: Top-up jabs (current flu, and COVID booster) Draw blood for blood tests Then down to radiology for Chest Xray - waited for maybe 5 mins, then about 1 minute having the Xray taken All done. Total time - arrived 8:40am (early), left 10:40am. Hope that's helpful, happy to answer any questions!

@MaliceDaMeanest thanks - picked one up just to be safe. Hopefully I haven't forgotten anything, it's quite a stack of paper

I have a question about the pre-interview pack (IR1 visa) that I'm planning to drop off this week. I saw a few posts mentioning to include a self-addressed courier envelope, but I can't find this instruction anywhere in the correspondence from NVC/ACK, or on the ACK pre-interview document instructions. Does anyone know if it's required?

Following up my previous post. I just talked to/scheduled with CityMed. They said for the eMedical it usually takes ~48 hours to get the documents to the consulate. With paper forms it's longer, but usually less than a week. So she said booking the medical 2 weeks ahead of the interview date was no problem.

I emailed the consulate to double-check how early I could drop off my documents (just to see if I got the same reply as above). Here's what they said: So I'm considering scheduling my medical 2 weeks before the interview so I can drop off the documents at the same time and keep everyone happy. Is this too close to the interview date? I don't want to delay the visa being issued if the medical results haven't been received at the consulate by the interview date. But I also don't want to make a trip to Auckland just to drop off the documents!

Ours just came through as well, interview scheduled for 24 May. Sounds like it’ll be a fun little get together 😄

@kiwierin congratulations! It's a huge milestone. No interview date yet unfortunately but will keep you posted. @MaliceDaMeanest thanks for sharing the info, I think this will become the thread I was looking for a few months ago 😁 Did you find out whether you can drop the docs off to the consulate early (when you go for the medical)? I remember seeing threads about them actually being able to be couriered, despite the consulate instructions being that you have to drop them on site. Don't quote me on that though.

@MaliceDaMeanest very useful, thanks. I was assuming a trip to AKL for the medical, but saw somewhere the other day (can't find it now) a site listing Wellington and Christchurch as options. Good to know that's not the case & thanks for the updated info. Getting a definitive answer was on my todo list. I know I'm asking a lot, but it'd be nice if all the websites/forms were consistent 😅

@kiwierin that's awesome, good luck. For what it's worth (not sure about your situation) we thought we had a pretty straight-forward case, but NVC requested additional documents twice which added about an extra 2 months beyond what we were expecting. Although, review times are coming down now to ~3 weeks. You may already have been playing this game it was painful. If our timeline is the same as @MaliceDaMeanest (28 days from DQ to getting an interview date, then 57 days to interview) we'd expect: Receive interview date: 23 March Interview date: 19 May @MaliceDaMeanest I know you'd done a bunch more research on this timeline so please chime in if my dates are off. Good luck everyone

@MaliceDaMeanest congrats and thanks for posting the update. Nothing for us yet but helpful to have a rough idea of how far out they are. A little longer than I was expecting -- I saw reports of it being within 3-4 weeks, but it could certainly be worse.

Hah! Thanks for all your work then, and good luck. I'll update here once we have ours too, always nice to have current info

Any chance you've had an update on your case? We received DQ from NVC last Thursday (23 Feb) for my IR1, trying to get a rough idea of how long it might take until the interview's scheduled. I emailed the Auckland consulate to ask, who just said to contact NVC.

Update - the joint sponsor is showing as added to the case this morning. So it took a little more than 1 hour, but less than a day. Now that we can view the documentation requirements, they also need a proof of US domicile (separate to the petitioner). We're going to try a US driver license and utility bill based on other VJ comments -- will update if it works.

Hi everyone, given a few of you will hopefully be going through the NVC/CEAC process soon, I thought I'd share a gotchas from our experience in case it helps speed things up. They're all mentioned in other threads here, but figured a timely note might not hurt :) Fees - need to be paid from a US checking/savings account. For some reason I thought we could use a credit card, so we ended losing a couple of days to transfer money to my wife's US account for us to pay. Payment processing time - takes a couple of days to process, and you can't upload/fill out forms until it's processed -- so do this ASAP so you can get on with the rest. If you're using a joint sponsor - there are two steps: 1) add them to the case, 2) upload supporting documents To add the JS you need their I-864 and a proof of citizenship (eg. passport). After you've uploaded those there's a processing time to add them to the case, and you can't upload any supporting documents (tax transcripts/returns, W-2s, etc.) until this has been processed. The CEAC website says "up to an hour" but there are threads on VJ with people being stuck for a couple of weeks (mainly in 2021, so this might be fixed now). I added a JS ~45 mins ago, and currently stuck on this step. So if you're using a JS, add them early! You can't upload support documents (eg. tax transcript/return, W2, etc.) until they've been "added to the case". DS-260 (general)- not too bad, but there are a couple of parts that require a long history; for me it was everywhere I've lived since 16, and everywhere I've worked for the last 10 years. The DS-260 is filled out interactively on the website (so you can't access it until you access the CEAC site), but there is a draft DS-260 that you can view before you get access. I would highly recommend reading through this and gathering all the info you'll need ahead of time. DS-260 (form timeouts) -- filling out the form, the form timed out frequently for me (and I'm a pretty fast typer). Especially on the long forms (eg. 10 years employment history). I'd recommend having all the info ready to go and fill it in quickly (and carefully). If you take time to look up dates in emails (like I was), the form will probably time out and you'll need to log into the CEAC website again. The form does save after each step, and there's an option to manually save, but it won't do it unless all fields are valid. I-864s - these are submitted as PDF uploads (ie. not an online form). They're available online, so I'd recommend you get everyone you need to fill them out ahead of time, and collect supporting documents the supporting documents. The forms aren't too arduous, but they are tricky. I would highly, highly recommend reading the I-864 instructions very carefully. There are VisaJourney threads for just about every curly question/situation you'd have - I used these forums a lot. An example of 'tricky' is that my wife is employed, but her income is $0 (because none of it is qualifying income). These are all spelt out in the I-864 instructions and FAQs, but there's no mention of many of the gotchas on the actual I-864 form itself. I-864 - need to be filled out typed or in black ink. I-864 - the downloaded form appeared to be password protected (I was able to fill most of it out on my laptop, but my wife/relatives couldn't). Some fields also don't seem to work correctly (eg. there's an auto-calculated field for number of household members that just doesn't change, and the phone number for me wasn't long enough to accept a NZ phone number). We ended up printing it, hand-filling, and scanning. Resizing PDFs - they all need to be under 2MB. This was fiddly on a Mac (there is a default 'Export and Reduce file size' setting in preview, but the result was unreadable). Solution: (Mac only, sorry) go to this question on StackExchange and look for the second answer: "Use Apple's built-in ColorSync Utility to create a custom filter" (the accepted answer is really fiddly, requires you to edit a config file, and didn't work properly for me anyway). In short, you use ColorSync to create the filter, which then becomes available in Preview when you go File > Export. This is the fastest/easiest way to fiddle with compression settings to get a mix of under 2MB, but also still readable. That's all I can think of now, and hope it saves someone some pain!

Case update -- unless I'm getting something wrong, it looks like our petition was approved?! I'd been checking the USCIS Case Status Online tool every day and noticed the 'actively reviewing' date changed from 2 Feb (when we filed) to 18 Nov. My wife checked the USCIS portal and there was an approval notice. Not sure if she also got emailed about it. Weirdly, both the USCIS portal and the case status tool still both show 'actively reviewing' from 18 Nov, but I read sometimes they're slow to update after sending the notice. We were expecting Feb 2023 and were actually about to submit K-3 visa paperwork, but I'm not complaining! The only other thing I can think of is I submitted an entry for the Diversity Visa (DV-2024) program on Nov 8, but not sure how that would have any impact. We started at Nebraska. The Approval Notice came from Texas, so we must have been transferred at some point. Hope more come through soon for everyone else as well

Sorry that’s an (important) typo. My wife’s a US citizen and moved with me to NZ (I sponsored her residency). She is a dual citizen now.

@Bajinga thanks for your reply. That’s what I was expecting but it’s great to have someone with more knowledge help validate it. We’ll press on with the I-130! Thank you

My wife who’s a US citizen (married 2019, child who is a US citizen).

I was working in the US on an H-1B, with a company who had filed an I-140 for me. The company was acquired in 2017 and my role was restructured out. My H-1B expiry date was in August 2017 so I elected to return to New Zealand with my NZ fiancé (now wife). Fast-forward to now, we want to return to the US to be near family. I’ve filed an I-130 and tracked down the immigration attorney that filed the I-140 to check the status in case it came up, assuming it was abandoned when the company was acquired/I was made redundant. Surprisingly, their reply was that the I-140 was filed by the acquiring company, and was approved in Feb 2018 (6 months after redundancy and leaving the US) but that I never filed the I-485 (makes sense). I didn’t get any notification about the approval, I assume it was sent to my old work email (that’s on me). I have two questions: 1. Is that I-140 approval likely to have any impact on my current I-130 application. 2. Is there any chance that I-140 approval might still be able to be used if I file the I-485 for it? I’m guessing the answer is an obvious ‘no’ after 5 years in New Zealand, but can’t hurt to ask. I’m not employed by that company any more, but saw various things about if the I-140 hadn’t been withdrawn by the company after 180 days there were some special cases. Thanks for any help!

Well said. We're prepared for the wait and it all seems pretty fair so far, just tricky planning things with such a big variance (eg. do we visit family in the US in November, or are we likely to get an approval some time close to then... etc.). It is what it is, and we're together in the meantime so I feel pretty lucky all things considered. Thank you (and thanks @Mor) for the tips, I'll try these out.