tofulollipop

Sorry, forgot to come back and update. Had our interview in April, interview was fine, very simple. Mostly just asked me about my finances and if i had filed taxes correctly. For my immigrating spouse, they just asked her how we met and what she plans to do in the US. Instant approval on the spot, got our visa 3 days later.

We had our interview yesterday April 18th, and as of today Wednesday, April 19th, our status on CEAC has changed to "issued". I need to return to the US for work this weekend, and am hoping my spouse can return with me this trip, but we're cutting it close time wise. Anyone have any recent experience with how long from "issued" to ready for pick-up at the Madrid embassy?

Thanks! Also btw, thanks for all your help - received tons of advice from you in tons of my posts over the last few years, greatly appreciate it.

We had our interview yesterday, April 18th. There were no issues and we were told my spouse's visa was approved. However, I logged onto CEAC today out of curiosity, and noticed that I had received a message 2 weeks ago saying that my joint sponsor is missing a W2 that we need to upload (she doesn't have one as she's self-employed). Is it important that I respond to this with a letter stating we don't have this W2 (i.e., will the return of my spouse's passport be delayed due to this), or can I ignore it since our visa was already approved?

Would you be willing to send me a link to that whatsapp group as well? My wife and I just received our interview date in April for Madrid.

We were documentarily qualified in mid December, around the 15th I think. However, our request for an additional document was prior to being approved. We submitted all our NVC docs by early september, and in october heard back that we needed additional evidence. I was not documentarily qualified at that point. I resubmitted and in December they accepted everything. As far as I'm aware, if you see the words documentarily qualified, you are okay, maybe someone else can verify. You could try sending NVC a message to make sure? They're responding in ~a week at this point (i sent them an email just a couple weeks ago). Following being documentarily qualified, we got radio silence from the NVC until they scheduled our interview this week.

Hi all, my wife (beneficiary) and I (petitioner) just got her CR-1 interview appointment at the Madrid consulate. However, we recently moved out of Spain at the beginning of this year (I got a new job in the US, she temporarily returned to her home country while we finished waiting for the interview, neither of us are Spanish but both had residence permits). We will return to Spain to do her interview as our residence permits are still valid, however, we no longer have a permanent address or phone number in Spain. Has anyone had a similar experience, and how did you get around issues such as visa delivery? Can the visa be picked up or will it only be mailed?

Yes, the document was accepted by NVC without issue. We're still awaiting the interview so I'll try to check back in after. So, I had some documents apostilled and others that weren't. However, I didn't apostille them for US immigration purposes. As far as I'm aware, an apostille isn't required unless they explicitly ask you for it. We had a bunch of paperwork for our Spain visas while we were living in Spain, so already had some documents apostilled. For US immigration purposes, I turned in any documents that hadn't yet expired or that don't have expiration dates that we had already apostilled, and didn't bother getting any new documents apostilled. I only apostilled the original documents, and then I translated the document and the apostille to english myself. I'm not sure if we're technically allowed to or supposed to translate documents ourselves, but I haven't run into any issues thus far..

Hey, sorry I didn't reply sooner. We got the federal one a couple months ago which turned out to be pretty easy. There's a new online form to get it done. Not sure what is sufficient or not, but this one was simple enough to do and my spouse's original one was older than 1 year and we're still awaiting our interview so we went ahead and grabbed this one too. https://www.gob.mx/prevencionyreadaptacion/articulos/tramita-tu-constancia-de-antecedentes-penales

Hmm okay, you think it's better to forego my personal proof of income then? I had just followed the letter from one of the guides on visajourney and uploaded everything accordingly, oops

Did any of you guys figure out a solution to this problem? I have the same issue as point 1 of OP

i just double checked, nope! i put $0 as my qualifying income!

I actually did mention this in my cover letter that i submitted with the rest of my packet, but I guess they glossed over it and didn't realize. I tried calling NVC to learn their phone line is down now 😕 Maybe not much other option than to resubmit another letter explaining the situation and maybe upload my paystubs for 2021 from my foreign job (in addition to the ones I already uploaded), send them an inquiry, and in the meantime possibly wait out another couple months til they review it again..

All my documents say accepted, but I didn't get DQ'ed or an interview date. They're requesting I upload all my W2's and 1099's for 2021. The thing is, I've lived abroad outside the US for all of 2021 and have no W2's or 1099's to upload, what should I do?

Just called HR, unfortunately they say immigration is not a qualifying life event. They say a QLE would be if she already has coverage and then loses it, as some of you have mentioned, but I have no idea how that would work since she is covered by a non-US healthcare system

That's a good call, i'll give them a call tomorrow after work and see what's up just to make sure, thanks for the suggestion!

good to know, thanks for the info! Easy enough solution.

So we're waiting on my wife's visa interview to be scheduled still for her CR-1 visa before she can come to the US. However, how does health insurance work once she arrives prior to finding employment that offers health insurance? My employer offers health insurance both for myself and for my family, but annual enrollment is now. Should I go ahead and add her and pay for her health insurance even though she may not arrive til mid-late 2023?

So I (US citizen) and my wife (mexican citizen) are living in Spain and will be doing our CR-1 visa interview in Spain, a third country. With regards to making sure she has all her vaccinations (non-COVID vaccines e.g. hepatitis, tetanus, all the ones you get as a child), do we need any kind of verification or certificate to prove she's had her vaccines since it's coming from a foreign country? What I mean is, beyond the vaccine card she has from Mexico, is there any kind of special certificate that will be required?

No luck on my end. I ended up just sending an expedite request via snail mail to the Nebraska service center where our case was, which according to tracking arrived without problem as I requested a signature on delivery. Then nothing, they never contacted me or said anything regarding the expedite. Regardless, our I-130 got approved last month which was standard time based on our NOA-1. Sorry I can't provide more useful information.

Thanks for the info! Maybe that is the best strategy for us then to minimize wait time. Between the prior medical exam, the interview, and waiting to pickup her passport with the visa, I'd imagine in that case she will likely have to come back to Spain for upwards of a month or so at that point, yes?

Good to know. Maybe it's best that i just hold onto my residency resolution paperwork and just bring that and we do it in Spain then

Technically, we just renewed our resident permits last month and so should have residency in spain until 2024. That being said, as I will no longer be working here, I don't know if the residency is valid or not since it was originally granted due to my job. Regardless, we should both be able to come as tourists without problem.

So we just got our I-130 approved today. My wife is a Mexican citizen, and we are currently living in Spain. However, I have accepted a new job offer in the US, and we will be leaving Spain on October 12th of this year so that I can start my new job, meanwhile my wife will move back to Mexico while we await her visa. Since we're still living in Spain, i imagine that we would get our visa interview scheduled in Spain (Madrid, though we currently live in Barcelona). Would it make more sense to go ahead and have her fly back to do her medical exam, interview, and wait out the visa in Madrid, or should we switch her address to Mexico and schedule the interview in Mexico? The reason I say so, is it seems like time to get an interview could be much quicker in Spain than in Mexico. That being said, of course it is kind of a pain to do everything when we will no longer be in Spain and will need to come back. If we decide to change our address to Mexico, will we be able to do so at the NVC stage?

Which is why I figure I'd shoot my shot. We've been sitting around for 9 months now waiting on the I-130 anyways, got nothing else to do while I wait at the cost of a bit of paper work. Not like they're going to make me wait longer just because I asked haha.