Colombia - K1 Visa - Packet of Instructions has not arrived

[amarilloslick 13]

Hi Guys, our petition was sent to the NVC at the end of July 2021. What is a ballpark estimate of when the file will be sent to the Bogota Embassy? Thanks in advance.

[Daniel y Andreina 0]

5 hours ago, amarilloslick said:

Hi Guys, our petition was sent to the NVC at the end of July 2021. What is a ballpark estimate of when the file will be sent to the Bogota Embassy? Thanks in advance.

I believe our case was in NVC for around 9 months before being sent to the embassy.

[cararyn 12]

I don't know if this is country specific as I am going through the Cairo embassy, but you do not have to wait for the packet to arrive before you schedule an appointment. The most important thing is to fill out the DS-160 then pay the fee. For Cairo, my fiance had to go physically to a bank to pay, get a receipt number, enter it into the system (I think) and then wait for it to be active in the system before he could book an appointment. It took about 1 day before it was active. 

 

That said, as soon as you see the status change to "ready" on the CEAC site, reach out to the embassy right away and tell them that it's ready and ask for next steps. They'll probably email you the packet instructions like they did for us, but they left out this scheduling piece (filling out DS-160 + paying). We learned this through other people. You can do both at the same time, but I'd do the DS-160 first then pull together the packet of info to send to the embassy since you'll have more time.

 

Once you are able to log into the system to schedule an appointment, you should know that you can only really check about twice a day. People have been saying 4 hours spaced apart because if you check too much, you will get locked out of the system for 3 days!!! It's annoying because you don't know when more appointments will be available but I'd play by these rules and only check twice a day. My fiance and I did this for about a week and then he saw some come available and booked one right away. Good luck! 

[Boston_Gary 16]

On 8/19/2021 at 9:30 AM, amarilloslick said:

Hi Guys, our petition was sent to the NVC at the end of July 2021. What is a ballpark estimate of when the file will be sent to the Bogota Embassy? Thanks in advance.

You’re looking at a year or more. But the backlog is getting worse every month so it could be a lot longer.