top_secret

Well. it seems we will be joining the July '24 party. My wife is eligible to file 7/28. We will wait until 7/29 just to be safe. We were planning to put it off a few months because of planned upcoming travel but we decided to take our chances on interview dates and valid travel documents. Naturalization voids her Philippine Passport and replacing that would take time but upon checking just now it seems we could get an appointment at the San Diego Passport Office like next day if need be, so whatever slowdown on US Passport processing there was seems to have passed. We still have some concerns about name changes on pre-booked airline tickets. We already completed the application and uploaded everything so it's all ready to pull the trigger come Monday morning. The only issue we are still on the fence about is how best to handle the change to married name. We are leaning towards filing as married name = legal name based on the marriage certificate even though all of her documents are still under her maiden name simply because her I-130 was approved in just 49 days and at the time it was impossible to change her Philippine passport before her interview. It seems a legal name change is not required since the marriage certificate should suffice but we are hoping that is a negotiable and changeable point should USCIS somehow see it differently at an interview. We are still open to hear opinions on the virtues of legal name change vs belatedly using married name based on the marriage certificate. In any case we plan on filing Monday morning. 3 year rule. I-751 already approved. San Diego Field Office.

Maybe a notable detail(???). This thread titled "appointments now available" started July 1. The available appointments mentioned lasted all of about half the day but the first of the month release of new dates part is 'interesting', if not anything definitive. Maybe be alert approaching August 1???

A lawyer or consultant would undoubtable cause even longer waiting in this specific situation because, NO, lawyers and consultants ARE NOT seriously sitting at their computers going through this asinine process to get their clients an appointment. They would just notify you that you have no appointment yet so just wait some more. No lawyer or consultant will be as proactive as you are.

This is my interpretation. It sounds like on the previous passport application they received a letter spelling out exactly what evidence needed to be provided to prove the US Citizen parent's physical and legal custody and to prove the applicant was a minor when they entered the US as a LPR. It seems the easy solution is to provide what was requested.

If you want a definitive answer you have to ask the Local Civil Registry Office (LCRO) in the specific municipality where you intend to marry. Because unfortunately the Philippines is the land of inconsistency and what is required in one city may have some differences from what is required somewhere else. The affidavit of legal capacity to contract marriage is just a statement you get notarized by the embassy in Manila or consulate in Cebu city. You can make an appointment here. https://ph.usembassy.gov/services/notarials/ Nothing should need an apostille.

K3 is effectively dead. I think there have been less than 10 K3 visas actually issued WORLDWIDE in the last 5 years. None in the Philippines. Probably the reason your lawyer recommended you file the I-129F is because even though it was 100% certain to be denied, some say the denial of the I-129F speeds the approval of the I-130.

Are you female or asking for your wife? Just clarifying that because your name sounds male and NBI is traditional about naming conventions so only a woman may change her name in marriage. In specifically the case of a married woman, she would update her NBI Clearence civil status to "married" and add her "husbands surname". It doesn't change her maiden family name on the NBI Clearence but the adition of husbands surname implys the marital name change. I don't think it can be done as a simple renewal online but you can try. I think you can start a new NBI Clearance online but would still need to go in to the office to complete it and show the marriage certificate.

Currently they are stuck at scheduling cases DQ up until about the first week of August 2023 so it is rather definitively about a 12 month backlog right now. Looking forward it seems impossible to predict if that will improve, get worse or remain the same.

Yep. That looks correct. If there was any K1 appointments at all available it would be showing the first available message.

There is an example of how it looks if there are any dates at all available. I just logged in and chose a different category (C-1) that does have dates available as an example. As long as the category is set correctly K1 shows that too whenever there are dates available. No message = no dates.

My observation is that if the counselor somehow decides to make things difficult for a particular applicant then they can totally do that. They CAN make up rules as they go along. Your guess is as good as anyone's about what ticked them off. The best course of action to put on a big smile and just play along with whatever the ask for and get it over with. It's no use trying to second guess them.

The Facebook group "IR5 US VISA PROCESS" is almost entirely Filipinos petitioning their parents. It is fairly well moderated as far as FB groups go. The admins and members there are somewhat organized about notifying everyone any time a batch of interview letters go out and what documentarily qualified dates are included. No one could possibly predict what US Embassy Manila will do next because they act really erratically. But you could argue that September 2023 'might' be included in the next batch, and they are overdue for sending out ANY recent interview letters.

USCIS covers it pretty clearly in their Policy Manual. If they follow their own policy 🙄 then it seem pretty clear you could just use your married name without doing anything more than showing the marriage certificate to justify it's use. Not to say that USCIS has never failed to follow their own policies. https://www.uscis.gov/policy-manual/volume-1-part-e-chapter-5

My non-scientific speculation about the rate limiting issue is that it's a primitive defense against scripting. It seems maybe more likely to be triggered by rapidly clicking through screens as obviously you would naturally do. Possibly a slow motion approach deliberately spacing out mouse clicks by a significant amount of time helps(???). Also, assuming you have everything completed correctly already, upon your original log in, if there are any dates at all available it will say "first date available Aug 18" etc in the lower left main screen. If its blank there, it's no use clicking through to the no dates available calendar and getting rate limited. Rate limiting goes away after an hour or so. Try again a little less aggressively. If you get the 48 hour ban its more serious. I also have noticed it actively blocks IPs associated with VPN's so that's a no no.

My understanding is that if you are only taking your spouse's last name then there is no need for the legal name change option. You could just file the N400 with that as your legal name, list your maiden name as other names used, and provide the marriage certificate as proof of legal name change. This is however a question we ourselves are still considering how best to navigate so I would be very interested in the experience or opinions of others.

The only thing that matters about the plane ticket is that the name and birthdate matches her Philippine passport. Any and all visa details can be updated or changed at check-in. However, until you have an actual visa on hand (and CFO) you have no true certainty about dates. If you book a ticket before you have an actual visa on hand look very carefully at the date change penalties. Because dates could still unexpectedly change.

When you are buying a ticket probably all they need is you passport info. Really all they need is just name and birth date to issue a ticket. When you go to check in for a flight to the US you will definitely need all passport AND visa information.

I think sometimes it's completely random if someone winds up in the two day camp or the six month camp. I have definitely seen a thread somewhere on the subject a newborn infant taking six month to get conditional approval and how ridiculous that was. In our case, my wife took six months and her daughter took two days.

It would probably WAY faster for your sister if you petition your parents and then when they arrive have them petition your sister as F2A. If she is 13 it seems there is still a decent chance it could be done before she ages out.

Currently at US Embassy Manila, IR5's are taking almost a year from when they became documentarily qualified to receive interview dates. They are currently up to cases that were documentarily qualified in August 2023. They had been making significant progress reducing even longer backlogs for IR5's but for the last couple of months they have not moved much.

They process the W7 first and then forward the return for processing. I think they are currently taking ~2 months for the W7 so it would extend the processing of an amended return by that amount of time.

The 750 score when she arrived was 100% based only on her being an authorized user on my cards for a number of years.

One thing we found to be a significant hurdle, is having a brand new social security number. My wife had a 750 credit score when she arrived and we figured everything would be smooth sailing. However, she was turned down at first for several credit cards in her name only. Even recently after she has been here close to three years and has a 790 credit score Chase made her upload a scan of her social security card before they approved her. B of A denied her online, then mailed her a letter asking for written authorization to verify her SS# with SSA plus tax returns as proof of income. It seemed a bit much for a credit card, but we sent in what they asked for and they still denied her again stating they couldn't verify her SS# even though she gave them written authorization to verify it with SSA. I'm pretty sure if she had gone into the branch and applied in person she could have resolved the SS# issue but we were fed up with B of A by then and didn't follow through.

You can indeed file a W7 with an amended return. Also make sure you get her to sign a letter electing for the non-resident alien spouse be treated as resident for tax purposes. https://www.irs.gov/individuals/international-taxpayers/nonresident-spouse

With some considerable experience with international travel I can say that uninformed, misinformed and sometimes even just plain incompetent airline staff are just a fact of life. If your travels are at all interesting, sooner or later almost everyone will have some kind of run in with them over something. It seems est11 handled it expertly. Know EXACTLY what the rules really are in fine detail and then stand your ground and politely escalate it up the chain until they follow the exact rules. I will withhold any commentary about it being Jetstar 😆🤣