Hi folks,
In a bit of confusion here. My partner got his medical done for the K-1 in December 2021. He had an interview first because of timing (Melbourne actually told him to take any medical slot he would get and if it was after, that was fine.) They did not give him anything, they said they'd send it to the consulate. He received an approval before February 2022, and a sealed packet later with instructions to give it to the CBP person at point of entry. Presumably this held the medical info inside of it. When we applied for AOS, we double-checked the form that stated as long as that overseas medical AOS application had been done a year before the AOS submission, it would count. When it was December 2022, I called USCIS and spoke to an agent saying, "hi, it says 1 year validity, but we're at the 1 year mark now and our case hasn't been seen, what do we do?" and the agent told us that they would be seen as valid for 2 years, so we didn't need to give them the I-693. We took them at their word for this.
Now we have the RFE request for the I-693. The problem is, we don't have one to give them. The envelope from the medical went straight to the embassy, he was not given anything outside of it (like the CD or apparently the photocopy of the vax record / the I-693). He was sent the sealed packet to supply at POE, but when he arrived in April 2022, the CBP person took the sealed envelope and kept it; he didn't get anything from inside it back. So we assumed that that meant they have all the data on file already. So we don't have a DS-3025 form, because the medical center in Melbourne didn't give him one, and he wasn't given back the sealed packet at POE which might have had it.
Do we need to do a full I-693 again? We have a copy of his Australian vaccination records, and we know they had done the medical and can approve him, so can we call the civil surgeon and get them to just fill out the vax paperwork? Per the I-693 instructions,
And we're pretty sure he falls under that. OTOH, the RFE doesn't specify vaccination, it just says,
So that makes it sound like they want a whole new one, which feels crazy to us because he had one 13 months ago. Is it better to be safe and get the whole new exam ? We considered calling Melbourne to see if they have a copy on hand of the old exam but then it would be on the wrong form. And why did they not provide a copy of the vaccine record and the CD?
Also, was it standard for the CBP officer at entry to take the whole packet and give us nothing back? If so, what happened to all the evidence in that packet, shouldn't it have gotten scanned in somewhere? Should it have been given back to us so we could use the medical from inside it?