Kawika & Michelle

Once you have your case number you can complete your DS-160. Once that is completed, you can pay your MRV Fee. Once that is completed you can schedule your interview appointment. Once you have that you can schedule your medical exam...so on & so forth.

We checked her CFO certificate & there was no expiration date on it. Her counselor indicated to her at the time of issuance (2021) that it had no expiration for the country & the person that the certificate was issued for. So it would always be valid for me if she came to the US. If she ended up with someone else in the US or another country, then she would have to re-do the CFO process with that guy. And I guess if we decided to live outside of the US...then she would have needed a new CFO certificate for me & that country.

Hi Folks, I wanted to see if anyone that required a CFO has traveled since May 1st when they instituted the new digital certificate in lieu of the old sticker. I have heard several different things which have included still needing to go to the CFO office with your paper certificate so that they can put the discontinued sticker on your visa and others who have indicated that you can travel with your visa, passport & paper CFO certificate. Can anyone who has traveled since May 1st shed some light on how this new system works? Thanks! Kawika

In our situation, we originally had it set up to be delivered to her home address. Unfortunately we were contacted via email from a representative at LBC that her home was outside of LBC's delivery area so they requested that she provide them with the nearest LBC office that she could pick up her package from. He made sure to indicate that they would still be collecting the 440 pesos for premium delivery when she picks up the package. About a day later he responded with a tracking number that we could use to track the package. I'm not sure how we would have gotten the information otherwise, but I believe another person who had their interview on the same day as ours was also contacted by LBC with her tracking number in the email. We have the slightest bit of hope right now as I was unaware that the CFO office does not work on Fridays....so she needs to get her visa today by roughly noon in order to take the 3 hour bus ride into Cebu to get to the CFO office before it closes at 6 pm. I've also emailed the CFO directly to see if they can shed some light on what is the requirement since the new program was implemented on May 1st with digital certificates in lieu of stickers. My fiancé's friend who is on a CR1 visa went to the CFO last week & had a sticker put on her visa. Her counselor (prior to May 1st) indicated that she would need to bring her visa & her paper CFO certificate to get a sticker put on her visa. We've reached out to her several weeks ago about the May 1st change, but her counselor has not responded. I've had some people indicate that she only needs to bring the visa, her passport & the paper CFO certificate (no sticker needed). We've got another 6 hours or so of hoping that her visa will show up....

You can also try to contact your embassy directly to see if they can give you any information on the availability of upcoming interviews. I'd be sure to let them know that you have been checking the website for appointments & have not been able to find any, hence you needing to reach out to them directly.

It varies...but typically right now in most cases it is. You also don't need to wait to marry. You can also consider marrying in a third country or marrying online.

As noted above, in the past the primary reasoning for the K1 was to allow the couple to be together much faster than the spousal visa typically took to process. In today's day & age with the backlog...that is no longer the case. There are a lot more benefits to simply going the spousal visa route at this point due to processing times being virtually the same if not in favor of the spousal visa still. The main issue is whether or not you are 100% sure that you both plan to be married. Hindsight being 20/20...I would have likely just went the spousal visa route if I knew at the time of our filing (October 2021) that it would have taken all this time to get her to the US (some time this month). We've had several friends who filed spousal visa at or around the same time as when we submitted our K1 & they have already been reunited with their loved ones and are much further along the immigration process than we will be. For your specific question...just make sure you meet all the requirements of the K1. You've already met the requirement of meeting in person. Now you just need to provide documentation of a bonified relationship & your ability to support her & any of her dependents in the US. Those are typically the primary hurdles for most K1 applications.

Since you seem to have some sort of special circumstance, your best bet is to reach out to your specific embassy & let them know the specifics of your situation & how long you intend to postpone the interview. I know that there is some sort of unofficial time period on it at which times the application is considered to be abandoned but I typically remember that being up to a year. When that year timer starts...I don't know...and I wouldn't push it so your best bet is to simply contact the embassy directly as they are the ones who will ultimately make the call.

It is letting you know that the NVC has processed your application & has forwarded the physical files to your fiancé's embassy. If you don't already have it, you can request the case number & proceed to complete the rest of the required steps while the files are in transit (i.e., DS-160, paying your MRV fee, scheduling an appointment, scheduling & completing your medical exam, etc.).

Feel free to join up with our Texas Filipinas Facebook group. I'm sure my fiancé would love to have another friend from the area.

Shipment is supposed to be going to an LBC Office in Toledo City...no idea what is going on with all of that above.

This has been our wonderful experience with LBC Express so far:

Keep checking the USTravelDocs website to schedule your appointment. We scheduled our back in March and the current available slots were for June & July. There were occasional slots that opened up prior to that due to cancellations or reschedules, but you can't really count on getting those slots as there are tons of other people who are constantly watching the website to snag those earlier spots as well. I was lucky enough to be able to move us up from June to May. I imagine at this point the currently available slots will be in August to start with & you'll have to try to snag any openings that may or may not become available before then. There was at least one time that I checked on available appointments when the website indicated that no appointments were available, so I suggest you just keep checking until the embassy opens up additional slots for you to sign up for. I'm not sure if the medical exam requires that you have an appointment already or not...in our case we signed up for the first available appointment as soon as we paid our MRV fee. And then we scheduled our medical exam for as soon as possible thereafter to allow us to take advantage of any potential openings that might have come before our initial appointment time.

Sure...but isn't it easier to re-do the medical exam rather than trying to re-do the entire I-129F process?

Still waiting on an email with some kind of tracking information...

Still doesn't explain why they don't just give people the option to re-do the medical exam without invalidating the visa that took much longer to acquire.

Here's what I have now: USTravelDocs: CEAC:

It would seem that the obvious answer there would be to simply re-take the medical exam to verify that you have not acquired any medical issues since the medical exam expired.

Seems like an odd way to do things. People could potentially get issued a visa that is only valid for a month, a week or even days if they have to reschedule their interview and end up getting approved towards the back end of the medical exam's 6 month validity period.

I'm pretty sure that the medical exam & the VISA are on two separate timelines. They typically tell you to get the medical exam no more than two weeks before your scheduled interview appointment. In our case when we were able to schedule our appointment back in March (after completing the DS-160 & paying the MRV fee), the earliest appointment we could get was in June. At the time we were going to wait another month or two to get our medical exam done. I kept checking for earlier appointments & sure enough, an appointment was available in March...unfortunately we were not ready since we had not completed our medical exam. That motivated us to get the medical exam done right away just in case we had another shot at an earlier appointment in case anyone else canceled or rescheduled. We completed our medical exam by the end of March & was able to move up to an earlier appointment in May (yesterday). The way I understood it is that the medical exam is only valid for 6 months from the time it is completed. In our case, we had it done at the end of March so we knew we needed to get her to the US by the end of September at the latest. The K1 visa has the same 6 month validity from the time the visa is approved (not when you have it in hand).

In our case we simply printed out the letter you get from the NVC indicating that your visa petition was approved & was on its way to the embassy. We received ours via email from the NVC. My fiancé completed her medical exam before the embassy even received the physical files from the NVC (which happened 2-3 days later).

Best to speak directly to your assigned counselor. We are one of the couples who did the CFO process well before our visa. They required us to go through the CFO process for us to meet for the first time in Costa Rica back in 2021. The certificate we received then is still valid for our visa today. Prior to May 1st, we were told that we would need to visit a CFO office with our certificate & visa in hand to get them to affix the CFO sticker to it. Since May 1st they were supposed to do away with the sticker process in favor of a digital certificate, however my fiancé just went for her interview yesterday & was with a friend who had her CR1 visa. Her friend went to the CFO to get a sticker for her visa so I'm not sure how it works now. The CFO doesn't seem to be following the new protocol they just put out.

Wow...I had always read it that if they identified you as someone who needed to take the test that you took it at the time of your medical exam but the findings would take up to 2 months for it to culture & give them the results. If that is the case & it will not take an additional 2 months for you to even schedule your test...that only gives you 1-2 months that your medical exam will actually be valid for travel purposes (6 months total).

Thanks for the tips. I'm still holding out hope that maybe she'll get here sooner than later

It takes them that long to schedule & take the test or is that when the results come in?