Toronto Consulate wants to interview both of us right after filing I-130

[prakriti 0]

Received this email:

You should be hearing from us if we still need additional information or documents. If the I-130 petition package is in order, we will send an appointment schedule via email for both you as the Petitioner and your beneficiary to meet with the Consular Officer in Toronto and at the same time present all the original documents that were included in the petition package, as well as additional document/s provided recently. The appointments are generally done every Friday mornings only and currently, we are booked up to October 2010. There is a possibility that you and your wife will be scheduled either in November or December, however, as of to date, we still do not have final dates of interview schedules for November and December 2010. An email will be sent to you again once interview schedules are available. Please note that this not the visa interview yet.

Thank you and hope this is useful..

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What is this and is there a way I can get around it?

Thanks

Adam

[birdnerd 5]

Received this email:

You should be hearing from us if we still need additional information or documents. If the I-130 petition package is in order, we will send an appointment schedule via email for both you as the Petitioner and your beneficiary to meet with the Consular Officer in Toronto and at the same time present all the original documents that were included in the petition package, as well as additional document/s provided recently. The appointments are generally done every Friday mornings only and currently, we are booked up to October 2010. There is a possibility that you and your wife will be scheduled either in November or December, however, as of to date, we still do not have final dates of interview schedules for November and December 2010. An email will be sent to you again once interview schedules are available. Please note that this not the visa interview yet.

Thank you and hope this is useful..

---

What is this and is there a way I can get around it?

Thanks

Adam

No, there is no way around it. Every couple filing DCF must be present for an appointment at the consulate. Some consulates have this as a walk-in option, Toronto requires you to submit the I-130 by mail, then go in person. I believe it is to prove the USC is physically present in Canada (or whatever country) and is therefore eligible to file DCF. You will have to take the originals of the documents you mailed in. Then your application will go through the US background checks, then you will receive the petition 'approval', which is when you submit the DS-230 (visa application) to Montreal.

[prakriti 0]

Out of curiosity could we have done this at the Ottawa embassy and saved time?

Thanks

[birdnerd 5]

Out of curiosity could we have done this at the Ottawa embassy and saved time?

Thanks

The short answer is you can submit an I-130 to virtually any consulate in Canada, including the embassy, but to whichever one services the area in which you reside. The wait time is probably approximately the same for all of them. We waited one month after filing our I-130 before hearing back from them, and our appointment was scheduled for exactly another month later.

Unfortunately, it seems like you're stuck with the system, flaws included. It is slow, but there are signs that the process is being streamlined, so you may be going through this at a very good point in time.