Any experience with interviews in Auckland?

[EKT 117]

2 hours ago, kg_nz said:

My husband JUST got his passport back, right in the final hour (his flight is tomorrow 😅). PSA: NZ Post is having a mare at the moment and their estimated timelines are not accurate! We paid for overnight courier - passport sent out on the 10th, on Monday the 13th our delivery estimation was changed to Wednesday the 15th. Wednesday at 4pm it's still "being processed" at the depot. He calls NZ Post to investigate and explain the urgency. They can't find our parcel, said it's like finding a needle in a haystack. He had to call 5 times throughout the day today and finally management of the East Tamaki depot got involved and managed to find it and got a third party courier to deliver it at 5:30pm because they're so swamped and delayed they couldn't do it themselves. Had he not escalated this relentlessly, who knows when it would have arrived. SO, if you are in any sort of hurry after your interview, I suggest using literally any other shipping service. @rycilla seemed to have good luck with that envelope from Warehouse Stationery!

Wow, so relieved for you both that he finally got it and can get on that plane tomorrow! As if this process hasn't been stressful enough already, haha. He will no doubt be one of the first spouses to ship out of NZ after this whole lockdown fiasco.

[JoshandSarah 52]

7 hours ago, EKT said:

@JoshandSarah @kg_nz @rycilla What time were your interview appointments and how accurate were they? My husband's interview time is 8:15am and we live in the South Island so he will probably have to fly up the night before to make it on time! I thought about asking B for a later appointment but really don't want to jinx this whole process... But it sounds like you were all all just waiting around in line for ages anyway, right?

@EKT My interview was at 8:30am and it was a little rushed flying up from Nelson. Took 30 minutes on an uber to get there from the airport. I flew up on the 6am flight, I could barely sleep so I was up at 4:10am lol 

 

I would suggest trying to change it even though it's a hassle, ask her if there's a possibility of an alternative as you'd probably be 15 minutes late or somethin, especially as you're flying up from CHCH, unless you fly on the jet and it's quick, but it took me an hour and a half to fly up there from Nelson here. 

 

Hope this helps!

[EKT 117]

9 hours ago, JoshandSarah said:

@EKT My interview was at 8:30am and it was a little rushed flying up from Nelson. Took 30 minutes on an uber to get there from the airport. I flew up on the 6am flight, I could barely sleep so I was up at 4:10am lol 

 

I would suggest trying to change it even though it's a hassle, ask her if there's a possibility of an alternative as you'd probably be 15 minutes late or somethin, especially as you're flying up from CHCH, unless you fly on the jet and it's quick, but it took me an hour and a half to fly up there from Nelson here. 

 

Hope this helps!

Thanks! The 6am from Chch flight arrives at 7:25am and I think that’s just cutting it way too close for comfort even though they usually arrive early. You think they would book out-of-towners a bit later in the morning. 

[JoshandSarah 52]

16 hours ago, EKT said:

Thanks! The 6am from Chch flight arrives at 7:25am and I think that’s just cutting it way too close for comfort even though they usually arrive early. You think they would book out-of-towners a bit later in the morning. 

Absolutely, from what I can tell...I think you'll be cutting it too close, so I'd request a slightly later time, even if by only 30 minutes, I just agree, and think you will be late if your interview is at 8:15am. It'll just be too rushed for you guys...

 

Hope you're doing well!

[mcs_2021 3]

Hi everyone - we’ve been following this thread for a while now, but haven’t posted. I know you all have been specifically chatting about interviews in Auckland, however, my husband and I were really hoping for some expertise from the group given some of you have made it through the NVC already. We have now had our “NZ Police Certificate” rejected 3 times, despite uploading the confirmation email from the Police Vetting service (given we do not have access to the document ourselves)  the first 2 times, and a pdf including a cover letter with an explanation, the confirmation email, the reciprocity schedule, and the section 14 form we sent to the police vetting service. Every time we call the NVC, they are very unhelpful and have no information around what they need in order to approve the document. We don’t know what else we can possibly provide. Would really appreciate any wisdom - we’re so frustrated and upset by this whole process. Thanks in advance.

[EKT 117]

1 hour ago, mcs_2021 said:

Hi everyone - we’ve been following this thread for a while now, but haven’t posted. I know you all have been specifically chatting about interviews in Auckland, however, my husband and I were really hoping for some expertise from the group given some of you have made it through the NVC already. We have now had our “NZ Police Certificate” rejected 3 times, despite uploading the confirmation email from the Police Vetting service (given we do not have access to the document ourselves)  the first 2 times, and a pdf including a cover letter with an explanation, the confirmation email, the reciprocity schedule, and the section 14 form we sent to the police vetting service. Every time we call the NVC, they are very unhelpful and have no information around what they need in order to approve the document. We don’t know what else we can possibly provide. Would really appreciate any wisdom - we’re so frustrated and upset by this whole process. Thanks in advance.

So sorry this is happening to you! You've done everything right. The issue lies with NVC. Ours was rejected the first time when we uploaded the confirmation email and added a comment to say that it had been sent directly to the consulate. After the RFE, we resubmitted the confirmation email with the sentence about it being sent to directly to the consulate highlighted in yellow and also attached the original Section 14 request as you did. I was still paranoid so emailed the consulate the following:

 

Hello,

 

My husband is completing the immigrant visa process and his application is currently with the National Visa Center for processing:

 

Applicant: 

NVC Case Number: 

 

The NVC recently reviewed and accepted all forms and documents for his case except the police certificate (Section 14 vetting request). We noted in a comment that this has been sent directly to the U.S. Consulate by email to AucklandIV@state.gov as required. The attached confirmation of the Section 14 request states that providing this email confirmation should be sufficient for the NVC. Can you please confirm if this is the case? If the NVC in fact need the full vetting results, how do we go about submitting these to NVC for review?

 

Thanks for your help.

 

There was no response for 2 weeks and then this came:

Your request has been processed as advised by the New Zealand police Vetting Service. We have forwarded the results to the National Visa Centre on your behalf. The National Visa Center will upload your vetted police certificate into the case file.

Regards,

B

Immigrant Visa Section

U.S. Embassy Wellington Website:   http://nz.usembassy.gov.

U.S. Embassy Samoa Website: http://ws.usembassy.gov

 

I have no idea if this actually made a difference. Nothing ever changed in our CEAC portal to indicate that NVC had received it from the consulate but it was accepted at the next review. Maybe it's worth emailing IV Auckland <AucklandIV@state.gov> and explaining the issues you've encountered and multiple RFEs. Then I would definitely call the NVC call center again to see if they can escalate it given that you have followed the correct process and keep getting rejected. Honestly the entire spousal visa process is an absolute shambles. Feel free to drop by to commiserate anytime! Hopefully you get through asap. 

[EKT 117]

19 hours ago, JoshandSarah said:

Absolutely, from what I can tell...I think you'll be cutting it too close, so I'd request a slightly later time, even if by only 30 minutes, I just agree, and think you will be late if your interview is at 8:15am. It'll just be too rushed for you guys...

 

Hope you're doing well!

I floated the idea of a slightly later interview with B but had no response after 24 hours so we finally just booked flights the day before and he will stay in Auckland approximately 180m from the consulate lol. He's going to do his medical the day before instead of flying up twice. 

[mcs_2021 3]

18 minutes ago, EKT said:

So sorry this is happening to you! You've done everything right. The issue lies with NVC. Ours was rejected the first time when we uploaded the confirmation email and added a comment to say that it had been sent directly to the consulate. After the RFE, we resubmitted the confirmation email with the sentence about it being sent to directly to the consulate highlighted in yellow and also attached the original Section 14 request as you did. I was still paranoid so emailed the consulate the following:

 

Hello,

 

My husband is completing the immigrant visa process and his application is currently with the National Visa Center for processing:

 

Applicant: 

NVC Case Number: 

 

The NVC recently reviewed and accepted all forms and documents for his case except the police certificate (Section 14 vetting request). We noted in a comment that this has been sent directly to the U.S. Consulate by email to AucklandIV@state.gov as required. The attached confirmation of the Section 14 request states that providing this email confirmation should be sufficient for the NVC. Can you please confirm if this is the case? If the NVC in fact need the full vetting results, how do we go about submitting these to NVC for review?

 

Thanks for your help.

 

There was no response for 2 weeks and then this came:

Your request has been processed as advised by the New Zealand police Vetting Service. We have forwarded the results to the National Visa Centre on your behalf. The National Visa Center will upload your vetted police certificate into the case file.

Regards,

B

Immigrant Visa Section

U.S. Embassy Wellington Website:   http://nz.usembassy.gov.

U.S. Embassy Samoa Website: http://ws.usembassy.gov

 

I have no idea if this actually made a difference. Nothing ever changed in our CEAC portal to indicate that NVC had received it from the consulate but it was accepted at the next review. Maybe it's worth emailing IV Auckland <AucklandIV@state.gov> and explaining the issues you've encountered and multiple RFEs. Then I would definitely call the NVC call center again to see if they can escalate it given that you have followed the correct process and keep getting rejected. Honestly the entire spousal visa process is an absolute shambles. Feel free to drop by to commiserate anytime! Hopefully you get through asap. 

Wow we feel so much better we're not the only ones that struggled with this. I emailed travel docs a week or two ago to confirm they sent the doc to the NVC and they let us know it was sent ages ago.... We will go ahead and email the consulate directly as well to see if that does anything. 

 

Part of why we're so frustrated is that I've spent probably around 12+ hours on hold and talking to the NVC in the past 2 weeks. The first time the email confirmation got rejected we called and requested a re-review, and it got rejected again. Then after calling probably 4-5 separate times to try and figure out what was expected of us (no one said the same thing or had a clear answer after around 2 hours on hold each time) I finally talked to a helpful manager that seemed to realize how unclear it was as to why the document was rejected. She told us to resubmit this last new doc (with a cover letter that stated the email confirmation and section 14 form were all we had and included a copy of the reciprocity language to show we'd followed the instructions) and that she would take that to document review so that she could get us feedback in the event it was not what they wanted. 

 

No luck.... that most recent doc just got rejected with no feedback and no word from the manager. So now our document has been rejected 3 times, and we have literally no idea what else we could possibly provide.

 

I've read online that some people have just selected "document is unavailable" and not submitted anything? 

 

Sorry for the saga... haha really appreciate your help!

Edited December 18, 2021 by mcs_2021

[EKT 117]

16 minutes ago, mcs_2021 said:

Wow we feel so much better we're not the only ones that struggled with this. I emailed travel docs a week or two ago to confirm they sent the doc to the NVC and they let us know it was sent ages ago.... We will go ahead and email the consulate directly as well to see if that does anything. 

 

Part of why we're so frustrated is that I've spent probably around 12+ hours on hold and talking to the NVC in the past 2 weeks. The first time the email confirmation got rejected we called and requested a re-review, and it got rejected again. Then after calling probably 4-5 separate times to try and figure out what was expected of us (no one said the same thing or had a clear answer after around 2 hours on hold each time) I finally talked to a helpful manager that seemed to realize how unclear it was as to why the document was rejected. She told us to resubmit this last new doc (with a cover letter that stated the email confirmation and section 14 form were all we had and included a copy of the reciprocity language to show we'd followed the instructions) and that she would take that to document review so that she could get us feedback in the event it was not what they wanted. 

 

No luck.... that most recent doc just got rejected with no feedback and no word from the manager. So now our document has been rejected 3 times, and we have literally no idea what else we could possibly provide.

 

I've read online that some people have just selected "document is unavailable" and not submitted anything? 

 

Sorry for the saga... haha really appreciate your help!

That's crazy. At least you didn't have to wait the full review period each time. I pictured you guys being at NVC for like 6 months!! I have heard several complaints about the NZ police certificate process at NVC and now feel lucky it only took us two tries. As awful as it is waiting on hold with NVC I feel like one more call and you might crack it, especially if helpful manager left notes on your file. 

[mcs_2021 3]

5 minutes ago, EKT said:

That's crazy. At least you didn't have to wait the full review period each time. I pictured you guys being at NVC for like 6 months!! I have heard several complaints about the NZ police certificate process at NVC and now feel lucky it only took us two tries. As awful as it is waiting on hold with NVC I feel like one more call and you might crack it, especially if helpful manager left notes on your file. 

Crossing our fingers! Your feedback to email the consulate directly is really helpful - thanks so much again. 

 

On another note, how long after the NVC approved all your docs did it take for you to get an interview date set? We were initially following this thread because we were wondering the same thing that you all were about when the consulate was going to start back up on interviews.

[EKT 117]

4 minutes ago, mcs_2021 said:

On another note, how long after the NVC approved all your docs did it take for you to get an interview date set? We were initially following this thread because we were wondering the same thing that you all were about when the consulate was going to start back up on interviews.

In normal times, it seemed like the interview date was about 4-6 weeks after getting the DQ email. We were DQ July 28th and got the interview letter August 20th for a September 15th interview. Another couple here were DQ in early August and had the same interview date. They typically only held interviews once a month (mid-month on a Wednesday) for IR/CR visas but since reopening they’ve had 3 days of interviews in December and at least 2 days scheduled so far for January (5th and 12th). They are clearly making an effort to catch up so hopefully there won’t be much of a backlog after January

[JoshandSarah 52]

19 hours ago, EKT said:

I floated the idea of a slightly later interview with B but had no response after 24 hours so we finally just booked flights the day before and he will stay in Auckland approximately 180m from the consulate lol. He's going to do his medical the day before instead of flying up twice. 

That's a good idea! I received my package back yesterday by the way incase anyone wonders. It only took a day and a half to get to Nelson from Auckland! so fast!! I used NZ post, with a Saturday delivery sticker and upgraded to the courier overnight sticker WITH signature as apparently that adds a level of priority. I fly out on Thursday! Goodluck at the consulate Emma! 😊

Edited December 19, 2021 by JoshandSarah

[Stevi_09 5]

On 12/18/2021 at 8:03 PM, mcs_2021 said:

Hi everyone - we’ve been following this thread for a while now, but haven’t posted. I know you all have been specifically chatting about interviews in Auckland, however, my husband and I were really hoping for some expertise from the group given some of you have made it through the NVC already. We have now had our “NZ Police Certificate” rejected 3 times, despite uploading the confirmation email from the Police Vetting service (given we do not have access to the document ourselves)  the first 2 times, and a pdf including a cover letter with an explanation, the confirmation email, the reciprocity schedule, and the section 14 form we sent to the police vetting service. Every time we call the NVC, they are very unhelpful and have no information around what they need in order to approve the document. We don’t know what else we can possibly provide. Would really appreciate any wisdom - we’re so frustrated and upset by this whole process. Thanks in 

On 12/18/2021 at 8:03 PM, mcs_2021 said:

Hi everyone - we’ve been following this thread for a while now, but haven’t posted. I know you all have been specifically chatting about interviews in Auckland, however, my husband and I were really hoping for some expertise from the group given some of you have made it through the NVC already. We have now had our “NZ Police Certificate” rejected 3 times, despite uploading the confirmation email from the Police Vetting service (given we do not have access to the document ourselves)  the first 2 times, and a pdf including a cover letter with an explanation, the confirmation email, the reciprocity schedule, and the section 14 form we sent to the police vetting service. Every time we call the NVC, they are very unhelpful and have no information around what they need in order to approve the document. We don’t know what else we can possibly provide. Would really appreciate any wisdom - we’re so frustrated and upset by this whole process. Thanks in advance.

Hey MCS - I had my police certificate rejected recently. I read in here about others who were having issues and one person said they didn’t attach anything and wrote in comment about certificate has been sent to NVC from Wellington embassy and was accepted. Well after waiting four months to be reviewed and then rejected was another painful experience in this cruel immigration process. I have now attached Sec 14 form as well email confirmation from embassy. However reading this I will also send an email to Auckland US embassy hoping they will have NVC upload my police check. Probably have to wait another 4 to 5 months to be reviewed but will keep you updated how I go. 

[EKT 117]

5 hours ago, JoshandSarah said:

That's a good idea! I received my package back yesterday by the way incase anyone wonders. It only took a day and a half to get to Nelson from Auckland! so fast!! I used NZ post, with a Saturday delivery sticker and upgraded to the courier overnight sticker WITH signature as apparently that adds a level of priority. I fly out on Thursday! Goodluck at the consulate Emma! 😊

That's such great news!! You must be over the moon. Hope there's not too much left for you to sort out over the next few days. 

[Sammy.NZ 45]

On 12/18/2021 at 9:25 PM, EKT said:

So sorry this is happening to you! You've done everything right. The issue lies with NVC. Ours was rejected the first time when we uploaded the confirmation email and added a comment to say that it had been sent directly to the consulate. After the RFE, we resubmitted the confirmation email with the sentence about it being sent to directly to the consulate highlighted in yellow and also attached the original Section 14 request as you did. I was still paranoid so emailed the consulate the following:

 

Hello,

 

My husband is completing the immigrant visa process and his application is currently with the National Visa Center for processing:

 

Applicant: 

NVC Case Number: 

 

The NVC recently reviewed and accepted all forms and documents for his case except the police certificate (Section 14 vetting request). We noted in a comment that this has been sent directly to the U.S. Consulate by email to AucklandIV@state.gov as required. The attached confirmation of the Section 14 request states that providing this email confirmation should be sufficient for the NVC. Can you please confirm if this is the case? If the NVC in fact need the full vetting results, how do we go about submitting these to NVC for review?

 

Thanks for your help.

 

There was no response for 2 weeks and then this came:

Your request has been processed as advised by the New Zealand police Vetting Service. We have forwarded the results to the National Visa Centre on your behalf. The National Visa Center will upload your vetted police certificate into the case file.

Regards,

B

Immigrant Visa Section

U.S. Embassy Wellington Website:   http://nz.usembassy.gov.

U.S. Embassy Samoa Website: http://ws.usembassy.gov

 

I have no idea if this actually made a difference. Nothing ever changed in our CEAC portal to indicate that NVC had received it from the consulate but it was accepted at the next review. Maybe it's worth emailing IV Auckland <AucklandIV@state.gov> and explaining the issues you've encountered and multiple RFEs. Then I would definitely call the NVC call center again to see if they can escalate it given that you have followed the correct process and keep getting rejected. Honestly the entire spousal visa process is an absolute shambles. Feel free to drop by to commiserate anytime! Hopefully you get through asap. 

This has me so nervous for the NVC stage. I'm glad I know in advance but still seems like everyone from NZ gets RFEs/Delays at this point.... Has anyone had a successful story with their NZ Police Certificate where it was accepted first time... if so, please spill your secrets. 😟