Kayl&Natch

Hi all - I wanted to provide an update with information on the week of the interview. This may be useful for anyone doing medical and everything in Rio. I am the petitioner and was already in Brazil when we got our interview appointment so I extended my stay a couple of days to be there. Arrived in Rio - Jan 4th Blood exams - Jan 4th Chest X-Ray - Jan 4th Fingerprint/Photo - Jan 5th Medical - Jan 9th Interview - Jan 10th Arrival - Blood Exams - Chest X-Ray (Jan 4) Our plane from Palmas was delayed so we went straight to get the blood exam done from the airport (bags and all). We used the Leblon location (you can choose between Leblon and Barra) and it was really lovely. Leblon in general is cute as a button. There was no wait on the blood exams, they were extremely well staffed and so nice offering us all drinks and snacks. Since my son is 15, he didn't have to blood or urine, and my wife (35) only had to do blood. We were in and out in 30 minutes and it cost r$65, if I remember correctly and they take card. The hotel the doctor recommends when you schedule your medical appointment is literally around the corner. We had the chest X-Rays that evening, also in Leblon and it was fine. The building is on a side street and you need to take the elevator to the 3rd floor and it's in the corner. The people were nice enough, but it's quieter. It took awhile on this one because I think they may have been behind. But the actual appointments for my wife and son were about 10 minutes. It was was a bit pricey at r$190 each, but they also take card. They will tell you, but make sure to schedule this early because it can take 4 business days to get to the doctor. In both cases as the petitioner I just sat in the waiting room. Fingerprint and Photo (Jan 5) This was in the new location at the Bossa Nova Shopping mall. From the entrance you just walk in and go down the escalator and it's right there. We arrived about 45 minutes early as we heard the wait time can be a lot. However, they queue a bunch of people up and then let them in in groups. You have to turn off phones and smart watches. Only the people with the appointment can enter. So I was left outside. I was holding all of the phones but I wish we would have left one with them so I could walk around the mall while waiting. You can't sit down in the open area and there are no chairs. There is a radio station right there and they do play music, which is nice. Both tourist visa and immigrant are lumped together and it gets really busy in waves, however it seems to be a relatively smooth process. It took maybe 45 minutes in total. They queued for the fingerprint, then queued again for photo. The person at the photo just asked a couple of verification questions and then they took the photo. There was no charge for this since we were CR1/2 visa type. Medical Appointment (Jan 9) When you make the medical appointment (by email and in Portuguese only), they will send you a list of vaccines that may or may not apply and who is required. I recommend going through that and matching to your vaccine records. They tell you how much the vaccine will cost of you have to get it. It was expensive. So we went and got the missing vaccines in Palmas where half were free and the rest were 40-80 reais cheaper. My son didn't have the varicella vaccine or Hep A. We got both right away, but both are 2 dose shots. We talked with the medical people ahead and they let us know that he'd finish Hep A in the US since there needs to be 6 months in between. We got the 1st varicella dose early and there only needs to be a month between doses so we got the 2nd dose the day before we left for Rio. We got there early because we weren't sure where to go. At first we went to the mall because the Centro Medico is there, but that was the wrong spot. You have to go to the corporate park next to the mall. There's a little walkway between if you go to the wrong spot. We checked in with reception and they call up to the doctor's office. There is a waiting area on the first floor and the security guard calls your name and gives you access through the turnstiles. There was an issue with our appointment where the reception recorded our appointment at the wrong time, and we had to push for them to honor it. But the doctor made him honor it since it was his mistake and we had the email confirmation. This was another appointment I had to wait downstairs in the lobby. The doctor verifies your shot records before you see him. He fills out a sheet with everything on it with the photo taken earlier attached. My wife said he was incredibly nice and kind. The actual appointment was 20 minutes for both my wife and son. It was r$800 each and can only be paid in Pix or Cash. FYI - Make sure you are current with your Covid vaccine. My wife had 3 shots (2 initial and a booster) and they made her go get another booster since hers was from 2022. It was free and the clinic was down the street and very quick. I think we were back in under 45 minutes and it was during the doctor's lunch hour anyway. Once we returned, they were sent straight up to the reception who had the document waiting once she showed the vaccine receipt. Interview (Jan 10) Our interview appointment was at 7:40am. After reading how busy it gets, we got there at 6:30am. There was already a long line. This was the tourist visa line. We weren't sure if we should stand in that line too since it hadn't opened and there was no one on the immigrant side yet. That was actually the right side to be on. We realized at 7am when they started calling the 7am appointments for tourist. We moved over to that side and they let us in in the first group, there was maybe 10 of us total. They take you in around back and upstairs to the second floor. It's a smallish room. They hand out a paper with the list of documents they need in that order. Once you organize yourself, you show it to the person who guides you up and hands out the paper. He spot checks it and then you get seated in the number chairs. You go up to the windows in number order, scootching chairs until you're in the first set. All 3 of us went to the window together. They take and review the documents and have you validate information from what was submitted in the application. They ask maybe 3-4 questions. Once that's done you go and wait again. Despite letting the group of us in together, they seemed to call people up to do the interview part by appointment time regardless of who did the document validation first. There are no clocks in the room and you cannot wear smart watches or have your phones (there are storage places across the street and it's r$40 per phone). When we got called, we went to another window all together and the person reviewed the documents and application and asked 3-4 questions each to my wife and son. She then told us we were approved and we left. We were done by 9am. End note: We paid for expedited shipping of the passports and received them on Monday, Jan 15 and they come home Feb 11. (I am super nervous about the customs part so going to have to look into that) Thanks for all of the help!

Yea they’re not super helpful, so that’s why I’m asking here since I’ve seen people say they didn’t have Hep A and no one on any forum mentioned having to wait an additional 6 months because they didn’t have the series complete.

Question: We were doing vaccine validation for our upcoming interview on Jan 10, as we may just cover the couple of vaccines missing here in her town as it will be cheaper than the Rio medical place. However, our son doesn't have Hep A which is not commonly given in Brazil. Looking online it says that there may need to be 6 mos in between doses, can anyone share their vaccine experience and if they had to wait 6 mos on doses?

Thank you I sent an email to both. I always feel like an idiot asking for things.

Okay thank you, does it matter that he hasn't been DQ yet? Everything was accepted, but they asked for one additional document that was provided a week ago.

Okay, so how would I go about that? Genuinely feeling a little overwhelmed. Do you do the "ask NVC" option for NVC? And do we wait until we get the interview letter from the consulate to ask them? I appreciate that feedback, but I also wanted to see if you knew the general turn around time when you submit the response to the FE.

I have CR1/2 cases for my wife and son (step son) and they have up until recently been processed together. They were approved by the USCIS at the same time, case numbers are 1 digit off and created at same time, and I submitted AOS for both and their IV, etc. at the same time. At midnight October 31/November 1, we got the response back there was an update to our NVC cases. My spouse was DQ but with my son, they accepted everything but I got an FE case note asking for my spouse's and my marriage certificate to be added to my son's account. I uploaded within 15 minutes of receiving the note. However, they still have not updated or reviewed anything. I was wondering how long it takes for them to review FE requested documents, given that we are now a full day past the time it took for them to initially review (and approve my spouse)? Should I reach out or anything through the ask nvc?

My spouse got DQ on 11/1 and we are waiting on interview letter. However, she's a package deal with our son (my step son) and he had all his stuff accepted except they RFE asking for our marriage certificate on his case. I uploaded it literally within 10 minutes of receipt and it's been over a week and they haven't DQ him yet or received anything. I don't know how long it takes, but it's now taking longer to get an update from the RFE for him than it was for them to accept everything else. I don't know if I am allowed to send an ask notice about it.

Did you get your interview letter yet?

Looks like there was an update, it's back to normal-ish timeframes.

Did you get your welcome letter? If not, maybe try contacting them through the ask nvc function. I don't know if case type matters in processing welcome letters, but we got our welcome letter 2 business days after it was approved by the USCIS on October 14th.

Congratulations!!!

Just an addition - they showed as having processed August 30th cases on September 11th. I don't know how you can backtrack like that when October 10th it was showing through processed through October 3rd.

This really does look strange because how do you go from a 7 day backlog and in literally 1 week go to a 60 day backlog? That makes no sense. Something seems off here. The most it's jumped since Jan 2021, is 7 days worth back in Feb 2021. And that seems reasonable as they didn't do any review in that week so it added a week.

I am going to say this topic can be closed. This morning I received an additional update to the case and my I-130 applications for my wife and son were approved after 320 days! This is going to be anecdotal, but perhaps the reasons for the updates yesterday was that they were actively reviewing our file. Onward to the NVC!

Thank you I am aware, I called out the roughly 14 month Nebraska service time in the initial post. That's a little unrelated to the issue and questions at hand. I appreciate the feedback though.

I didn't know how to write the title concisely, I apologize. I filed for I-130 for each my wife and son (step son to me) on November 28, 2022. And we have been in the long silent countdown that is USCIS ever since. Based on averages here of other US/Brazil submissions (which I take with a grain of salt), we should hear approval around end of October. I know that was unlikely but still. In June we noticed our online countdown move from 3 months to 1 week and we got excited at the random promotion in time. But, when the countdown expired we were just left with "Your case is taking longer than expected to process" message, which was frustrating because technically it wasn't even past the original countdown. However, today I got a message and the system restarted our countdown clock and saying 7 months. If accurate, at this point that would be 18 months total and well beyond the 14th months Nebraska is showing as 80%. The more concerning part is that the I-130 application is now showing a received date now of October 12th, 2023 even though it has had the received date of November 28th like everything else (including the receipt). It almost feels like they are starting us all over. Has anyone else seen this happen and have any idea as to what may be happening? As much I was trying to keep my hopes in check, I really thought that we were getting towards the end of the USCIS portion in the next few months.

Thanks to everyone for providing feedback. After much consideration and discussion we have decided to get married via Utah Zoom and file a CR-1. I have some additional questions but I will create a post in CR-1 since it's more specific to that forum. Again thank you!

Thank you for providing the details sounds like it's definitely best to get married via Utah zoom

Thanks I thought that's what it meant but then the mention of sexual intercourse came up and I was a little thrown.

I appreciate your response, but there's no way in hell I am waiting 2 years to be with her if I can do it in 1. We can go through the secondary pain together, but being apart is worse than that. But I appreciate that it was better for you though. On your #1, how the heck do you "prove" you've had sex with someone and we're ladies so sex is definitely a little different for us.

1. everyone on this site talks about using Utah on the CR1 as it's fast, cheap, and relatively painless 2. does it count if it's not a US marriage? The only thing recommended is Utah here 3. Whether we do Utah zoom or not, technically we'd be in Brazil when we get married. I am not sure what the numbers are for as they don't align to my questions, but the way it seemed (and maybe I misunderstood) was it had to be a US marriage and that is why everyone was promoting the Utah zoom marriage. Regardless, the Utah marriage is cheap and easy, and we want to do a "real" aka more traditional with family symbolic wedding later, but want to be together in the most efficient and effective way. Apparently you can't even get symbolically married when going through the K1 process so that's a bummer.

Okay, I know this topic has been covered and I have been scouring here and reddit and USCIS trying to figure out the best approach and I have some questions. My fiancé and I filed the I-129f and received a receipt that they have it as of 10/13/22. However, I have noticed a drastic shift upwards in processing times on the USCIS website in the last 3 months to 14 months for the I-129f. Not to mention Las Vegas is showing a 20 month processing time for the I-485 AOS. On the other hand the I-130 for spouse is showing ~11 months and she'd be able to work right away. Not to mention she has a teenager and we want him to be able to visit his father, so her being able to go with him would be a huge benefit. Our biggest concern is that we seem to be getting mixed information and are afraid that if we scrap the I-129f that it'll be like changing lanes in traffic. What we are considering is me going back out to Brazil at the end of November and getting married via zoom with the state of Utah and filing for the I-130 instead, withdrawing the other. While a bummer to essentially throw $500 in the garbage, if it means we get to be together sooner and that she can work and travel immediately, it seems like it could be worth it. Questions: 1. Just to be 100% clear, the Utah zoom marriage counts as a lawful marriage in the eyes of immigration, correct? 2. Based on the information, is the CR-1 the better option for us potentially? pros and cons are great and appreciated! 3. Are the processing times on USCIS generally a good barometer of process times? Thanks for your help!

I just filed for a K-1 today, but now I am worried about the timeline because even in the last 3 months the K-1 timeline has extended substantially and I don't know why. Are you able to change the filing type if you end up getting married to CR-1 after filing a K-1?