Entering US after CR1 Granted

[saksnoot 31]

My wife is awaiting her CR-1 visa interview, and we are trying to look at flights to enter the US about 1 month after her interview.

 

One option appears to be flying on Air Canada via Toronto. I know CBP use preclearance for flights from Toronto airport. Is it ok to travel with an immigrant visa packet and complete immigration with CBP preclearance on that journey?

[Leeman15251 35]

My spouse entered through Toronto with no issues. It is not recommended to buy tickets until you have the visa just if there is a delay. 

[payxibka 10,045]

12 minutes ago, saksnoot said:

My wife is awaiting her CR-1 visa interview, and we are trying to look at flights to enter the US about 1 month after her interview.

 

One option appears to be flying on Air Canada via Toronto. I know CBP use preclearance for flights from Toronto airport. Is it ok to travel with an immigrant visa packet and complete immigration with CBP preclearance on that journey?

No such thing as an immigrant visa packet anymore,  it's all electronic nowadays.

[Mike E 11,739]

3 hours ago, saksnoot said:

One option appears to be flying on Air Canada via Toronto. I know CBP use preclearance for flights from Toronto airport. Is it ok to travel with an immigrant visa packet and complete immigration with CBP preclearance on that journey?

Yes that is fine. Probably better actually as preclearance for foreigners is faster than ports of entry on US soil.  

Also your spouse will then be an LPR before entering the USA.  Cool. 
 

Note that Canada considers transits as essential travel so you will both be exempt from Canada’s Covid travel ban.  
 

But as others have said, buying tickets now before there is a visa in hand is not going to end well.  

Edited July 24, 2021 by Mike E

[saksnoot 31]

4 hours ago, Leeman15251 said:

My spouse entered through Toronto with no issues. It is not recommended to buy tickets until you have the visa just if there is a delay. 

I’m only starting to look at options. Hoping I can use some miles I have lying around

[Mike E 11,739]

27 minutes ago, saksnoot said:

I’m only starting to look at options. Hoping I can use some miles I have lying around

That's what we did. Once the embassy called us to say the visa was ready, I used United miles to book us two one-ways.

 

It helped that at the time United was running specials on miles, so closer to 2 cents per mile than the normal 3 cents. I proactively bought miles ahead of time.

 

Pro-tip: United has annual limits on how many miles to can buy directly per year. But United also lets you do two seemingly unrelated things:

 

* Buy extra miles for a ticketed trip

 

* Cancel within 24 hours of purchase any trip

 

So I just bought a business class ticket between EWR and BOM, bought a bunch of extra miles, waited for the miles to credit, then canceled the ticket. Then once we were 99 percnet certain we'd have a visa, I booked United miles flights for us to go home to SFO.

[Ryan H 3,812]

Moved from Progress Reports to Process & Procedures.

[P0907 127]

As has been suggested before, wait until the visa is in your hands before any tickets are booked. People have had spelling mistakes in their visas before and it will happen again.

Edited July 25, 2021 by P0907