mglev

Hi Everyone, My wife has her visa interview scheduled for early February at the embassy in Santiago, Chile, and after reading some reviews on here for the embassy, it seems like the passport return process can vary quite a bit. Some people said it took as little as 2-3 days, while others waited upwards of 2 or 4 weeks. After registering our appointment on the embassy's website, we learned about a "premium" option that would cost about $20 to have the passport sent to a different location, or a few extra dollars more to have to it sent to a location of your choosing, like a home address. It doesn't seem to indicate if either of these options actually arrives any faster, but I am wondering if the people who received their passports quicker might have opted for this service, and if it would be worth it just to spend the extra $20 if it means she could get the passport a lot quicker and we could book her flight 2-3 weeks sooner and be together after waiting all this time. Does anyone have any experience with choosing these "premium" options or have any insight on how they might impact the passport return process? If anyone has specific insight into the Chilean embassy in particular too that would be great. Thanks!

Hi Everyone, On Tuesday of this week my wife and I received notice that we are now documentarily qualified for our visa interview, and the NVC will be working with the US embassy in her country of Chile to schedule the interview, which we are thrilled about and very relieved to be at this point. I did want to see if anyone else has run into this specific circumstance, however, as we also got a message which I am confused by through the CEAC portal at the same time as we received the DQ message. In submitting the civil documents after submitting her IV application, we had a document type listed on the page that asked for a police certificate from a country that my wife only visited for 5 months many years ago, in addition to the police certificate from her home country, which we submitted. After doing some research on this, I found that some people who also had this come up ultimately just submitted a letter stating something along the lines of "Since I was in this country for only 5 months, I am not required to provide a police certificate," and listing the months she was there, in place of an actual police certificate from that country, so we did that. But now, along with our DQ message, we also received a message that states, "This explanation has been accepted for NVC purposes. However, when you are able to obtain this document, you will need to upload this document under the Optional Documents section and present the original to the consular officer." My understanding is that the police certificate would not be required at all, and they DQ'ed us anyway, so now I am not totally sure how to proceed. Does this mean that we will need to somehow still obtain a police certificate for the country she visited, or could this have been just an automated response and do they mean that we should just resubmit the same letter that we had written before, and have her bring that copy to the interview? I don't think she'd even be able to obtain a police certificate since she never formally lived in the country she was staying, but maybe she could get a letter or something else similar. I plan to reach out and try to speak to someone directly about this, but since we are already documentarily qualified, and they will schedule our interview anyway, should we be doing anything further through the CEAC, or should I just reach out to the US Embassy in Chile to see what they need at this point? I am a little worried that there could be any delays in scheduling our interview until anything more is uploaded, but in our other correspondence with the DQ it seemed like they are going forward with working with the embassy to get that scheduled, so I'm not sure if this is something I should be worried about or not for scheduling purposes, or for the interview once it is scheduled. I know my post is already a little long, since I am a bit confused by our recent correspondence and not totally sure how to proceed, so any insights or thoughts would be greatly appreciated!

Hi All, I had a question regarding how to proceed with our application process while we are currently waiting on the I-130 approval. We should hopefully get the approval in the next couple months or so, but my wife may be needing to move back in with her family by the end of the year. Will this present a problem if she is no longer at the address we listed in the initial application? I am worried about potential correspondence that may get sent to her former address if she does end up moving, and how to proceed with documents in the future that may ask for her address and the potential discrepancy between the two. Do we let them know in advance or wait until the initial approval and notify about the change on future documentation only? Thanks for any information on this!

My wife speaks English well but not entirely fluently, and I did schedule her a round of one-on-one English lessons through a language learning app earlier this year. Do you think some screenshots or receipts from those would be worth including as well? And that is good to know about the remittances, we did already submit some receipts/screenshots the first time around but I guess it wouldn't be necessary to show additional receipts, and definitely wouldn't want that to backfire in any way like you suggested. But definitely planning to upload the plane tickets and photos from trips as well as the other newer evidence we now have. Thanks for the response!

That is great to know, thanks so much for your answer! I will get on that right away and submit all the additional documents we have that would be beneficial for strengthening our case.

Hi Everyone, my wife and I married in September of 2024 and I submitted the I-130 application along with all of the evidence of a bona fide marriage in October of 2024, and so with how things seem to be progressing hopefully this means that around the end of 2025 or so we will have an answer on whether our application has been approved or denied. When we first submitted, I had only gotten to visit my wife in Chile once since our initial meeting back in January of 2023, and she had only visited here once as well, for our wedding. Since then, she has been here once more for an extended trip (about one month), and I have visited her for a second time as well. We have many more pictures, ticket stubs, and passport stamps from our travels together, including pictures we got with all of her family (we somehow forgot to take any pictures together when I met them for the first time during my first visit). I have also since gotten new insurance, and listed my wife down as my life insurance beneficiary, and also have several more receipts from various money transfers to help support her over the past year, along with some other receipts for various gifts and things from the past year. My question is, am I allowed to, or is it in any way helpful to upload these newer documents to our chart where we submitted the application? I worry that this might somehow cause a problem since the official application has already been fully submitted, but I also have some worries about the potential for an RFE given that we had only been married a short time and hadn't had the opportunity for more of the "commingling of finances" and gathering even more contextual evidence for our relationship. Our initial evidence included all the evidence we had at the time, such as ticket stubs and receipts from flights, passport stamps, and pictures from our initial visits, a listing of her as a beneficiary for one of my financial accounts, along with two affidavits of support and anything else we felt would help our case. I recall reading someone post in this forum about how they uploaded some documents after submitting the application, but hadn't heard anything about that otherwise so just wanted some clarity on best practices, and what might or might not be helpful for our application's potential approval. Any insight into this would be great, thanks!

Thank you for your responses, she was able to make it through border control in Atlanta without any issue at all last week. We are both very happy, relieved, and enjoying our trip!

Hi Everyone, My wife and I got married back in September 2024 in the United States when she last visited from her home country of Chile, and she was here for about two weeks. This time around, she booked a round trip flight for nearly a month and is arriving next week. She had no problems getting into the country the last time around, and we had a lot of paperwork to show the customs agent just in case there were any issues (they weren't necessary, thankfully), but this time around there are a couple of different factors and I wanted to get the opinion of others if there is anything else we can do to be prepared for when she arrives and goes through customs. We submitted our I-130 and are at the NOA1 stage since October, so I know this might suggest more intent for someone to want to stay in the country instead of return home. She has ties to her home country, such as her lease contract agreement for her apartment, but she no longer is working right now so we cannot show that she has a job to come back to in Chile as we did last time, which I know is a strong tie. She also has the return ticket home, and will have a copy of our marriage certificate, and I intend to write a letter explaining our situation and that she intends to go back home, as I saw someone else on a different thread had recommended. The only other difference is she is flying into Atlanta for the first leg of the trip, whereas last time she flew from Chile to Bogota, and then from Bogota directly to Dulles. I have heard Atlanta customs can give a little more of a hard time as well. If anyone has any thoughts or feedback for our plan and what we should anticipate, I would appreciate it!

This is all good to know, I was hoping that since the US and Chile have a pretty strong relationship from what I hear, that would help things go a bit smoother upon POE. I think it makes sense to just have her say she's here for vacation which is the truth, and if prompted she could say she'll be staying with me and if ultimately necessary to disclose the marriage plan, having something prepared if they question her intent to stay or not. Are there any things in particular when it comes to showing strong ties that people would recommend, or have any experience showing? I imagine paystubs or some other documentation about current work status or her apartment lease/etc. would be helpful, but anything outside the box that would be beneficial to have prepared? As I mentioned in my original post, she has a cat, she has friends and family here, she also just recently got her Master's degree in the country. I just want to make sure we can be exhaustive for whatever might help convince an agent at the POE that she doesn't intend to stay here. I do appreciate all the information so far, it's been very reassuring to hear!

If that is the case are there things to prepare to help her to get into the country without issue? The lawyer I talked to basically said you shouldn’t get married and said the K-1 visa is better to avoid any complications, but we already have made plans and everything. I’m just worried about how things will go and want to ensure we are as prepared as possible for her entering the country.

Thanks, I thought that was the case as well but I actually talked with a lawyer who said that it is risky and you’re basically at the whim of whoever the agent is at the airport asking her questions, and if she says she is planning on marrying her fiancé while she’s on her visa, that would be a red flag. That’s just what I’m worried about more than anything.

Hey everyone! I met my now-fiance while traveling in 2023, and we have been together for some time now. She lives in Chile and I am a US Citizen. Our ultimate goal has been for her to come here permanently sometime in the future, ideally as soon as she'd be able to. We have a trip planned for her to come to the US in September, and when we planned it out the intention was just to have her visit and spend some time together. However, I recently looked into the immigration process, and realizing how long the timeline tends to be we discussed that it might make the most sense for us to get married while she is here in September, and then file for the CR-1 spouse visa to begin that process. I have heard conflicting things about if we were to do this, some people saying it is illegal if she were to come here on a tourism visa and intend to get married, but I've heard that only really matters if her plan is to come here on the visa, get married, and stay here from then on. That was never our intent and she does have ties to her home country (full-time work, an apartment she rents, a cat she takes care of, family, friends, etc), so I am hoping that would factor in, but I wanted to hear what people think regarding the likelihood of her being turned away at the airport for any reason. We do not want to lie about her coming here of course, but the main reason she will be here is not just to get married, it kind of just seemed to make the most sense to do that since we'll be together and we want to begin the CR-1 process as soon as possible. In the eyes of an immigrations officer I imagine that may not mean a whole lot, but I'm curious whether or not it would be considered fraudulent if she does not explicitly state that she will be getting married while here. We don't want to jeopardize the application process or make it any harder for her to get here, but we want to marry and begin that process as soon as we can and this way seems to make sense for us. Any thoughts, or anyone who can share their experience?