US Immigration from Ireland

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before we were married at POE Dublin airport under INA Section 217 R06006 which was stamped in my passport and my ESTA was revoked.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.

I decided to use FedEx to send the K1 application and sent the application to the address specified for express mail and courier deliveries. I waived the signature requirement per the new Covid requirements for accepting packages but just got a notice from FedEx that my package couldn't be delivered due to "Customer not available or business closed."

Looks like someone else ran into this back in December - anyone else had success or failure submitting this way? They'll try again tomorrow, but this is really annoying. I assume if that office had closed due to Covid it would say to use USPS to the lockbox only on the website, but I should know better than to make assumptions.

Another silly NVC related question

In the DS230 under other names used or 'Aliases' if married woman give maiden name - wondering if any nicknames need to be included here too E.g. a shortened version of your name that family/friends call you?