FEBRUARY 2023 K1 to NOA2 to NVC to EMBASSY

[Bh_sarah 942]

10 minutes ago, Mychal said:

Has everyone else in this group got there interview dates? Or are we the only ones to have heard nothing?

 

What has happened so far in how we have been notified and the manner in which information is sent from the USCIS, NVC, and US embassy in my finances country hasn't followed the processes listed here on this website at all, and now we are completely in the dark, months after a weird notice of the NVC sending our information off, which itself is weird because we never submitted anything to the NVC before they told us they sent our case to the embassy, with no agency responding to any request we send for or try and call about.

 

Nothing is playing out as we have researched and been informed, and now we feel like sitting ducks with no agency to answer us.

What do you know about your case so far? I'm trying to understand it too so I can see if I can help.

What do you call a "weird notice of NVC sending your information off"? An email to the petitioner with an attachment called K1-FTP?
Do you have your case number (you should if you got that email above)? What is the status of your case number on CEAC? At NVC, In Transit or Ready?
What is your fiancé's embassy? Do they let you schedule your interview as soon as it's ready or not?

You don't submit anything to NVC ever. They just forward your case to your embassy.

[Mychal 42]

On 8/17/2023 at 12:29 PM, Bh_sarah said:

What do you know about your case so far? I'm trying to understand it too so I can see if I can help.

What do you call a "weird notice of NVC sending your information off"? An email to the petitioner with an attachment called K1-FTP?
Do you have your case number (you should if you got that email above)? What is the status of your case number on CEAC? At NVC, In Transit or Ready?
What is your fiancé's embassy? Do they let you schedule your interview as soon as it's ready or not?

You don't submit anything to NVC ever. They just forward your case to your embassy.

Hi Sarah,

 

We have our NVC number. I did receive the K1-KTP. Status of CEAC is "Ready" (see below).

 

Basically we are 1 month behind the timeline for number 7 and/or 8 provided on Visa Journey HERE. It has been a month since the CEAC has updated our case status to "Ready." From what I can tell, the Embassy in Nassau schedules the interview but I really don't know. More on that below.

 

Number 7 in the Visa Journey timeline says we can contact the embassy for updates but we do not get any responses from the email or any answers from the phone number. My fiance has received nothing regarding what the timeline says.

 

*** Quick side note, I read that the K1 visa is a Non Immigrant Visa, but the CEAC will only accept our case number if we call it an Immigrant visa. Otherwise we get an error saying our case doesn't exist.

 

The CEAC notification says the following, and this is the last update we received:

 

"Your case is ready for your interview when scheduled at the U.S. Consular section. If you have already scheduled an appointment for an interview, please prepare your documents as directed in your appointment letter and appear at the consulate on the appointed date and time. Otherwise, please wait until you have been notified of your interview appointment. Additional information about how Immigrant Visa interview appointments are scheduled can be found at: http://nvc.state.gov/interview"

 

Purple Text: We haven't scheduled anything. The Nassau Embassy website says either the consulate or NVC does it...

Blue Text: Haven't heard anything and its been a month since the embassy has received our application when the timeline says it should take a week. In addition, I am in contact with another fellow applicant from Nassau who has long since had their interview scheduled by someone in Nassau I think, and my fiance and I were ahead of them in the timeline processes up to this point. That makes me worried that our case is lost or something.

Red Text: The link takes me to a place where I have to register my appointment online that I get from the embassy. An appointment we aren't receiving and can't get any updates on because all the contact information is broken or something. 

 

TLDR: Just looking for a reliable place to contact the embassy to get an update. We are stuck with not receiving an interview appointment, which is required to do any kind of tracking or registration for the US Embassy Nassau.

 

[Bh_sarah 942]

9 hours ago, Mychal said:

TLDR: Just looking for a reliable place to contact the embassy to get an update. We are stuck with not receiving an interview appointment, which is required to do any kind of tracking or registration for the US Embassy Nassau.

 

Ok, thank you for the complete info! So your case is ready for more than a month, that is good that you're over the NVC phase and moved on to the embassy, but one month after ready with no info, that worries me.

I don't know much about the Bahamas process but I am researching my groups and contacts.
 

I know that you should not take any CEAC/NVC messages in regard. You probably already see that the immigrant visa and the non-immigrant visa lines gets blurred. Officially, K1 is non-immigrant. But CEAC treats it as an immigrant visa (the CEAC tracker issue you just described). So all the info there regarding interviews and documents is made for immigrant visas, which pay fees and sends docs to NVC. Not our case. We don't send anything to NVC, we don't pay fees, and we only use CEAC to fill out DS-160 (non-immigrant form) and to check our status (selecting immigrant). NVC only serves as a bridge between USCIS and the embassy in our case. They don't bother to update the info specifically to K1, making people confused. 

Ok, so you're case is the embassy, so you should forget getting anything else from NVC if you already got the K1-FTP. I assume all the info on K1-FTP is correct, names, receipt numbers, and embassy, right?

 

When it comes to the embassy phase, everything gets really specific to the embassy. Also, every embassy website is different and MANY embassies will also list K1 as an immigrant visa even though it's not. That seems like the case for the Bahamas embassy website.
See what I could find on their website:

- https://bs.usembassy.gov/fiancee-visa-interview/ -> Here they describe the process but this isn't helpful when it comes to knowing what to do after the case is forwarded to the embassy.

- https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfa6lA0W9ioP2_pR9qgYghbMIIEVHAsztMmZwqN4VHnC3GWXA/formResponse -> This is the visa navigator from the embassy. You can see that "U.S. EMBASSY NASSAU DOES NOT ACCEPT ANY PHONE CALLS RELATING TO VISA MATTERS". I wonder if they do reply to emails. On this link, click on NEXT, then IMMIGRANT VISAS, then you'll get to a page that lists the K1 visa website above, and also has a blurb with "You can find information on how to apply for an immigrant visa from our visa information service" that links to AIS, the visa scheduling system used in many countries, including mine.

- https://ais.usvisa-info.com/en-bs/iv -> This is the AIS website for the Bahamas. Where you schedule your visa appointment. You'll see you need to go on register, select K1 visa, and then guarantee them you received info from the embassy. Which is not true, you haven't. But this is what I do for my country and I know many others that work the same, we do it all when it turns ready, and then have enough time between scheduling and interview for the embassy to contact us. If we don't do this, then we lose about 2 weeks waiting for the embassy to indeed contact us. I can't tell you if Nassau works the same way.

Another important thing. To schedule the interview, you need to have DS-160 completed and submitted. Did you already do this? If not, go ahead and do it now. One thing that always made me confused about this whole process was how the embassy would know my email to contact me - I saw everywhere that my embassy would send me the welcome letter/packet 3 by email but my email wasn't known to them at all. I think this is a huge failure in the system. They expected me to fill DS-160, even though filling DS-160 is a part of the welcome letter/packet 3 instructions. So I didn't know anything about filling DS-160, I would be waiting forever for their contact. Maybe it's the same case for Nassau. They expect you to know you gotta fill DS-160, and then they get the beneficiary's email from there. So go ahead and fill DS-160. There's no harm to it.

Unfortunately, VJ embassy information is not up to date for Nassau. I would keep searching for people who are going to the same embassy. I would fill DS-160, submit it, go to AIS, schedule the interview and then I would keep emailing the embassy so they can send you the packet 3 (email with instructions), but with an interview date (schedule it with enough time for the embassy to reach out). Maybe with an interview date they will pay more attention to your inquiries. Use this for other questions too: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfa6lA0W9ioP2_pR9qgYghbMIIEVHAsztMmZwqN4VHnC3GWXA/formResponse

Also, try reaching out to other people on FB groups to see what they did. I thought about VJ users, but there's not a lot of VJ timelines for the Bahamas: https://www.visajourney.com/timeline/k1list.php?op6=All&op66=All&op7=Bahamas&op1=3&op2=&op3=1&op4=1&op5=5%2C6%2C8%2C10%2C11%2C13%2C14%2C15%2C16%2C17%2C18%2C20%2C21%2C22%2C25%2C26%2C27%2C28%2C108%2C110%2C111%2C208%2C210%2C211&cfl=

[Mychal 42]

Thanks Sarah. We completed the DS-160 right when the CEAC said our case was ready.

 

I just hit nothing but dead ends and get caught in endless loops of links. "Click here to learn more" and "There is no information here regarding Nassau. For more information go to the consulate website" but the consulate website requires an interview date to create and account or register anything. The websites are so convoluted and are constantly saying to go somewhere else for information and before you know it you've arrived back at the same webpage you initially started on.

 

But the embassy also won't take visa related questions.... So it's like a perfect dead end. There's no one to call, no one to write, nowhere to register or create an account because to do so it requires information they are supposed to provide us, and they aren't providing it.

 

The person from Nassau I'm in discussions with received a phone call for their interview. The embassy reached out to them. Which I'm happy for them, but what about us?

[Bh_sarah 942]

On 8/20/2023 at 5:58 PM, Mychal said:

Thanks Sarah. We completed the DS-160 right when the CEAC said our case was ready.

 

I just hit nothing but dead ends and get caught in endless loops of links. "Click here to learn more" and "There is no information here regarding Nassau. For more information go to the consulate website" but the consulate website requires an interview date to create and account or register anything. The websites are so convoluted and are constantly saying to go somewhere else for information and before you know it you've arrived back at the same webpage you initially started on.

 

But the embassy also won't take visa related questions.... So it's like a perfect dead end. There's no one to call, no one to write, nowhere to register or create an account because to do so it requires information they are supposed to provide us, and they aren't providing it.

 

The person from Nassau I'm in discussions with received a phone call for their interview. The embassy reached out to them. Which I'm happy for them, but what about us?

Oh wow. I am so sorry about your situation. It somehow looks like the embassy simply forgot to reach out to you. And a phone call... that is the first one I see that makes phone calls. But they won't accept phone calls in return, funny.

They won't reply to any email at all either? I wonder if you can just go to AIS, schedule your interview far ahead and then contact them through that google forms that they have there to reschedule it. See if they will acknowledge it. It's hard to be kept in limbo with no one to contact. I mean, you might as well keep waiting forever if you don't poke them! I am not absolutely sure of the process and the risks though, seeing you do have to pay a fee there on AIS.

They also have a "ask the status of my visa" on Google Forms. Would it be useful to try it too? It leads me to this info here:

EMAIL US at IVNassau@state.gov with the following information:

• USE THIS SUBJECT LINE: M22 - STATUS UPDATE - YOUR FULL NAME
• Last Name
• First Name
• U.S. Embassy Nassau Immigrant Visa Case Number (starts with NSS)
• Date of your interview

Wishing you luck!

[Mychal 42]

7 hours ago, Bh_sarah said:

Oh wow. I am so sorry about your situation. It somehow looks like the embassy simply forgot to reach out to you. And a phone call... that is the first one I see that makes phone calls. But they won't accept phone calls in return, funny.

They won't reply to any email at all either? I wonder if you can just go to AIS, schedule your interview far ahead and then contact them through that google forms that they have there to reschedule it. See if they will acknowledge it. It's hard to be kept in limbo with no one to contact. I mean, you might as well keep waiting forever if you don't poke them! I am not absolutely sure of the process and the risks though, seeing you do have to pay a fee there on AIS.

They also have a "ask the status of my visa" on Google Forms. Would it be useful to try it too? It leads me to this info here:

EMAIL US at IVNassau@state.gov with the following information:

• USE THIS SUBJECT LINE: M22 - STATUS UPDATE - YOUR FULL NAME
• Last Name
• First Name
• U.S. Embassy Nassau Immigrant Visa Case Number (starts with NSS)
• Date of your interview

Wishing you luck!

I've emailed an address similar to that asking for similar information.

 

VisaNassau@state.gov 

 

Why it's so similar to the one you have, I have no idea. Best to give it a try though, thanks!