Annotation on Visa

[Brenda2010 1]

Hi guys - received my Visa and am a bit confused by one of the annotations...it says, PET EXP /REVALIDATED: December 23, 2010 underneath PETR: my fiance, and above PET. FILED date.

The visa was issued on August 30 and expires February 24 2011 so I'm not sure what happens on December 23...I'm guessing it's an internal thing, checking our records again maybe? Dunno but I'm a bit nervous as I'm not planning to POE till the end of December.

Anyone else have this on their Visa? Know what it means? When you have a sec., thanks, Brenda

[slider100 8]

Do not worry about that date, Montreal is backlogged and NVC knows it. So, in case if you don't get an interview within that 4 month period, your petition is automatically extended (if you submit P-3 within that time frame). So according to me, they revalidated your petition and that's what it stands for. My K-1 says that too... Once your visa is issued, you have 6 months to enter the US and once you enter the US, you have 90 days to get married.

Hope this helps!

KnR aka slider100

[HeatDeath 430]

"PET." will stand for "Petition" - the I-129F petition your USC honey initially filed for you. "PETR" almost certainly means "Petitioner" in this context.

When the I-129F is approved, it's only good for a relatively short period - a few months. The precise period is written in your I-129F NOA2 approval notice. Theoretically, if you don't have your consulate interview and get your visa approved within that period, the consulate could make you start all over with a new petition. But they never do that. The vast majority of consulates, as long as you are in regular ongoing communication with them regarding your visa application, will "automatically" extend the validity period of your approved petition to include the interview date, particularly if it is their scheduling backlog that pushed the interview back past the petition expiry date.

This appears to be exactly what has happened in your case, and it's quite common. It's a little unusual to put it in the annotations field on the visa itself, but the annotations field is very free-form, and different consulates can put quite different things in there.

Now that the visa has been issued, the expiry date of the petition is basically meaningless to you. You have until the visa expiration date to enter the US, and you have to get married within 90 days after that. Those are the deadlines you need to worry about.

[Hugglebuggles 60]

Simplistically, your NOA2 approval is valid for 4 months. If you aren't issued a visa within that 4 month time frame, then they automatically extend the validity period for another 4 months.

So your petition was approved in April, meaning it expired in August, so they extended the validity until December.

Now that you have the visa, that date is meaningless.

Congrats on the approval!

[Brenda2010 1]

That's great news, thanks all. Now I can relax again. Well, for a little while...thoughts of moving keep me pretty wound up these days!