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!

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!

And when your son gets DQ they will use your wife’s position in the queue and set an interview date for the same time for both.

Good luck.  Hopefully, NVC will schedule them together soon.  

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

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

Well, I got Documentarily Qualified today!
 
Submitted October 17th, Qualified on the 25th!
 
Our case made use of a joint sponsor and household member(married filed jointly)

Exactly. It is illogical...unless they found an unopened batch from August in the basement somewhere and are now processing that batch lol 

Hey everybody, 
 
Just an update that I got my visa back on October 5, 2023 and everything went well with the process besides the lack of information during the process. Here are some details from my experience.
Travel:
I traveled from Canada to SP on Sep 16, in time for the medical exam at noon on Sep 18. Two days before traveling I was notified my medical exam was split into three: 11:30 am my son, 12:00 pm my wife and 12:30 pm myself.
Medical Exam:
When we got to the doctor's office, there was paperwork, I presented 4 pictures each and the doctor saw us together after an hour of wait and triage. Exam went quick with a basic vision exam, "listen to your heart" and medical questions. I think the main objective is for him to assemble our case int the US immigration computer system to generate a PDF that gets sent to you after all is complete. He sent us to Fleury for Lab work. R$800 for each of us.
Lab Work (and vaccines):
For myself: I couldn't prove some of my vaccines, so had to take Tdap (I only had Td beore), MMR (couldn't prove I had it before), and Flu (mine was from December last year and it was unacceptable). For my wife: MMR (couldn't prove she had it before), and Flu. My son: Covid (he had two kids shots, and it was a surprise he had to take the third dose) and Flu. His covid shot had to be at SUS as Fleury didn't have any.
My wife and I had to get blood work and x-ray and my son the tuberculosis blood work (R$500) and in total it was another R$ 2,000 for lab work.
In between time:
I traveled to my hometown for another week in Brazil to wait for the interview in Rio.
Interview in Rio:
The day before the interview we had to go to CASV at 7:00 am to collect fingerprints and take a picture. Even though there are a lot of people, it usually takes only 2 min per person with lots of staff. It took us about an hour and a half to get it all done. You can have cell phones (turned off).
The interview was on a Friday at 7:20 am. We arrived at 7:00 am and went to the wrong line (the long one). Go directly to the Immigrant visa line, there were only about 10 families there. No cell phones allowed inside (there are people holding your phone for R$10 each, apparently people get their phones back).
When you get there, you go upstairs. After you arrive, make sure to organize the documents (passport, birth certificate and marriage license) in the order they ask you. After they give you a sheet on how to organize the documents, you will have a seat again. They will call you to one of the windows to sort documents and ask you basic questions. You have a seat again. The consul will then call you (and your family) for the interview. The interview is not as formal as I expected, you basically stand at a different window. He asks you a few more questions as he enters some info on the computer. He asked me one question about my brief. It took us less than 10 min of interview and about 2 and a half hours total. He said he was missing one medical exam from my wife, but we were approved. He then gave us a paper saying we were approved. Done.
Waiting for passport:
My family returned to Canada and I went back to my hometown on Sunday. On Tuesday I got a notification that my passports were shipped via Sedex and to be delivered on Thursday. I checked online and NVC changed the status to ISSUED. The passports arrived Thursday at 6:30pm. THE END.

current proposed processing times for Nebraska for I 130 is 13.5 months
 
https://egov.uscis.gov/processing-times/

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!

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!

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!

Speaking from personal experience, for a US citizen to marry in Brazil it takes many weeks and lots of documents.  Any US or other non-Brazilian civil document needs an apostille (big hassle), then all the documents need to be translated to Portuguese using a government-certified translation service (additional cost and wait times).  After all the documents are ready, then there is a marriage application that needs to be filed and signed in-person by both parties at the local cartorio or government office where the marriage will take place.  For the application, I could not fly down to Brazil to sign in person, so instead I had to draft a limited power of attorney document, get an apostille for it from the Secretary of State's Office in Sacramento CA, send it to Brazil for official translation, etc. so that a friend of my husband could sign the application on my behalf.  After the application is approved, there is a mandatory waiting period of 30 days before the actual wedding can take place.  Utah zoom marriage would be the preferred solution in this case, as it is fast and easy.
 
https://br.usembassy.gov/u-s-citizen-services/marriage-information/

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. 

Utah certainly helps in certain specific circumstances otherwise whatever floats your boat 

There are K-1 cases which take about as long as CR-1 cases.  "Consummation" means you were in the same place at the same time either during or after the ceremony.   A Utah zoom marriage is a legal US marriage.

1. Starts the 2 year clock for 2 year vs 10 year gc early (not it doesn't not start 3 year clock for N-400 early ... that starts at "consummation")
2. See 1, and also an American marriage certificate is cheaper, and easier to get copies of, and doesn't need a translation. It's like arguing transistors vs tubes, automatic shift vs manual shift, LED TV vs CRT TV, etc. Remote presence marriage service is just better.