Seashell90

Hi all, 

My visa has been approved and I just received it in the mail!

I've updated my timeline as well but including it below as well. 

2022

Feb 2 - submitted request to file DCF to TOKYOIV@state.gov.  

Feb 3 - received notice for the I-130 petition appointment at the embassy Feb 14 - my husband submitted the I-130 (and I-864) and completed his interview at the embassy

Feb 17 - I-130 petition approved & received instructions to complete my DS-260 online, arrange medical visa appointment and secure police certificates

(In between these dates, I was mainly waiting to receive my police certificates from Canada, Japan and Singapore. I was able to secure the medical visa appointment quickly enough once my DS-260 was completed)

Mar 22 - received visa interview appointment request visa email with interview date

Apr 27 - visa interview date. I was also told during the interview that my visa was approved. (my husband came along but he didn't have to be there)

Apr 29 - received visa (in passport) via mail. Included in it were instructions to make additional payment online before departing for the US and a "do not open" paper package that I've got to hand carry and submit to an immigration officer at the port of entry to the US

My experience with the American embassy in Tokyo was great in that everything was processed very quickly. I am still immensely pleased it has taken slightly under 3 months for the entire process. 

The most frustrating part about this process for me however was getting the police certificates which I've detailed in an earlier post. 

@my_gf_wants_cr1 I ended up not asking about changing my address (where my green card will be mailed to) as I'll be staying at my in-laws during the time I expect to receive it. However for those who want to change the address they submitted to USCIS, there are instructions that came with my visa for changing that online. 

Hope this has been useful!

Hi, just a quick update but my I-130 has been approved. It took only 3 days (despite the fact that we forgot to sign a page on the I-864 and had to sign and send the scanned copy back to the embassy) to get the approval email!

One thing I noticed belatedly and wanted to warn everyone about is regarding the POLICE CERTIFCATE.

Please note that depending on where you lived after you turned 16, obtaining your police certificate can be a complicated, cumbersome and expensive process!

So it may be worth checking all the requirements for the police certificate in advance.

https://jp.usembassy.gov/visas/immigrant-visas/family-immigration/how-to-apply-step-2/iv-checklist/

https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/us-visas/immigrate/the-immigrant-visa-process/step-5-collect-financial-evidence-and-other-supporting-documents/step-7-collect-civil-documents.html

Notably, it is quite unlikely that you'd be able to apply for a police certificate before your I-130 is approved but advanced research could save you a lot of anxiety if you know what to expect.

In my case, though I'm in Japan, as a Canadian national, I need a police certificate from Canada and I had also lived in Singapore, my birth country for 2 years from when I was 16-18 which meant I had to get a police certificate there too. 

I now have to gather a total of THREE police certificates.

Japanese Police Certificate

If you're in Japan, I suggest you head straight to the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department immediately after the petitioner's appointment with the embassy with your provisional approval letter (+ residence card and passport) to apply for a certificate of criminal record (details here) as they will take 2 weeks to process it (you'll receive a slip of paper - don't lose this! with your pick-up date). I was in and out in less than 15 minutes but that may be because I went in on a Monday morning. No appointment is required and it was a very smooth process. Very important that you DO NOT open the sealed envelope with the certificate when you receive it from the Japanese police as that will INVALIDATE the document.

Other Police Certificate

It takes a lot longer and is usually a much more cumbersome process to get police certificates from other countries while you're not physically there especially with the current delays due to covid-19. There may be some specific requirements for the category/type of background check for each country so please be careful to check that via forums or the above 2 links I've shared. 

One important thing I've learned that is making the process of getting my Canadian check so cumbersome and expensive is that the fingerprint form that is required for an accredited 3rd party fingerprinting company to process my fingerprints into digital data to send to RCMP (Royal Canadian Mounted Police) needs to be notarized by the fingerprinting official. So what this means is that while you can get your fingerprints taken by the local police, as a matter of national policy, Japanese police avoid stamping fingerprint forms so your form will not be notarized. What I've discovered is that are basically 3 options for me in Japan:

1) Get fingerprints with Japanese police, get a notary public/lawyer to notarize it, then send to the fingerprinting company for processing

2) Do all this process at the only fingerprinting company (Fingerprint Room Japan) in Japan that can take your fingerprints for you, notarize the form and send it to RCMP but at a significant cost.

3) Get fingerprints with Japanese police, send fingerprint form without notarization to one of the companies who understand the situation and supposedly, somehow can accept the form without issue

Quote from company who could do option1 was around C$150 ++ some other optional fees

Option 2, i.e. Fingerprint Japan costs around 50,000 yen including tax

Quote from company who could do option 3 was around C$180 ++ some other optional fees

While 1 and 3 were clearly cheaper, I ended up going with 2 because I had issues with the other companies (communications that while quick, did not address my question or concerns, sometimes a little condescending even. The 2 companies that could do option 3 had reviews that were quite alarming - one was a company that was featured in this forum and quite a number of people had the wrong checks done by them, the other was a company who revealed the full names of customers in replies to negative reviews showing a lack of respect for personal data).

As some of you can already tell, I tried to look up as much information as possible and do what research I can and that's because any hiccups regarding this can severely delay your application process by weeks and months.

I honestly have more to write about this(it's another hurdle with the Singapore police certificate) but will stop here. If anyone is curious about my process in obtaining the police certificate from Canada or Singapore, feel free to message me.

Until the next update, take care all! Hope this was useful.

6 hours ago, my_gf_wants_cr1 said:

Since I am also filing DCF - did you at any point need to make a USCIS website account?

At this point in the process, we are after the DCF of the I-130 and after the medical, just waiting for the beneficiary's interview.

Just wondering because at some point (assuming we are successful), we will need to change our address, and we want the GC to be mailed to the new address, but at no point in time we had to register a USCIS account.

If you have any idea, please let me know

I haven't had to make a USCIS account so far in the process. 

At present, our plan is to have the GC mailed to my husband's parents' place. Though ideally, it'll be best for it to be mailed to us directly after we've rented a place in the US. I think that's something we have to figure out while in the process. If I have any updates on this down the line, I'll post it in this thread and tag you

@Dashinka thanks and much appreciated!

I noticed I forgot to add my timelines so here's my current timeline so far:

Feb 2 - submitted request to file DCF to TOKYOIV@state.gov.

Feb 3 - received notice for the I-130 petition appointment at the embassy

Feb 14 - I-130 petition appointment

Not sure if you already filed DCF but my experience so far may shed some light. You can probably find my posting if you click on my profile. Hope it helps!

This forum has been a great help to me so I'm starting this post to document my visa journey so that it may help others in similar situations. I'd like to give special thanks to @TYOGaijin. Your posts have been very helpful and I only wish I discovered it earlier.

==============

Context: I'm the beneficiary who's a Canadian citizen and my husband is the petitioner who's a US citizen and we're both based in Japan. He received a short notice of job relocation and we are filing our I-130 through Direct Consular Filing. During the time of this posting, we have our embassy appointment set and I plan to post updates along the way.

Process so far (some already mentioned in@TYOGaijin posts)

1) Trying to find out if you qualify for DCF by contacting the embassy yielded no results for us so best that you don't waste your time (and I spent quite a bit of time here) doing that. If you qualify for any of the exceptional circumstances (can't paste the link for some reason but it's on the USCIS website), go straight to the next point. 

2) We received the following information from the U.S. Visa Service Desk after a few back and forths asking for advice whether we qualified but long story short, they won't say anything until you do the following

------ extract begin -----

In order for us to consider your case for direct filing, please provide the following information to TOKYOIV@state.gov.
(Please kindly type them in the same order as below.)

• Name of Petitioner (you), Date and Place of Birth
• Name of Beneficiary (your relative), Date and Place of Birth
• Name of Child, Date and Place of Birth (if NOT US citizen):
• Date you became aware of a transfer or other emergency situations
• Has a petition previously been filed on behalf of the beneficiary?
• Please describe the emergency situations
• Petitioner’s expected departure date
• Proof of petitioner’s physical presence in consular district – Please provide a scanned pdf copy of your resident permit, employment or school ID.
• Job relocation order or job offer letter- Please provide a scanned pdf copy
• Proof of petitioner's US citizenship- Please provide a scanned pdf copy
• Copy of adoption decree or family register with its English translation -Please provide a scanned pdf copy

------ extract end -----

For info, my husband's relocation date is May 1 and we sent an email with the above info on Feb 2.

3) We received a reply within 24 hours with a petition appointment at the embassy with details on what to bring and are now a few days away from that appointment

Top tips so far:

A) Get civil documents translated as soon as possible as some companies take awhile and it may take some time getting a few quotes to compare prices. (The company I used was much quicker and cheaper than others. Not sure if I should be promoting any specific company so please PM me if you'd like to know.)

B) Fill in I-130 and all other application forms like I-130A, I-864 and get the accompanying IRS tax transcript as soon as possible. Some of those forms take quite a long time to fill in so don't wait until step 2 or even step 1 to do it 

*FYI but for step 2, I'm fluent in Japanese and English so I was able to translate the marriage certificate on my own and apparently that sufficed so if you're able to do the translation, at least for step 2, it might be worth proceeding ahead with your own translation if you don't have time to wait around for the professionally translated copy

That's all for now! Will share more after the I-130 petition appointment at the embassy (which by the way is just for the petitioner and not the beneficiary). 

Cheers!