US Immigration from Saudi Arabia

Hello,

My parents entered the U.S. on immigrant visas and were given the IR-5 endorsement stamp. I know it takes anywhere between 1-3 months to receive the physical green card in the mail, but I was wondering if there was any way to track it on the USCIS website or if we just have to wait for it blindly.

A friend is planning to apply for a U.S. tourist visa though they plan renew their passport at the same time an interview might be made available. He lives in Canada and just got permanent residence there but his passport isn t visa-free for the U.S. and in Canada right now appointment wait times for tourist visas are egregiously long, 700/800+ days.

He might visit his home country briefly as appointments at U.S. diplomatic missions there have much shorter wait times, but his passport is close to expiring. His time will be limited and so he s planning to fill out the application and try to make an appointment before he travels to his home country, but the application will have his current passport info, and wants to renew his passport as soon he gets there before the appointment.

If he goes back there and renews his passport after filling the application and scheduling an interview appointment, but before the actual appointment takes place, would that be all right for the purpose of the application and interview or would it have conflicting info? I wanted to see if anyone filled an application and scheduled an appointment only to bring a renewed passport to the actual interview and if that went well or not.

I read that there are certain eligibility criteria for tourist visa interview waivers as per the State Dept guidance here:

https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/News/visas-news/important-update-on-waivers-of-the-interview-requirement-for-certaing-nonimmigrant-visa-applicants.html

Is there any part of the DS-160 that asks about the interview waiver s criteria or is it something that will be determined automatically after the application is submitted?

I posted before that my parents case is waiting to get scheduled for an appointment at the US embassy. But I was wondering if anyone knew what should be done about this year s taxes. I still haven t filed them since the deadline is in April, but since it s tax season, do I need to file them and upload a new tax return for this year and upload a new I-864, or should I just leave everything as is?

I didn't know if this belongs here or on the embassy/consulate subforum so feel free to move it if it's in the wrong place.

We submitted the rest of the paperwork for parents of US citizen sponsorship back in October and we got this email today:

Quote

The U.S. Embassy/Consulate General in MANAMA, BAHR approved your request for expedited processing of your immigrant visa application. The National Visa Center sent your immigrant visa application to the U.S. Embassy/Consulate General in MANAMA, BAHR for their action. The Embassy/Consulate General will contact you soon to schedule a visa interview.

It's great news that the application is going to the embassy, but as far as I know, we have not requested expedited processing of the visa application. Is this something routine that might get sent? I'm asking because I don't want for there to be an issue during the interview indicating that we need to show proof of the reason to request expedited processing (since as far as I know we didn't request such a thing). Also, might this be indicative that the paperwork we submitted might be sufficient for the process? I know there are no guarantees for that, but we never received an RFE from the time everything was submitted until we got these emails. So I'm wondering if this means the paperwork is possibly enough for the interview to go smoothly without asking for more things barring any sudden changes.

I appreciate any insight anyone might have on this.