EternalWait

Has any one experienced delay with their RCMP police certificate? It should take like 10 business days at most (2 weeks), but mine has been taking more than three weeks, and every time I call they it's in processing (I am pretty sure I got no criminal records btw ). I am kind of in a hurry ! Is there anything I can do to expedite this? I'd appreciate if people could share their experience in case they have had the same issue (and share when they applied for the police certificate and when they received it). Thanks !

Update from CO "As of August 8, 2022, most Immediate Relative and fiancé(e) visa cases being scheduled for interview in Montreal were documentarily complete at the National Visa Center in May 2022; most Family Preference cases scheduled for interview were documentarily qualified in August 2020; and most Employment cases scheduled for interview were documentarily complete in April 2020."

There are quite a few of us here, don't know the exact number though. See @Blueeyes1989 posts on this thread and mine here to give you a sense of the backlog and what you can expect for the wait time. Disclaimer : those are average numbers.

Interesting, but what if my EB2 visa is EB2-NIW (self-petitioned without sponsor)? Sorry I should have specified that.

I have found the information here incredibly useful So thanks a lot @Kai G. Llewellyn ! I will be ending up in a situation like this eventually. But with one difference : My immigrant visa will be EB2 . Is that also multiple entry and can it be used for traveling as long as I don't have my greencard issued? What if it gets issued and I am still outside the US ? 😕

I asked Dr Lyndon Mascarenhas and he said this : Please bring this along AND also fill in the dates on my vaccine checklist form, I will check in my office when we meet so no need for having it signed by a family doctor or ... , just fill in the dates according to your international immunization record, the doctor will check it themselves. But do ask the doctor that you are going to (call if not answering then email). Explain clearly your situation, some may have a different answer.

could you please post your DQ date? We know it's probably around March-April 2020. This is also for everyone else who announces they got their IL. We would like to have a more accurate picture.

Does anyone here know what is the mailing address for submission of civil docs to NVC for an EB2-NIW applicant? Because we don't get that option of uploading the docs to CEAC as other categories do. Also do I have to just look at the NVC website on civil docs requirements to see which one I should mail, or should I wait to receive instructions on that from NVC after I have submitted my DS260? Thanks.

I wondered if anyone knows a group or anything (Google Spreadsheet shared somewhere) from which I can get some data on the immigration visa interview wait time for EB applicants (or actually even other applicants) in Yerevan CO. I couldn't even find a discussion or a post on this on VJ. Thanks in advance.

@Tony05 I dunno, sue them?! Some people here are filing a writ of mandamus. We should see how that goes.

I have in English an immunization record document that I know is internationally recognized, and I know also as a fact that it is also accepted by the US immigration. However all vaccines were taken outside of Canada. All places that take the medical exam (at least the ones I looked in Ontario) request the vaccine checklist to be filled out by a family doctor or a walk-in clinic. Problem is I don't have a family doctor and everyone knows how hard it is to find one. So my only option is a walk-in clinic. Has anyone been in this situation before and would a doctor in a walk-in clinic be willing to fill out the vaccine checklist since all vaccines were taken outside of Canada and they may not recognize my immunization record document?

Ok that answers it when it's possible to upload. But when they ask the original form to be mailed, I suppose the wet signature is required right ? The thing is I am just trying to be a cheapo here by translating my docs using a remote option 😆 And that specific remote option I am looking at does not involve mailing the original translation to me.

Does anyone have experience with mailing to NVC or uploading documents on CEAC and whether they require the translations to have the original (ink/wet) signature/seal or are they OK with a digital signature/seal? What about the consulate at Montreal, if they ask for certified translations, can those be the print version of the secured digital pdf translation?

I noticed that the DOS visa reciprocity website for France states that For persons born in France: “Copie Integrale de l’Acte de Naissance” are obtainable from la Mairie (Office of the Mayor) at the place of birth. For French nationals born in a foreign country: they are available from the Ministere des Affaires Etrangeres, Service de l'Etat Civil, 20 Allee Brancas, 44 - Nantes. For French nationals born in a French colony: they may be obtained from the Direction des Archives de France, Section Outre-Mer, 5 Bd. Barthou, BP 1056, 44035 Cedex Nantes So I do have Copie Integrale de l’Acte de Naissance since I was born there, but I am not a French citizen; of course, I have a birth certificate from my country of nationality, which mentions I was born in France (and the city), and was made at the ministry of foreign affairs of said country. I was first thinking that I shouldn't submit the French birth certificate but now that I see that they have curiously separated these three cases above, specifically talking about 'people born in France', I am a bit in doubt. Should I actually read the first line as "For French nationals born in France: ..." instead of "For persons born in France: ..." , just because of how the next two cases are written? ... One would think that the reciprocity website for a given country always concerns only citizens of that country when it comes to birth certificates, but I am not sure now. So should I submit that document (and its certified English translation, because these days Montreal CO asks for everything in English) or not? I am just worried that given what is stated above on the website, the CO and/or NVC may request the document.

Thank you so much @arken . I am being a bit too cautious maybe, but should I also ask from the translator a statement with a copy that confirms them being certified translators (or as the NVC asks : "translation is accurate and the translator is competent")? Or is the seal and signature of the Ontario certified translator just enough for the NVC and consulate (which is in Montreal, Quebec)?

From what I have gathered on this forum, it is quite a possibility that the NVC asks an EB2 applicant to actually mail instead of uploading their civic docs, because the CEAC portal may not have the uploading option for them. Now my question is : does the NVC mail those docs to the consulate? And if there is something already in there, like an original document, then the consulate can't ask me for it, right, because they should know they already got it? Because if not, then what if a document that has no copy such as the RCMP police certificate is asked by the consulate when I have mailed it to the NVC already? Am I just supposed to get another police certificate? (if that one has expired, then sure, no matter what I should get one, but what if it's still valid) [The same goes for certified translations of docs although that is a minor issue. I could ask the translator for copies of the translation with the seal on it, even though only one will be the true original translation. ]

I forgot to add that those estimates above are computed with the major assumption that month to month fluctuations would not dramatically change the average annual number of cases. This may seem a safe assumption to make but one could argue: "we shouldn't use the annual backlog rate to compute backlogs for 2020-22, but instead hear where the consulate says it's at now (March 2020 for E, July 2020 for F), and multiply the corresponding wait time for the newest cases by the avg/month rate." This would mean a backlog of size 57.666 * 27months =1556 for E and 117.46*24months = 2819.04 cases for F remaining to be processed. Note this is the full backlog, i.e. the entire number of cases remaining to be processed. So 1556 should be compared to 914.04 that I computed at the end of my last post, assuming a prepandemic wait time of 6 months for E. I would still lean on the analysis in my previous analysis , since monthly fluctuations is quite likely what's behind the consulate being stuck at March 2020 for E cases for a while now. Overall, my own conclusion is that the full E backlog is quite likely somewhere between 900 and 1600. IF you are wondering how long a case is gonna take, it all depends on the rank in the backlog. But assume a case that has just been DQ'd. With this backlog size and a constant rate of 76 cases per month as we have had so far in this year, people who have been recently DQ'd should get a wait time of at least 900/76 ~ 11.84 to at most 1600/76~21.05 months. This is assuming that in the meantime the consulate will not increase its processing rate of E as it did for IR and F (almost doubling them to 400 and 200 per month). Finally, take all these predictions with a pound of salt 😆

TLDR : The backlog for F is 1800.76 while the backlog for E is 573.28, less than what @Blueeyes1989 estimated (reason being I consider data points from not just 2019, but 2018 and 2017). Notice this does not include the constant backlog that each category has and depends on its prepandemic wait time. We can potentially have an estimate on that too given data from visajourney forums of prepandemic years (see how that would be computed at the end of this post). I computed the backlog for E and F by compiling all monthly data present on the DOS website dating back to March 2017. There are three tables below. I explain each one in order for those who are interested. If people are interested, I can share the excel file here. The first one: the first two rows shows the number of F and E cases processed each year. Note for 2017 we have 10 months of data, and for 2022 it's 6 months. Next two rows are average processing rate per month for each of those years, e.g. for 2017 for F it's 1408/10=140.8 (because of 10 months of data) and for 2018 for F it's 1259/12=104.91. Remark: For the E cases, we see a curious uptick in the avg number of cases going from 2017/2018 to 2019. That is the reason why my backlog estimate differs by a lot from @Blueeyes1989's. The second one is for computing backlogs for F. This table has two sections. The first two columns: We first compute the average processing rate per month (which is avg/month), by using the average of the 3 processing rates from 2017,2018,2019 i.e. (140.8+104.91+106.66)/3 = 117.46. Multiply that by 12 you get the first row avg. The next columns computing the backlogs: simply subtract 1409 from cases processed during 2020 and 2021. For 2022, you gotta compute 117.46*6-846 as this is for 6 months of data. The backlog left is 1800.76 cases. The third table has the exact same description as the second one, but this time it's for E. If you want the constant backlog to be included too, let's say we know the prepandemic wait time for E is 6 months. Then you just add 6*56.77777=340.6666 to 573.38 which leaves us with 914.04. This would be all cases in E category waiting to be processed.

@Blueeyes1989 : I looked at your data for each month, and it seems like you are summing up the numbers, and your backlog calculation seem to be based on summing up the numbers of each month. But there is something that the DOS website says that is relevant to this: " Therefore, beginning with FY 2020, individual monthly issuance reports should not be aggregated, as this will not provide an accurate issuance total for the fiscal year to date. Instead, refer to our annual Report of the Visa Office for final full Fiscal Year statistics." Could you please comment on this and what your methodology was ? I am trying to compute for myself the EB and F backlog as well, and after reading that, I am not so sure how to do it.

Do you have also an idea on how long it took back then to get an IL ? Like average, was it the usual 6 months since DQ'ed ?

I have some documents like immunization records that contain both English and the language from the country that they were issued (and that country is not the country from which I will be doing the consular processing). These docs have essentially self-contained translation, meaning that everything not in English is translated on the other side to English. It seems pretty clear cut to me that these kind of docs don't need to be translated (for example passports are like that too, they have both the native and English language in them, and usually the English parts are just translation of the non-English parts). Nevertheless, nowhere in those docs does it explicitly say that the English parts are the translation of the non-English parts. I just wanted to make sure that it is indeed the case that I won't need to upload their translation for my application (and the consulate won't ask for it either). Thanks in advance.

Hey Everyone, I wanted to ask two questions. There is no precise answer to these questions but I know some people have got a good intuition since they have been following the data on this for quite some time, so here it is: 1- For someone who is going to get DQ'd around Oct 2022 in the EB2 category, how long until they receive the IL ? A year from then like Oct 2023? Can anyone make a quick calculation and give an estimate (even if it's very rough), like a lower and upper bound. It would be much appreciated. 2- Do you guys believe that all backlogs will be cleared by the end of 2022 and processing time will return to normal? And here normal means it should take ~3months from DQ to IL for an EB2. Thanks P.S. A third question totally unrelated : 3- IS it true that the IV visa for EB2 usually has maximum 6 months from issue date until expiry, or no, it is directly tied to the expiration date of the medical exam (which can be up to a year)?