top_secret

When I flew my wife and stepdaughter here in 2021 it was like $900 all in for the two of them together. The only problem was, that the fare was only available on on Singapore Airlines. Singapore Airlines is really a fantastic airline but disadvantaged flying from the Philippines to USA. I didn't mention the disadvantage to my wife, but I think she became suspicious when after flying 4 hours Clark to Singapore, having a 3 hour layover at Changi, and already being 4 hours into the Singapore-LAX flight, 11 hours into the trip, she noticed on the flight map that they were flying over Manila. Other airlines would have been like $800 more for the two tickets at that time.

I'd say trying to guess a future visa delivery date almost to the day is a risky endeavor. There are way to many variables in that equation. To have that level of flexibility is likely to cost more.

That's a summer time premium and is from anywhere in the Philippines to anywhere in the US this summer. Right now is the craziest summer pricing I've seen in like 20 years tracking airfares to and from the Philippines. It's almost as bad as Christmas/NY.

That fare was just on delta.com. The Philippines and TPAC flights were Delta codeshares operated by Korean Air. Note that EVA just added a Clark-Taipei flight last month and had some cheap(er) flights CRK-USA at the time to kick the new flight off. EVA would be a fantastic option from Clark now.

That was the "not ideal" part, although since you mentioned wife made it to Costa Rica under rona-travel bans, she has proven herself an accomplished international traveler who is able to handle a connection. BUT, Cheap fares are back on the EVA flights. Right now they have $772 one way CEB-TPE-IAH on May 15,21,22,23,24,25. Get one while it's still there. last time such fares only lasted an hour. (ok, still expensive but less ridiculously so)

Definitely. CFO and BI would both make a big deal of the family knowing and approving of a foreign boyfriend. Myself and everyone else I know making first trips together were boyfriend-girlfriend though. Fiancé is yet another grey area. The advice you will get here is that from an immigration perspective you would be far better first spending enough actual in-person time together to decide if you really want to be married, and If you really do, then DO marry and apply for a CR-1 spousal visa rather than a K-1 fiancé visa. CR-1 is 100% better in every way than K-1. Either way you could file from the Philippines. If married you can file for a CR-1 spousal visa online. If you still wanted to file for a K-1 fiancé visa you could always send the packet by courier from the Philippines just as easily as you could mail it from the US.

As an American and a Filipina we married in Costa Rica the day after either one of us had ever set foot in that country as tourists. That worked awesome for a USCIS and a great place for a honeymoon too. But that was in 2020 when Utah online marriages were new and not thoroughly tested for immigration. But by 2023 no doubt thousands of Utah online marriages have already successfully made their way through USCIS and various embassies around the world making it a very attractive option today.

I went through all that the first time I went to Thailand with my wife long before we were ever married. It went alright. I know a few others who have been through the same drill and until now everyone I know who traveled together made it out. I know one girl who did get offloaded trying to fly on her own to Thailand to meet her boyfriend but when he came and got her they traveled fine. CFO would DEFINITELY be a big plus but there's a good chance that is going to be difficult. The whole tourism CFO concept is a huge grey area. My wife never had any CFO over many many trips before we were married and none of the other unmarried couples I know who went to Thailand, Cambodia etc did either. Allot of it may just be luck and also how whatever agent sizes up the couple. I can say from plenty of first hand experience CFO is not a hard requirement.

That $772 fare is gone already. They really did have one seat available on on evaair.com about an hour ago but didn't last. Delta (cringe) has widespread availability for $780 one way CEB-IAH flying Korean Air CEB-ICN-ATL, connecting to IAH on Delta. Not ideal but the Korean Air part is not bad.

If you are traveling together she's far less likely to be offloaded so that is the biggest benefit. Most of the offloading stories you hear about are traveling alone or with other Filipinos. Secondary interviews are extremely common for foreigner-Filipina couples on a first trip but they do 'usually' work out if you are calm and friendly and just go along with the program. At 20 you should probably have a lot of smiley pictures of you with her parents and family. BI likes to see evidence the family knows you, approves of you and has some traceability on you if their daughter winds up in trouble overseas. The CFO would probably be a big help too if you can get it. CFO can be difficult for some without a visa but it is possible. BI at NAIA has a direct line to USCIS and they can and absolutely will go and verify a pending petition which could work to your favor since it proves you are serious and that you are traceable. But it could also further raise the CFO issue so it would be important to be quite clear the K1 petition is not yet approved you ARE NOT marrying on that trip. Theres about a 0.0% chance she is making it out of there without a valid confirmed return ticket and they could definitely take it in the office and verify it with the airline. At least consider what the change or cancelation fees are. Usually you can go on various hotel booking sites and make a dummy hotel booking someplace with free cancelation. You don't have to go so far as booking activities but it is definitely helpful if you both have some idea what you will do in Singapore or wherever.

I think usually if you refund a partially used ticket they first reprice the used part what it would have been anyways so it works out the same cost as a one-way ticket plus the refund fee. Right now EVA has CEB-IAH May 24 (and only May 24) for $772 one way if that works. That won't last long and It's not going to get much better than that these days.

As far as I know the only issue is the name that would appear on the citizenship certificate. It is identical to the rules for changing the name on a Philippine Passport. A woman must file a ROM if they want to use their husband's surname on their Philippine passport OR on a Philippine citizenship certificate. Otherwise it stays in the maiden name.

Are you planning to travel with her? IE, meet in the Philippines and fly together as a couple to Singapore? If it were her first trip out of the country there's a pretty good chance they would send you both for a secondary immigration interview but typically in the case of couples traveling together the outcomes are mostly successful and the trip goes on. Offloading is a far far greater threat if she were traveling alone and meeting you in another country. In the secondary interview they might ask a bunch of intrusive questions and maybe make you fill out some weirdly worded affidavit that sounds something like a release form someone might be asked to sign if their child is going to summer camp or on a school field trip. If you are traveling together just get to the airport way early so you have plenty of time for the secondary interview and don't be surprised if it happens. Make sure she knows the details of her trip. Not just "I'm following this guy to Singapore". Make sure she has some cash, US $100's, and better yet make her an authorised user on one of your credit cards so she has a credit card in her possession that is in her name. Proof that she has travel funds on hand independent of you. Filipinos call this "show money". They may ask her what exactly she would do if you abandoned her overseas so have an answer for that. Like "go to the airport and change her return ticket, which she could easily do with her credit card".

I'll answer this thread belatedly since I just noticed it but I did successfully get an ITIN for my wife using a certified true copy of her Philippine Passport from a DFA office. It totally worked awesome for us. I would highly recommend LBC over DHL, UPS or FedEx for mailing stuff if at all possible. Since we live in San Diego and there is a LBC office locally it costs us $11 and takes 5 days to send documents to the Philippines with full detailed tracking. If you don't live anywhere near a LBC office it might be worth at least calling them to see if they have an option of US mail to LBC US to PH????? As far as an extension you only need to pay what you think your tax will be and if that is $0, that is a perfectly good answer. You automatically get 6 months with no explanation required. We mailed our return to the Austin W7 address by the deadline so we did not need an extension. We heard nothing from the IRS for like 4 months. Received our return after 6 months. Every state will be different but we just did California State according to TurboTax and mailed it in with 999-88-9999 as the tax number. California Franchise Tax Board is usually like the mafia if you screw something up but they didn't have any complaints so it must be OK. Our 2020 return was over $10,000 greater as MFJ rather than me filing MFS or single. Like literally you check the MFJ check box in TurboTax and the return ticker went up $10,000.

Do you earn substantially more money than the US Citizen spouse???? if not, filing jointly would almost certainly result in lower taxes and MORE money back at the end of the year. If I were a USCIS officer I would probably seriously question why a married couple would chose to pay substantially more taxes in order to keep their finances separated.

The wait time at USEM is "interesting" now. I have a friend waiting there now so I recently spent a little time trying to somewhat scientifically figure out what USEM is actually up to with CR/IR-1/2 interviews lately. Scanning a variety of social media, I rather easily found something like over SIXTY recent credible self-reports of CR/IR-1/2 cases currently awaiting interview scheduling at US Embassy Manila. While that could hardly be considered complete, it's actually a remarkable dataset. Here is what I found. In January 2023 USEM kind of cleared out the CR/IR list. They were granting almost any expedite. Even ridiculous ones. There were accounts of people here and elsewhere getting expedites they didn’t even ask for and didn’t want. There's a number of people who DQ in early January and got interview letters in less than two weeks. Since January..... almost complete silence about interview letters. Throughout February there are all kind of accounts of "case number not found" on CGI etc. but mostly fallout from the end of January. So where are we now? Based on a substantial dataset of over 60 self-reported CR/IR-1/2 cases on a variety of social media there is a very distinct pattern at USEM. There are ZERO CR/IR-1/2 cases that DQ before Jan 17 reporting they are waiting on interview scheduling. I couldn't find a single one. Apparently, they are all taken care of. January 17-21 there are 3 DQ cases awaiting scheduling. The 3 cases could be considered stragglers. The person waiting from Jan 17 is just over three month and is the longest waiting CR/IR-1/2 I could find. Starting with cases DQ January 24 onward, large numbers of cases self-reporting they are awaiting scheduling. DQ January 24 onwards seems like a very specific cutoff. Stranger is, it seems like virtually all of the cases DQ in January that do have interview dates were scheduled or at least "Ready", IN January. Or in February after protracted "case ready but case number not found" on CGI issues resolved. I really can’t find any accounts of any CR/IR scheduling initiated after January. They also seem to have started denying almost any expedite request. Even legitimate ones. Soooo. It seems to me they cleared the list at the end of January and have done virtually no CR/IR-1/2 scheduling since. Presumably they would do a big group 'soon'.???? It will be notable when the remaining January DQ cases start getting scheduled.

CR/IR2 children need to attend. My 9 y/o stepdaughter had to attend the interview. They didn't ask her much but her presence was required.

I think whether you could do it before you have the visa or not is entirely at the discretion of the counselor and therefor like many other things in the Philippines there is no consistency or clearly defined likely outcomes. Allot of people can't get it done before they have a visa, but some people can.

Courier is free if you go pick them up at a LBC office. Probably faster and more reliable too. If you have them delivered to your house its ₱440 per passport, paid by cash directly to the delivery person when they deliver. The $220 Immigrant fee you pay after you receive the visas. Here https://my.uscis.gov/uscis-immigrant-fee/ The embassy will e-mail instructions too.

Very happy to hear you got the DS-5535 is resolved. Have you submitted a request on Saint Luke's site recently? IE after the 221g was cleared up. Maybe the request 2 months ago could have "to soon"??? https://slec.ph/inquiry/healthcase/

I wouldn't. There are several persons here in protracted disputes with NVC over being double charged. Their "system" is shockingly unaudited by customary accounting practices.

ROM is a Philippine government thing. The Philippines does not require consummation. USCIS, NVC and the Embassy don't need the ROM at all. For a Utah online marriage they want to see a certified copy of the Utah marriage certificate and proof you were together during OR after the wedding.

I have to admit I've logged into CEAC AND US Embassy Manila's interview scheduling website a few to many times recently too.

Just file an extension. Estimate that won't owe anything because you won't once she gets her ss# so you can file correctly. You were married in 2022 wether she had her ss# yet or not so married filing jointly is correct.

They have a pdf version of that too that looks real official when printed. https://travel.state.gov/content/dam/visas/iv-dv-supplemental/MNL - Manila - Philippines_11JUL2022.pdf