NVC AP for the UK!

[nickandkayte 0]

I am a UK May filer too and I filed just a couple of days after you guys. My case has not yet been approved and the california service centre has sent me a RFE. I was surprised to receive this as our file was pretty tight. So I am wondering now if they trying to slow down the process at all levels for UK applicants...

Hello everyone i am a newbie here. i am an english and my fiancee is american.WE met in 2005 while i was working in america, i since worked in america 2006, then i got a 18month visa and worked in the states from june 2007 - December 2008. Since then we have been lucky enough to see each other every 5 weeks or so. ( i live with parents in london and save 85% of my wages) we got engaged on our 3 year annervesary while she was in london 2 weeks ago. Weve started to look at all of this paperwork and it seems very overwhelming.

We have evidence of being together like everyone else (phone bills, emails, pics together over 3 years,flights, bank statements, ring reciepts,all my visas paperwork over the years etc) But i also have a socail security number, american bank account and new york state driving liscence from when i lived there, do you think that would help the application at all? or will it have no effect on lenght of time??

My girlfriend is meeting with an immigration lawyer this week in newyork who says there are several ways to enter the country, i have a feeling some will be a little less above board than others!!

My main question is if we mail the petition off this weekend as planned, can we still visit each other in our respective countries?? the US embassy in london says yes as long as i have overwhelming evidence i am returning to england. But i heard many stories of people not being allowed to see each for over a year, ive even heard a lawyer say that! im verrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrryyyyy confused

Any information would be helpful!! im sorry if this is not the correct place to say all of this, im new to this.

I would try your best to do it without a lawyer, I do have some good lawyers myself but in some ways I would of prefered to be in control :-P, maybe thats just me... It would probally help you to have one in some ways, they are good at collecting evidence and putting it together for you, but it can make the process longer. For instance, I have been on this process since December 2008, it took me months to get everything they wanted together, it could of been quicker to do it ourselves.

ON the otherhand, a Lawyer could be useful if you get put in to AP, or run in to problems. Thats why we got one .

I was reccomended not to travel by my lawyers to visit my Fiancee until I had the visa in hand, and to be honest I think its a good thing as it is a expensive process and I need to save to ship all my stuff over, as well as the fact you cant work for 3 months when you move over. Lawyers mainly say no to travel as you can get denied at immigration and they put you on the next plane back, however there are lots of stories on here of people visiting while the visa is processing and there is a specific topic for it also.

The "AP" was one of the reasons we hired a Lawyer to help us along the process. I think the best thing to do is sit and wait sadly . I wonder why its happening to so many people from the UK, as far as I understand, the UK has all kinds of agreements with the USA to share information that the USA has with no other country in the world, so you think they would trust us a bit more!

Our lawyers told us that they have a tendency to put young couples in AP, or people with little evidence. Now I understand why we had to send photos, videos , phone bills, msn chat logs, and other things to the lawyers. I think we sent them a box of evidence in March to go through! LOL!

[nickandkayte 0]

Waiitt...Reading up on this it seems to be mainly CSC people put in AP? Or are there some VSC ones too?

[Allie and Nigel 2]

I think we are just purely speculating on causes, who knows what it really is. Being young or having little evidence is also speculating. I guess its just a bloody waiting game simple as that.

[Nik+Heather 121]

Hey guys,

Let me preface this with: BEING IN AP SUCKS.

But, just like any "I'm being discriminated against because of X" it's just not really held up by the data (in the scope of USCIS). Going by some of the NVC data collected at apnvc.info, there are pretty even proportions of the numbers of people in other countries who get stuck in AP. There are a lot of British-American couples who get caught up simply because there are more of us applying in total.

For example, another high hitting country, the Philipines, has roughly 400 applicants, nearly 200 of which had a longer than average wait at NVC. On the other hand, we have about 172 total applicants, and only 77 of them in AP at NVC.

Anyway, it's alright to vent about it, but don't get too worked up thinking that it's because of anything other than getting a bad draw.

[scandal 951]

Sorry to hear about folks getting stuck AP @ NVC .. it is a very frustrating experience, and one even most of VJ (thankfully) remains unaware of.

We were stuck in NVC for 50 days last Feb/March. That was a very typical waiting time back in the spring. Thankfully it seems to have gotten much better since then, more like 20-30 days now. Not that that's good mind you, but not as bad as 50!

From what we could tell, there is no preference for getting into AP based upon VSC/CSC, or by country of beneficiary. It seems quite random and evenly distributed over all cases.

I maintain a stats page which is driven off of VJ timeline entries.

If you are in AP, you can see how long your wait compares to others in the same situation.

The page is at http://apnvc.info

Unfortunately I never got the automatic refreshing to work. You can refresh the stats by loading http://apnvc.info/vjcron.pl

This will take about a minute, and then return an error page. Just ignore the error page. Next time you go to the stats page, you will see that it's updated to the current date.

Good luck all!

[Allie and Nigel 2]

Yes, i do believe the country has nothing to do with it....maybe just the dang backlog. I think this wait is almost as bad as waiting for the noa2!!! LOL. .

I think all we can do is just to wait and to stew and stew and stew away.........................LOL.

I hate this wait, its driving me nuts! You wish you were like everyone else and just to fly through this process, i thought we did pretty good with a 92 or so day NOA2 wait and then now...darnit. Maybe waiting for interview will be better...oh how I wanted a November wedding but nooooooooooo!

Ok rant over....lol.

[Allie and Nigel 2]

Ok i'm confused, I called the NVC today and the lady said she didnt see the Additional Processing comment in my file....but the very first guy I spoke to told me like 10 days ago....omg I'm totally confused! LOL. The lady said that the case are usually sent out after about 3+ weeks or so...oh well!

[Ellie-and-David 38]

Ok i'm confused, I called the NVC today and the lady said she didnt see the Additional Processing comment in my file....but the very first guy I spoke to told me like 10 days ago....omg I'm totally confused! LOL. The lady said that the case are usually sent out after about 3+ weeks or so...oh well!

Uggghhh. Giving differing information is something we see all over this website all the time.

We were in AP for 35 days.....

But us UKers should consider ourselves lucky. Once our information gets to the embassy, the turn around on when you get the interview is really quick compared to other country's.

Hang in there. As scandal has said....AP times have come down considerably from when AP started happening in December.

Best thing to do is use the time carefully and to get your packet 3 information and interview evidence ready. I returned my packet 3 info the day the packet 3 letter arrived.

Good luck, I hope the AP is over soon.

[Chaz and Riggs 0]

Well, I just called NVC.... They sent my packet to London yesterday!

[Ellie-and-David 38]

Well, I just called NVC.... They sent my packet to London yesterday!

There ya go! Get the packet 3 stuff ready....packet 3 will be with you before ya know it!

[haleywynne 0]

Wow, after reading this I'm very grateful. I can say that AP doesn't happen to every UK filer (at least at the NVC stage). My petition was received by NVC and sent to London on the same day.

I really hope the best for everyone else who is waiting!

[Chaz and Riggs 0]

I feel bad.... I was getting all prepared to stick it out in the AP for a while..... Riggs hasn't even sent off the request for his Police report... he was supposed to do that this week though... man... now its going to be me waiting for him to finish paperwork... you can see in my signature, it took a LONG time just to mail off the I129-F... I just hope and pray that he will get everything ready ASAP...

[Lisa and Ian 7]

I feel bad.... I was getting all prepared to stick it out in the AP for a while..... Riggs hasn't even sent off the request for his Police report... he was supposed to do that this week though... man... now its going to be me waiting for him to finish paperwork... you can see in my signature, it took a LONG time just to mail off the I129-F... I just hope and pray that he will get everything ready ASAP...

The police report the regular mailing method takes 2 weeks, almost to the day. You should have plenty of time to get it back before you get packet 3.

Just hound him until it's done. lol

Congrats!!

[Chaz and Riggs 0]

How is everyone doing? Just keep calling to check status... I just got the letter yesterday from NVC saying my case will be sent to London in the next 7 days. It also gives me my case number...

[amykathleen2005 441]

I feel bad.... I was getting all prepared to stick it out in the AP for a while..... Riggs hasn't even sent off the request for his Police report... he was supposed to do that this week though... man... now its going to be me waiting for him to finish paperwork... you can see in my signature, it took a LONG time just to mail off the I129-F... I just hope and pray that he will get everything ready ASAP...

The police report the regular mailing method takes 2 weeks, almost to the day. You should have plenty of time to get it back before you get packet 3.

Just hound him until it's done. lol

Congrats!!

Well technically you don't absolutely need the police report until the interview. I believe you only need to mail in the 3 or 4 forms they give you links too as well as the checklist, but all of the documents like the police report you bring with you to the interview.

Please correct me if I am wrong.