US Immigration from Ireland

First and foremost I want to thank all the members of this forum for their support and information. I literally wouldn't be here if it weren't for your guidance.

I originally had a petition for k1. After receiving my NOA2, I was here on vacation when the pandemic got worse and so I posted on this forum for advice. The advice? Withdraw your k1, marry now and fie for adjustment. It took some time, but I did it.

We married in May, filed in Juy, noa1 in August and interview today!

I was nervous as heck. I was expecting the officer to ask me all about my k1 and why we abandoned it and why I had overstayed my ESTA. I made myself worry for no reason.

We arrived to the Field Office, Yakima, WA, 15 minutes early as per our notice. We checked in and the security guards were very sweet and telling us not to worry. My husband was as calm as a cucumber. I brought some photos, new updated info like my job payslips, adoption papers for our dog and our joint accounts as well as all government issued documentation I had and also a copy of my birth cert and passports (basically everything asked for on the notice)

We started by getting sworn in. The officer made small talk and was very appreciative of our photos. He also said "judging just this and you guys in front of me, we're not going to have any issues, i'll just need to ask some questions anyway"

We then went through our packet, again, small talk along the way and some jokes. When he asked if I had ever violated a visa I explained I overstayed my ESTA by a few weeks while we prepared things for the AOS and he just said "Oh that's fine. With covid we understand that, its not a problem". He then asked if we were filing from k1 or adjustment and I said we had the k1 and withdrew because of..and before I finished he just said "Oh right I see you put that there, that's fine!".

Next he went through the i944 and I just updated my work info and he asked if we had any other evidence we wanted to add so we gave him our dog's adoption papers (lol) and the bank accounts we had

Next was just the questions which felt more like a conversation so kudos to the officer for making us relaxed. He asked

1. When did you meet?

2. Did you start dating immediately or was it gradual?

3. Did you go on any trips? (we had shown him pics from some summer trips)

4. Where did you get married? Who attended?

5. Did you go on a honeymoon?

6. Had my husband met my family?

7. What qualities in each other did we like?

and my favourite question

Who does most of the cooking?

He then told us that was all he needed, and if we had any questions and proceeded to explain that this would be a 2 year GC. We'd get an update in the mail (the usual).

Again, thank you to everyone on this community. Your guidance helped me through the initial k1 filing, eventual withdrawal and AOS!!

For some of the options on the I-129F, I can't type in the boxes. This only occurs for sections following a tick a yes or no box question. For example, after section 8, it asks if the applicants current physical address is the same as their mailing address, and you tick yes or no. Then section 9 (physical address 1) is based on your answer from that. You fill out section 9 if you answered no. However, the form doesn't allow me to type in any of the section 9 boxes for some reason. The boxes are white as opposed to the rest of the boxes on the form which are blue. This happens in a few other sections also. I've tried opening the form in both Chrome and Edge and neither allow me to fill out that section. I can fill out physical address 2 (section 11) no problem. Any advice? Thanks.

ETA: Should I be handwriting the entire form?

Hi all,

Wondering if someone could shed some light on the effects of a previously denied entry would have on obtaining a CR1 visa (if any)?

I was denied entry before we were married at POE Dublin airport under INA Section 217 R06006 which was stamped in my passport and my ESTA was revoked. It was a pretty devastating experience, that I didn't see coming. I basically was unemployed at the time and couldn't prove strong ties to Ireland. There was also a major communication breakdown between myself and the CBP officers when I was explaining that I am unemployed now but hope to have a remote position on return to Ireland (which I did end up having and still do). They jumped on the remote part and basically thought I wasn't going to return home. Nothing I could say would change their minds. I shouldn't have even tried to visit while unemployed, I guess because I never had any issues visiting the US before that scenario naively never even entered my head.

Anyway...fast forward to today, we have since married and just become documentarily qualified at the NVC. I have remote employment which I will continue in the states if I am granted a visa. I am worried as I have heard others mention the consular might require a waiver of some kind?....Can anyone confirm if this is the case?

Hi all

At what stage can you change embassy location? We are waiting for NOA2 and the beneficiary is moving to work in a different country for a while (Ireland to uk). Is this something that takes a long time to change?

TIA

I know there are a few others out there doing something similar because I learned about it from someone else . . . I've been looking through the cases getting assigned WAC# etc on Case Status Online and had sort of assumed they worked regular 8-4 or 9-5 hours but cases were being assigned WAC# etc over the long weekend and this morning (as of 7:00 a.m. Eastern), there's already been some "On February 16 we [received/accepted/rejected/approved] your form [insert type]."

I'm wondering if anyone else knows about the way/hours they work. Are these from cases that have been entered earlier and then there's autogeneration in the system that just happens around the clock or are they now working extra long hours to clear the backlog? I can't imagine that's the case and yet, from the time they seemed to stop on Friday to last night I counted over 400 notices. These all had the 21900 "prefix" and I'm only looking at WAC. And, to be clear, these are not all I-129Fs.

I'm looking mostly because I'm a bit of a data geek I still have a long wait for my NOA1 and am curious about the data. For example, did you know that the Philippines accounts for ~20% of all K-1 visas and that 100% of visas issued are used (no surprise)!

I was also looking at the annual report for FY 2020 and saw that in each quarter there were about ~18k pending I-129F applications. The Fiscal Year ended on September 30 with nearly 39k received and 28.5k approved and 21k pending. If there were 21k pending on Sept 30 and Q1 (Oct to Dec 2020) received an additional ~10k . . . well. There is math. They'd have to be processing 350 a day to get through 21k in 60 days and that pile keeps getting added to.

*If you're interested in how to search, check out the November 2020 thread which is how I learned about it.