StevenInAtlanta

@blakezero When it became clear to us that we were not going to get her visa on that trip, we contacted the Embassy help line via the online message system and requested that her passport be returned because we had already been there 3 weeks, we were running low on $$ and I was tired of extending flights and hotel accommodations. We spent easily an additional $3-5,000 while waiting. We got an actual phone call the next day from someone at the embassy that works in the immigration area and she was trying to help us, trying to get our package processed but because I could not produce my federal income tax TRANSCRIPT for the current year we could not meet the "we want that IRS transcript document also" request. Knowing that we could not produce the last minute document requested, she told us to just go by the embassy anytime, show the guard at the door her 'green sheet' and they will let her in and she could pickup her passport. And we did, and we left the Warsaw embassy and Poland the next day empty handed. I am still totally PO'd about this entire last minute while we are already here IRS transcript request and I had no way to solve the problem while I was there. The IRS has no expedite my request for a transcript option and it was not available to me online because I had filled my most current return just days before the trip. All that being said, I know exactly what you are going through and if you send them a note or if there is a number at the Israel US embassy to actually call, you can request them to return the passport and if they operate like Warsaw, she can just go pick it up right away. It is also possible that telling them you can not wait any longer and must go home MIGHT get your petition to the top of the stack and it will mysteriously get processed and hopefully approved. You are basically powerless against the embassy personnel, if they want "it", your petition will be held till they get "it".

Breakfast at "Relax" just across the street from Trattoria. Seating upstairs is best! Great pastries, casual, friendly service, comfortable. Relax na Wilczej

Samples from Trattoria Italian resturant

@RogerVA8928 I don't know if it applies to you but I believe that Poland is not currently allowing Russian citizens into the country. The embassy was no help in trying to help us determine if she could return to complete our petition and get her visa (IR1). They told us that we would have to contact the Polish government to see if it was even possible. So....the US embassy system moves petitions from Moscow to Warsaw, and because of the war, they close the door to Russian citizens. Now the rumor is that they are going to begin to resume processing of IR1 visas at the Moscow embassy...but this has not occured yet as far as I know. It may never occur, but we have fingers crossed and pray.

Hello @RogerVA8928 If you read through this thread you will find the answers to many of your questions, my wife and I recently went through this process in Warsaw and mostly due to the war in Ukraine it was a lot of extra trouble since she is a Russian citizen living in Moscow. Airline restrictions, banking sanctions, boarder policies, and timing of interview, travel, hotels and documentation are all issues you have to face. So here is what we have learned: === Q:If interviewing in Warsaw is the only acceptable option, I'm wondering how much time they give you to prepare for the trip when they schedule the interview? A: In our case, the Warsaw office got our petition and within 90 days we were contacted with the appointment date/time. It was 3 weeks in the future. The war had just started and airline sanctions made that date not workable for us. My wife needed to get her Schengen visa (from Italy) and at that time there was a long line due to the imgrant surge out and around Europe and Russia. We paid our visa service an additional fee (like $350 if I remember correctly) for an expedited service but there was still no guarantee it would come in time for the interview. As it turned out, we got it in about 2 weeks. The visa service insisted there was no guarantee how fast but we were very pleased. Q: I've heard getting the Schengen Visa can take a few weeks and once received for whichever country (Spain, Italy, Greece, etc...) it's only valid for 30 days. A: Depends on which country and how long the line is in that country. The Schengen visa we purchased was good for 1 year....if I remember correctly. It may have been 2-3 years, I'll check w/my wife. Again, we opted for the Italian visa because they offered or made available an expedite service whereas the others did not. This expedite service was offered by the visa service we used in Russia, not by the Italian government. A visa service is familiar with how things work, they have inside contacts and they have people to go stand in line for you...that is what you are paying for. Q: So hoping there is at least a 2 month window for planning purposes and not a 3-4 week window as that would not allow enough time for processing her Schengen and traveling. A: I've chattted with a number of others here that went through Warsaw. Their experience seems pretty consistant with ours, you get about 3 weeks notice. Q: If they schedule with a small window, does anyone know the rescheduling process? A: Yes, we rescheduled our appointment, moved it to the first available slot in the future. That slot was about 3 months after our initial interview date. Availability is entirely based on how many people are applying and how many people are in queue. There is a website that you use to reschedule your appointment. The process was easy, we just picked a new date online and a few days later we got a confirmation of the reschedule. Note that when we did this there was a note in the system to not reschedule untill after your appointment time had passed which I did not understand...and I ignored the note. We were still easily able to reschedule our appointment and I hope that our slot was marked available and someone else got it. Q: Can we log in to reschedule the date they provided to one maybe 6-8 weeks later or would it be months to reschedule? A: See above. You can login and reschedule, how long a wait or when the next slot is available depends on the current queue of applicants. Some important lessons learned: 1. Be certain to bring every piece of documentation that you submitted, originals. And they need to be an exact match to what you submitted. Don't get new copies or updated copies, bring the ones you submitted. They will compare the originals you bring to the images of those you submitted at the interview. If there is a difference, they will send you back to the hotel to upload images of the changed documents and you will wait (in our case) 6 additional days before they confirm the new documents have been accepted. 2. Though the instructions clearly indicated to bring your most recent IRS tax form 1040 OR your IRS tax transcript, bring both! I submitted my original 1040 for the previous year, that I had just filed and the embassy asked for the transcript also. I responded that the instructions said "OR" not "AND" but they insisted. The IRS had not fully processed my return and the transcript was not yet available online. It took an additional 6 days to work with the embassy on this item. So by that time we had been in Warsaw 2 weeks. 3. There are plenty of places to stay right near the embassy. We stayed in an AirBNB, they were great places and quite affordable. Most of them were about $100 - $130 a night. We stayed at 2 different properties run by "OompH " They set a new standard! Because of our extended stay caused by having updated documents that didn't match perfectly what was submitted, we stayed in Warsaw 3 weeks. It's a 5 minute walk to the embassy. 4. You will not be allowed in the embassy. You have to wait outside, I waited approximately 3 hours. There is no place to sit at all and they will not let you loiter in front of the embassy. You have to stand across the street or find another place to hang out. There is no coffee shop or diner near the embassy. You have to walk a bit down the street. The interview itself took only 5 minutes. The officer was very brief, asked my wife 2-3 questions, flipped hurridly through all the supporting documents we brought, like proof of income, proof of financial support for 5+ years, pictures together, email and text streams, etc....he was only interested in what had been submitted and they had to be an exact match. The rest of the documents he hardley even gave a glance...though it was quite relevant. 5. The entrance to the embassy has two service windows and a door. You take your papers and printed interview confirmation to the window first, then you get in line for the door. If you do not have your printed original appointment confirmation with the bar code on it, you are not getting in, period. We saw several people get turned away because of this. There is an official at the door that checks your papers when you enter. You can NOT take your cell phone inside. If you have a bag of any type it will be searched. Best to just not take anything. 6. Below there is a map or two of Warsaw. I have circled two resturaunts, the embassy and the red line shows the street we stayed on (Wilcza). We stayed in 3 different places, one different each week for 3 weeks. Had we known we would have been there for 3 weeks, we would have saved a little by booking the 1st place for 3 weeks. As it turns out though, we got to stay in 3 really nice places. I suggest searching out the "OompH " managed properties. They are super nice, updated, clean, and they provide coffee, cerials, a welcome basket and are very responsive if you have any needs at all. Trattoria Rucola is fantastic Italian...it's maybe the best I've had. Great service, the pistachio moose is a MUST TRY. Across the corner is Tran Tran asian...another great choice. Food prices are quite reasonable and portions are generally generous. Be sure to take your wife to Lelou jewelry store! This is fashion jewelry, not real expensive, I bought my wife the most amazing scarf there, it's one of their signature products. We walked by many times and saw it in the window, each time it was calling to us to go inside. I finally did stop and invited my wife in. It's beautiful scarf, I think her favorite now. Great memory too. 7. As far as sight seeing goes...there is a LOT to see. Near the embassy there is not much but there is shopping and plenty of places to eat. About a 10-15 minute walk is a large park you can spend all day in and if you are up for it, a 45 minute walk down the boulevard is strongly suggested to get to "Old Town Square". The Old Town is a must see, it's going to be on your list of favorite places ever visited. There is a bus, take the walk, there is so much to see along the way to Old Town. From where we stayed near the embassy, it's a straight walk, it would be really really hard to get lost. Old Town is dripping with charm, there is a photo-op at every corner, it's beautiful, food everywhere and the best shopping. Many many many gift shops filled with fine goods, not your typical Disney motif junk. The largest deposits of amber are in Poland, so there are many amber shops with beautiful pieces made of amber. You'll be amazed. There is also what you might consider "downtown". It is North and a bit west of the property we stayed at. Not even a 30 minute walk, a straight shot. Just head for the tallest building in town, you will know it when you see it. There is a very interesting mall there. Just Google Hard Rock Cafe...you'll find it.

@Lynxyonok yeah....I found it hard to believe considering the current world climate, but one can hope. Judging from just the last two years in history, it's near impossible to predict what is going to come next.

Something new just popped up on the family rumor mill radar screen. My wife has just heard that a US official just announced that IR1/immigration visa interviews are going to resume in the Moscow embassy. Has anyone heard anything at all about this or have any resources or links to share for verification or further research. I've checked the US Russian embassy website news and there wasn't anything found there, did several Google searches, nothing.

UPDATE FROM WARSAW POLAND US EMBASSY INTERVIEW COMPLETED, VISA ISSUANCE DELAYED So we are now in Warsaw Poland, we completed the US Embassy interview last Tuesday, that was 1 week ago as I type this update. The total interview time took about 2.25 hours. Most of the time was just waiting for her number to be called once inside. The interview was scheduled for 8am, we arrived at the embassy at 7:45am there were already about 30-40 people standing in line. There was a line coordinator working the line and we were separated into two lines one for the non-immigrant visa folks, and one for immigrant visa folks. I was not needed/allowed to go inside with my wife during the interview. She was inside by 8:15. I had to wait 2+ hours on the street outside. Nowhere to sit, no coffee shop, no cafe near by. While inside she was given a number. When called she presented her documents to an immigration officer, a woman that spoke good Russian, she reviewed the documents and said 'its all in order' gave her documents back and asked her to sit down again and wait for her number. About an hour or more later she was called to the 2nd official, a man with not so good Russian. He spent less than a minute reviewing her documents and asked her two questions: 1. How did you meet your husband 2. How long have you known your husband Though she had every document requested in the instructions to be sure to bring with you, he asked her to return to the hotel and upload her updated birth certificate and police report and he indicated they would then process her visa quickly and she could pick it up at the mailboxes ETC. We went back to the hotel, scanned and uploaded the two documents within 1.5 hours. The need to do this was understandable since her original police certificate expired because of the long delay between moving her case from Moscow to Poland and the delay in obtaining an interview. The need for the birth certificate update was because my wife decided she wanted a brand new birth certificate that was in perfect condition, her original was partially not perfectly readable in the area for her birth city....so she got a new one and the officer noticed they were different so its understandable to upload the new one. LESSON LEARNED: If any of your documents expire or change, its a SUPER GOOD IDEA to upload them before your interview so that they are already in the system before your interview. Why the official couldn't just copy and upload them or put them in a folder I don't know but its not part of their process apparently. The official assured her that if she did this quickly (the upload) they would quickly process her visa and it would be available for pickup in a few days at the mailboxes etc. THIS DID NOT HAPPEN.... We have extended our stay an additional week in Warsaw, and this has been expensive to change flights, get a hotel for an additional week, food, etc. It's near impossible to get anyone on the phone that can tell you anything more than to just wait. We check the CEAC web site profile several times a day for an update, nothing after a week now. No email communications from the embassy, no communications at all. The Warsaw embassy has several ways to communicate with them. This includes live online chat, Skype and web phone call. The live online chat turned out to just be a robot and I was unable to actually get my chat routed to a human. I wasted about 30 minutes repeating my wife's name, passport number, birthdate and email address to the robot only to at the end be told it was a holiday. It's Tuesday morning and not a holiday in US or Poland I got no response to the Skype message I sent even after adding the correct Skype account to my contacts, no response at all The web talk phone call just took me to the same voice response system that calling the number on the website provided Called the number on the site +48 22 307 1361 (see below) Finally got a human on the phone this morning, talked for 20-30 minutes, he answered questions and was quite patient but could not indicate how long we might have to wait...that is how much longer we will have to wait. No indication whatsoever how much longer. The problem is that obviously we need to get back to work, we do not have unlimited funds to stay in Warsaw for an indeterminate time. To compound the issue, the embassy has my wife's passport and she obviously can not leave Warsaw/board a plane without it. We can get her passport back by doing a request for it to be returned, this can take 2-3 days, and if we do that we (apparently) do not have to return for an interview, BUT she will have to submit her passport again using the correct form and the support agent told me several times that the passport can ONLY be mailed from the mailboxes ETC location in Warsaw! It can not be mailed from any other location! Are you sure I asked him several times! MY level of frustration is just off the scale, apparently you can't just walk down to the embassy and explain your situation to anyone, there is no way to expedite your request or processing, you can only get your passport back and start all over or sit and wait an unknown amount of time. If this is what happens when you have a simple immigration case where the parties have known each other for 7+ years, been married for 5+ years and appear with all original documents as requested, I can't imagine what a hard case must be like. At this point we are wondering if we can stay an additional week....and the only advice we have to offer is to be sure if any of your documents changed to upload the updated version to the CEAC site well before the interview. If they do not need to be updated, DON'T...they were already approved. There is no need to update documents that are not expired (like a police report) and that have already been accepted and approved. Any sage advice would surely be appreciated.

I am asking if anyone here in the VJ forum is Russian and has recently been interviewed/processed through the Warsaw Poland embassy/consulate. Of specific interest are IR1 immigration visa applications. My wife's interview is scheduled for Tuesday August 30 @ 8:00am. I chose Tuesday and an early time with hopes that after the "10 minute" interview there will still be enough time in the day to pass the petition/application to the next step and enough days left in the week to still receive the new visa at the MailBox Express location...which seems to be the current process. If you recently went through Warsaw Poland interview will you share with the forum your experience please? Did you encounter any civil problems at all just because you were Russian traveling through Poland? How long was your interview? What questions were you asked? If approved, how long did actually getting your visa take? If approved, where did you pick up your visa? What country did you travel through to get to Warsaw? For your Schengen visa, were you required to stay in the interim country a few days to 'vacation' or were you able to simply plane hop and pass through on the next flight in your travel? Thanks to all in advance that can share their experience. #PrayForPeace StevenInAtlanta