I want to share my mom’s experience of getting IR5 visa.
She is a Russian citizen and 67 years old lady and also was denied Schengen visa to Spain for first time. However she applied again, and I wrote a sponsorship letter and provided my bank statements and my U.S. passport and my travel history to Spain. The reason for travel I indicated was family vacation. 2nd time she was approved and received a 14 days one entry visa. I am her sponsor for IR5 visa and I also traveled with her to Spain from Turkey. There were no questions at border in Malaga, next day we flew to Warsaw. I requested special assistance at embassy, so I was allowed to go with her to interview. Interview was held on February 8. Everything went smoothly besides the wait time, they collected documents and were verifying something, in our case that was more than hour and a half wait.
Visa was approved and passport was picked up on February 10.
On February 13 we successfully arrived to United States.
I know it’s hard and long path for Russians due to specific circumstances, but if you are prepared and have your paperwork done (make sure police certificate was issued less than 12 months ago, make sure you uploaded new one to CEAC, same to new passport, new I864 form, don’t forget about translations), visa will be issued pretty quickly!
My moms journey took 2 years and 3 months, counting from I-130 priority date!
I wish a good luck to everyone who is awaiting interview. People at US embassy in Warsaw are really nice, even security guards! Very friendly and helpful, they all speak Russian. Most people with whom I spoke in line and in waiting area also were from Russia. People travel, people been given visas no matter what’s going on in this world.
I wish everyone will archive their goals.
And I hope my recent experience will be helpful and inspire people not to give up.