BenNomad

As far as I know, you'll have to get the Covid vaccine in the U.S. if you don't get it at the medical exam in Moscow. You can travel to the U.S. but I don't think you will get your green card until you complete the Covid vaccine. Who knows, maybe in a half-year from now, they will remove Covid from the required vaccine list? One could hope! There's not much to read yet in the other thread I started. It's actually much easier to find info about applying for Schengen visas in Russian. Форум Винского is a huge forum and there's a lot of up-to-date info, many users. It isn't difficult to get visa appointments for every country. For Greece, for example, you can book an appointment the same week or even the next day (probably depends on which city you're applying in). Personally, I wish we had started the process to get a residence permit somewhere earlier. If we had residence in a third country, we could transfer the case there or at least apply for the Schengen visa from there instead of having to go back to Russia to apply.

It IS a very frustrating, complicated and changing situation. The other threads aren't necessarily outdated though. There's an active thread for those who are trying to transfer their interview from Warsaw somewhere else, and there's a thread for those who've decided to stick with Warsaw (or had no choice). There aren't a lot of active posters at the moment who are still waiting for interviews, so it may seem like threads are not being updated, but people are probably just waiting for some news about their cases. You have time to look into getting a residency somewhere if that's a possibility for you (of course the applicant is the one who needs the residency). It won't look suspicious to the US State Department. If you have the legal right to live in a country, you can transfer your case there. But continually renewing a tourist visa (like doing the visa-run thing) or having a long-term tourist stay (like in Georgia or Egypt) is NOT considered a residency. My wife's I-130 took 11 months for approval. Then things starting moving faster. What's your estimated wait time at USCIS?

Picking up an older thread here, because the question of the police certificate validity is a timely one for me at the moment, since my wife just went in to apply for a new one (in Russia) but perhaps she doesn't need to wait in Russia another month just for a new certificate. Our current one is a year old. I checked the Warsaw Embassy website on IV interviews today, and found the following: The first page was updated January 20, 2023. Seems like they got their requirements in line with NVC. My trust level is not very high considering what others have gone through in Warsaw, but the above does seem like ample evidence that certificates are good for two years now. Also, is it true that an apostille is NOT required for the police certificate?

There is also a thread started by @MosCali who was DQ'd June 12. Waiting to hear if they got the interview letter yet. Others who were DQ'd during the past winter/spring got their interview letters around the 21-24th of the month. I was DQ'd July 6 and I'm estimating (hoping) that my letter will come at the end of August, for an interview sometime early October. BTW, it's helpful to the community if everyone creates their timeline and keeps it current. That makes it easy to find this info in one place rather than scattered in various threads. However, I don't see in the timeline any place to mark "received interview letter", which would be a helpful data point.

@MosCali Are you still waiting for the interview letter?

I've been informed that another option for sending money to Russia is to open a bank account in Kazakhstan. I'm told it can be done without visiting Kazakstan, costs 25,000 RUB and includes delivery of the bank card to an address in Russia. Regarding scheduling travel dates for the Schengen visa, I know this has been discussed thoroughly elsewhere, but it sounds like two weeks is the absolute minumum if you're going to do the medical exam in Warsaw. That's based on doing the medical one week before the interview, 3-5+ days for passport return after the interview (embassy information), plus travel days. Of course, that doesn't take into consideration unexpected delays like administrative review. I'd feel safer if my wife had a one-month Schengen, but I'm not sure she's going to get a visa approved for that length since it will be her first Schengen. What happens if your Schengen visa expires and you're still waiting for Warsaw to give the passport back? I wonder if the US embassy takes the applicant's visa validity into consideration?

For those who have no transfer options and need to get to Warsaw, I started another thread:

Starting a new thread for those who have been assigned to Warsaw and haven't been able to transfer their cases elsewhere. *** If your case is IR-5, you can transfer to Almaty (if it hasn't been transferred there automatically) *** I'm sure most people are very familiar with the current situation, but here's a quick summary: - Poland does not issues visas to Russians, and Russians cannot enter Poland directly through an external border. In other words, you can get to Poland only by entering another Schengen country first, and then travelling to Poland from there. - Generally speaking, Schengen visas are being issued for the exact dates of your intended travel (how strict this is varies by Schengen country and the applicants visa history) - You can apply for a Schengen visa only in your home country or a country where you have residence (your residence in that country should be valid for at least three months after your planned return from the Schengen zone). Keep in mind that if you have residence in a country where there's a working US Embassy, you should be able to transfer your case there. - The stated purpose for your travel is most likely going to be Tourism, and therefore it is NOT recommended to mention in your Schengen application that you are planning to go to Warsaw for a visa interview. An excellent source of info about getting a Schengen visa is "Forum Vinskogo" (in Russian language). The country most often recommended to try for is France, because apparently France is less strict than other Schengen countries. However, it's very hard to get an appointment to apply for a French visa. In fact, some Russians are running a business booking appointments automatically using a bot. Seems like the price is around $70-80 to use a bot. Because of those bots I wasn't even able to create an account on the French visa center website. Another one to try for is Italy, with a lot of success stories of people going there. My wife and I have decided to try for Greece. From what I've read, Greece makes their visa decisions relatively quickly (around 2-3 weeks I think). It's also closer geographically to us. We don't know yet when our Warsaw interview date is, and we don't want to guess at travel dates, so we decided it's best to wait for the interview letter before applying for the visa. That means she's in Russia with our kids (and without me) until we get the interview letter. I don't like that our family has had to separate just for the sake of getting a visa to travel to the Warsaw interview, but I'm not going to preach to the choir here Another reason why we decided on Greece is the possiblity for me to get a residence permit through the Digital Nomad program. If I can get a residence quickly, then my wife could apply for a long-term national visa through "Family Reunification" (ie, not a Schengen visa). And that would allow us to travel freely in the Schengen zone. I don't know how long it takes, but I'm flying to Greece next week to start the process. I figure it's better to be working on an alternate plan as long as we're just waiting. A related question here is how to send money to Russia to support a family member. My wife was able to withdraw $2000 from an airport bank machine on her way back to Russia, but that's not much money to live on if we still have a month or so to wait for the interview letter. We left very little money in her Rusisan account when we flew out last year, not thinking that we'd be back any time soon. I heard that UniCredit bank is the last remaining bank that can take transfers in USD or Euros (without enormous fees). Has anyone made USD transfers to Russia recently?

I considered it, but they're going to ask for proof of your residence there. Another thing to consider is how much of a backlog do they have in those countries. I tried to find data about current wait times at various US embassies but I didn't find any official source for that, just statistics on how many visas they issued by month.

@MosCali Judging by experiences posted by other members, I'm thinking you should be getting your interview letter right around now. I couldn't find any members besides you with DQ dates in early June, and it would help knowing if the timeframes are staying about the same. I'm a month behind you in line.

Congratulations to you and your family! Thank you so much for those great tips!! I was planning to give my wife a copy of my tax transcript to take to the interview (I downloaded it from the IRS after getting DQ) but sounds like I could go ahead and upload it to the CEAC site now, even though no one at this point has asked for it. Is there any reason not to upload it now, months before the interview?

Hi everyone, I've read the threads about needing to print out, hand sign and rescan the i-864 form as a PDF, but what about other documents like translations? For example, I have PDF files from a translation agency that are editable in Adobe Acrobat (meaning I can select "Edit PDF" and all the text fields become editable). I'm assuming the NVC will reject those kinds of PDFs. I can restrict editing in Adobe Acrobat, though. The document will be openable and readable, but editing will require a password. Will the NVC reject it for being "password-protected" if I do that? Is it best to print out all the PDF translations and rescan as new PDFs? Thanks