US Immigration from Japan

Hi, I'm a US Citizen and I filed for my wife for the I-130 in mid April, 2024. I currently work in my wife's home country Japan. However my job provided me the opportunity to also work in France for roughly 2 years. It would be a big jump in my career and overall a benefit for both of us, but my concern is that I have already submitted the I-130. I have a few questions I'm hoping for answers to.

1.) Is there any disadvantage or reason we could not continue the process from France? And what points must we notify the USCIS and/or NVC?

2.) At what points is it possible to purposely delay the timeline slightly? For my work they want me to be there for ~2 years.

My understanding was there is two points:

Point a. Once the I-130 is approved its sent to the NVC and from there we would have to initiate the process with the NVC, however we have 6 months to initiate the process and if want to delay longer we can call the NVC or send a letter explaining the reason for a delay and extend the deadline? But I'm unable to find an exact source. Is this true?

Point b. Once the visa is approved, we have 6 months or a year. A lawyer I spoke to was not sure, is there any exact source if its 6 mo or one year? And is there any way to extend this?

3.) Does the Visa serve as a re-entry permit for up to one year? meaning we could go together to the US, submit documents proving in the US and then return to France for up to a year?

If it is impossible to delay up to being there for two years I might have to consider just cancelling the I-130 once and re-applying once we're in France.

Lastly this is my rough schedule, if anything seems wrong please correct me

1. April 2024 Submitted I-130, Processing time should be 13 to 14 months from what I researched

2. May 2025 I-130 Approved, case transferred to NVC

3. October Submit Documents to NVC to assign case (asking above in my post if its possible to delay more)

4. Jan/Feb 2026 Interview (france wait time 3-4 months for interview I think)

5. March 2026 CR-1 VISA approved

6. September 2026 Move together back to America

If this schedule would be fine then I would be okay with continuing our application, if possible I'd like us to be able to stay in France a little bit longer though so wondering about the above questions.

I would genuinely appreciate any help, I tried researching but its a fairly niche situation. Thank you for reading and any response in advance.

I've been tracking the progress of ROC approvals using the data, albeit limited, we have available on VisaJourney. For example, I've filtered this page to only show the Nebraska Service Center (where our case is) and then sorted by Filed Date: https://www.visajourney.com/timeline/liftlist.php?cfl=0&op1=1&op2=d&op3=&op4=1&op5=5,9,10,11,12&op6=Nebraska Service Center

As of today, if you go to pages 8 and 9, you can see there is a clear cut off in which cases with with NOA dates of December 2022 and earlier (page 9) have mostly all been approved, regardless of whether N400 was submitted. Cases with NOA dates of January 2023 and later ( page 8 ) have mostly not been approved. The very few cases with an NOA date of January 2023 or later that have been approved seem to be due to an N400 filing.

The approvals for cases with NOA dates up to December 2022 were being issued at a steady pace by USCIS through May 2024. At that point, this service center seems to have cut off approvals. Rather than continuing at the same pace, there have been essentially no case approvals in June or July 2024.

I was expecting that ours, with an NOA month of January 2023 with no N400 planned, would likely be up next, but it seems we've gotten unlucky and USCIS has taken a pause for some unknown reason on basically all cases with NOA of January 2023. Has anyone seen something like this before? Is it a "lull" due to employee summer vacations, or could they have decided not to continue with cases with NOA of January 2023 or later for other reasons? I know we can only speculate, but that is why I made this thread :).

Hello VJ folks,

We have submitted I-130 in Oct2023 and been waiting for its approval.

While we are waiting, we are trying to prepare for I-864, but we feel stuck now...

Our background: The husband (USC) and the wife (beneficiary) are currently living in Japan, and he hasn't had income from US for the last three years.

We would love to move to US together, but we are having hard time finding a joint sponsor. Most likely we will end up not getting one.

So we are thinking what we can do without a joint sponsor. We don't have enough assets.

He has to start earning money from US somehow, but even if he could manage to find a job now, would it cause a significant delay in I-864 approval?

According to VJ estimation, we are hearing from USCIS sometime December this year.

If he somehow manage to earn enough money by then, would we be fine without a joint sponsor?

We need your insight on how to best solve this issue.

We appreciate your help.

Hello,

I had my birth certificate and India police certificate rejected by the NVC. The notes are a standard response saying please upload an acceptable doc from correct authority.

I've checked the reciprocity page before submitting and did it again after this was received. My original birth certificate has the name, date, signature, seal and was dated a few days after my birth. I really can't figure out why it was rejected.

My police certificate has all the details and the police commissioner's signature and seal as well.

Has anyone faced these? What did you resubmit and how did you get DQ after that? It seems even on this forum people ask the questions and then once they get DQ, they disappear without sharing what they did differently to succeed. Please help if you have any tips.. thanks!

Hello, we're currently living abroad (me the beneficiary and my spouse the USC).

Since we've been waiting for the visa processes to reach a certain stage, we're both still working and earning income abroad. Once we get the interview date my spouse will relocate back to the states and once my interview is done I will follow. However we're having trouble filling out the i864.

In my case, I don't think my foreign income will continue after my relocation so I will enter only value of assets.

However in my spouse's case, she is about to get hired in America and she is a couple of weeks away from quitting her foreign job. While filling the i864, should we mention her Current Annual Income as the amount she earns abroad now converted to dollars? Or does that stay blank?

We don't think we want to wait for the American job to send her a contract as it may take a week or so and we really want to process the i864 and ds260 without delaying further.

Please advice how you solved this foreign income situation if you faced it previously too!