Philippines US Marriage Visa Approvals by Month (K1 Visas Way Down, CR1 Visas Up)

[payxibka 10,045]

Offset by fewer k1 petitions from new couples who cannot fulfill the meeting face to face requirement.  

[sable227 0]

Thanks Captain. I think you might be right. People are going the CR1 route due to the backlog. 

[NoMansLand2020 298]

On 6/13/2021 at 2:08 AM, payxibka said:

Offset by fewer k1 petitions from new couples who cannot fulfill the meeting face to face requirement.  

If they can even meet to get married. 

[medic5678 12]

"The immigration process demands a great deal of knowledge, planning, time, patience, and money.  A deficit in any of these areas can spell heartbreak."

   -GB, "old man of much life experience"

 

Truer words never spoken.   Unless you just hop over the border to the south.  Next lifetime, I'm sneaking everyone in.

[top_secret 2,414]

1 hour ago, medic5678 said:

Unless you just hop over the border to the south. 

Mexico deported my wife (fiancé at the time) for the offence of arriving in Mexico City with a Philippine passport, a valid visa, and complete requirements for Mexico, attempting to spend a weeks vacation in Cancun with me last August.  After they deported her to Germany we rerouted our trip to Rio de Janeiro Brazil instead where we had a much better vacation together.  Our takeaway from that debacle is that Filipinas are not particularly welcome "south of the border",  even with a valid visa,  and probably have a better shot with US Immigration then they do with the fine Immigration forces south of the border.

[top_secret 2,414]

Numbers for the month of May just came out today.  USEM only issued 36 K1 visas the entire month.  That's even lower than their post lockdown average.  I cant keep track of all the Philippine's various "CQ's" but Manila being under some sort of revised hybrid altered general community quarantine type order (or some sort of CQ like that??)  maybe could have had some effect????  C/IR1's are down a bit from the March peak but 309 spousal visas were issued in May which is still substantially more than both the post lockdown and the long term averages for spousal visas. 

[EdwardSnowden 13]

Sorry for the newb question, but where is the bottleneck in this process? Is it really only Manila that's slow to process? Or is there some aspect in the USA that is slow to approve K1 applications before finally sending them to Manila?

[top_secret 2,414]

1 hour ago, EdwardSnowden said:

Sorry for the newb question, but where is the bottleneck in this process? Is it really only Manila that's slow to process? Or is there some aspect in the USA that is slow to approve K1 applications before finally sending them to Manila?

The bottleneck is the number of in person visa interviews the embassy says they are able to conduct while maintaining social distancing and with limited personal.  Pre COVID USEM had some days where they did close to 1,000 interviews a day for visas of all types.  Plus the government of the Philippines keeps randomly paralyzing the entire nation at all levels with a mind boggling array of so called anti-covid measures.

[flicks1998 1,044]

10 hours ago, EdwardSnowden said:

Sorry for the newb question, but where is the bottleneck in this process? Is it really only Manila that's slow to process? Or is there some aspect in the USA that is slow to approve K1 applications before finally sending them to Manila?

Its pretty much all of USEM with excuses being used for the travel restrictions, etc within the Philippines.  

 

I think the bigger question you should have is are they going to allow your fiance/spouse to get a US visa?  I thought you were still stuck in Russia?  Back in 2013, you were holed up in the hotel right around the corner from my condo in Hong Kong and amazingly got out of the country.  Id love to hear that story.  I think you have alot of risk applying for a US visa, a denial would be a high probability.  Might be better to try for a Russian visa at this point in time.