J-San

Thank you for the responses and advice. I want to provide an update in case others are in the same situation. We were not able to go with the safest option of entering the US before that pause went into effect, so we decided to give it a month and see if we should travel or forget about it. After following some similar cases online, we decided to travel and we entered the US last week. Port of entry: IAD Questions asked: "You're here to immigrate?", "Do you have any items to declare?", and "Can you confirm your address in the US?" Then the officer stamped the page across from the visa sticker and wrote "IR5" under it. Regarding IAD: Con: Very long line. We were lucky and were about 10th in line from our flight, but there was another flight ahead of us that was finishing up. It took us about 45 minutes, but I could see the rest of our plane would have likely taken 3 hours to finish up. Depending on airline, they use those weird elevated busses to move people between the arrival terminal and immigration, so the first off the plane isn't necessarily the first in line. Pro: The officer processed us at the window and didn't send us to a room for secondary screening. He verified the address and stamped the passport in about 2 minutes. Not sure if this is normal at IAD or if we just got an officer who was able to take care of it all there. Best of luck to the rest of the VJ community and hopefully the pauses and bans go away soon.

If a petitioner from the affected countries has already received the I551 immigrant visa stamp in their passport, can they still enter the US for the first time in February or are they affected by this pause? It sounds like the pause is only on issuing new visas, but I'm wondering if anyone has read anything about how it affects travel after consular approval?

Replying to: Any updates following your inquiry? Nope. Nothing.

Mother applied for a visit visa in 2023 and was denied at the interview. The interviewer said he didn't need to see any documents and would not issue a visa. Interview took about 3 minutes.

For the Cairo Embassy, the service they contract (SLS) gives you the option to pick up the passport at an SLS office (for free) or to have the passport delivered at home (for a fee). If you want it delivered to your home, then they will need to your actual address. If you selected the pickup location, then your mailing address won't really matter even if you enter it. They will contact you anyway when they receive the passport to tell you that it's ready for pick-up or to confirm the address for delivery.

Update: Interview passed successfully and immigrant visa received the following day. No unexpected questions. Interviewer asked to see passport, petitioner and applicant birth certificates, police certificates, application confirmation, document delivery confirmation, and photos - nothing else. 2 years and 9 months from filing I130 to receiving visa. Out of that time, 1 year and 10 months were waiting for interview after NVC Documentarily Qualified status.

The interview went well. A long wait, but very few questions. Approved on the same day, visa issued the next day, and passport delivered 2 days after the interview.

Thank you all for the responses!

Two minor questions for anyone who might be able to offer some advice: 1- During the interview, does the officer ask for all documentation at once, or do they ask for specific documents? I divided everything into different files for my mother like "financial documents," "birth certificates," etc. but I can just ask her to take them out of the individual files and put them in one big envelope. Any advice? 2- After the medical, my mother was told that she didn't need any paperwork because it would be sent automatically to the embassy. But the embassy website says: "When your examination is completed, the doctor will either provide you with exam results in a sealed envelope or send them directly to the U.S. Embassy. IF GIVEN AN ENVELOPE TO CARRY TO YOUR INTERVIEW, DO NOT OPEN THIS ENVELOPE. Instead, bring it to your visa interview. Any x-rays taken will be given to you. You DO NOT need to bring the x-rays to your visa interview unless you suffer from tuberculosis (TB). However, you must carry the x-rays with you when you travel to the United States for the first time. The medical report must be less than six months old when you enter the United States as an immigrant." Does anyone thing the lack of x-rays will be a problem? I took a look at a couple of older posts here and it sounds like this isn't a big deal.

I did as you suggested and it worked. Thank you. Also, I ran into a couple of other issues, but I used their Feedback Request option and their replies were pretty helpful.

Thank you. I think this is exactly what I need to do but I must have messed it up somehow when I tried. I tried filling out the application (which is quite long) but I never got to the document delivery section or the confirmation page. Now when I log in, I just see that the application is open but I can’t access or edit it. I guess it had to be finished in one go. There’s an option to close the open application and start over, but I’m afraid that’ll affect the actual DS260 I submitted last year. If it won’t, that would be the easiest way to move forward. I’ll try to reach out to their help line to see if they can get me to edit and continue the application I started. I even tried making a new account but it won’t let me use the same passport number. I’ll post here when I figure out how to continue the application.

Jeanne, Thank you for your reply. I also think this sounds like this should apply only to non-immigrant visas where the application goes through the USTravelDocs website (DS160). But the Embassy instructions say that this needs to be done prior to the immigrant visa interview (see below). It doesn't make sense to me, but I'm worried because of they're being very specific about bringing the confirmation to the interview. After 18 months of waiting for an interview, I wish it was a bit more straightforward. I will also review the link you shared.

I’ve been trying to figure this out for about a week now and I’m stumped. Hopefully someone here can help clear this up for me. My mother has her interview scheduled for a few weeks from now, and her medical exam in Cairo in a few days. The embassy’s website says that she must register her address online and provides a link (see image). The embassy also provides a checklist that says this must be completed and 2 copies of the confirmation page must be brought to the embassy (see image). The problem is that the link takes me to USTravelDocs which only gives me the option to fill out a DS260 application and to schedule an interview (see image). But we’ve already submitted a DS260 through CEAC and we have an interview date already and a confirmation page from CEAC. But I have no document delivery confirmation. Do I need to resubmit the DS260 to get a new confirmation? I don’t see any other way to get a document delivery address confirmation page that they want, but I’m quite confused. In the past, for the DS160 NIV application, it was all down through USTravelDocs so there was no confusion. Thanks for your help.

Update: Received interview letter in mid-July. Interview scheduled for late September.

I have the same question as the OP. Applied for sibling in 2017 and received a receipt notice. Then nothing. No I130 approval. I assumed there’d be no communication until the 15 or so years were up. But reading about I130 approvals on here, I submitted an online inquiry. Two weeks later I got an automated reply stating that they’re looking in to it. That was about 3 months ago.

DQ’d end of December. Still waiting to hear from the embassy in Cairo.