JR_CG

When asking for fingerprints at an embassy, make sure you ask the RSO, the Regional Security Office, not the consulate section. The ACS, American Citizen Services section can also help you get in touch with the RSO.

How did it all turn out?

Submitted N-400 on 30 Nov under 319(b) as husband is military stationed in Saudi Arabia. Received RFE for Fingerprints on 13 Dec. Mailed fingerprint cards done by Provost Marshal on 15 December and also have an appointment for Biometrics at the USCIS Office in Doha, Qatar for 29 December as the mail sometimes takes a long time/gets lost, the cards might be smudged or not filled out correctly. We will see what’s faster. Spoke to the MilNatz team leader in DC and he said once the fingerprints are good the background check may take around ten weeks. And if the N-400 isn’t finalized before the military moves us, we will have to start over if we are stationed in the states, but won’t be eligible until Jan 2027. 🤞🏻🙏🏼

Update: Even with trying to get my congresswoman involved (Marilyn Strickland’s office never even called back. Each time I call they just say there is a caseworker assigned to it), the U.S. Embassy in Riyadh did nothing to correct their mistake or help us. I will be filing a complaint with the Vice Consul. We were able to get an appointment with the USCIS Office in Fairfax, Virginia for 12 December after sending a few messages through the online USCIS account. I had to borrow $3,200 at 23% interest to make the trip. Luckily we happened to find unusually cheap flights, but they were still $1,400 and 20 hours of travel each way. We took everything that we had originally provided to the Embassy: the I-130, I-130a, I-864EZ, the receipts for the fees we paid, original marriage cert, original birth certificate and copies and certified translations (the military has a free translation service through military onesource), criminal police certificates from Saudi Arabia and Ecuador, photos of our relationship, copies of what the clinic gave us from her medical exam, passports, IDs, military orders. The officer asked if we had the approved I-130 and we did not, so that worried us. He also said we did not need to give him the I-485. His supervisor was very friendly and said that they will put an add-in into her new passport (her immigrant visa/temporary I-551 was in her original passport which we had to renew because it was going to expire March 2025). The add-in is a USCIS stamp that they write her A# and receipt # into and they gave us an expiration of 11 Dec 2025. It doesn’t look very official so it will probably cause the same problems of every single airline worker questioning the authenticity and calling one or more higher supervisors. The USCIS supervisor was surprised to hear that even her official looking Visa/Temp I-551 gives her problems. He asked which airports we had issues at and we told him it has been every single time to include layovers: Frankfurt, Miami, London Heathrow, Amsterdam, Istanbul, Riyadh, Abu Dhabi, Dulles-Washington, JFK-New York City, Guayaquil. Departing we go early enough and plan ahead for the 30-60 minutes that it takes to argue with the ticket agents, but at layovers she has almost missed a few connections because they still don’t believe her temp I-551 is valid, even though the departure airport validated the documents in the system. Anyways. I was worried about being able to attend the appointment with my wife, but the guards at the x-ray machine didn’t seem to care that I wasn’t on the list. We were also worried when her name didn’t get called but then the agents told somebody else that they were running behind and they eventually called her name. I told the officer that we had some 319(b) questions and he had us wait and 10 minutes later the 319(b) team supervisor came and let us ask him questions which was very nice. We had sent a message via the USCIS inbox asking for our case to be transferred from San Antonio, TX to their office in Washington DC and we had received a response a couple days later that our case will be transferred to the National Benefits Center in Missouri. The 319(b) supervisor said that’s normal and that once we get a Request for Evidence for fingerprints and return those it can take about ten weeks for the background investigation. I also asked him what happens if the military moves me back to the States before her N-400 is finalized and he said that it will be denied and we will have to start over in the states using the timelines for military of needing three years of residency. For her that will be March 2027 so we are hoping it gets finalized before we move, though we don’t know when that is quite yet. We have the fingerprint cards done and we received the Request For Evidence on 13 Dec. We just got back to Riyadh so we mailed them today now that we have the address of where to mail the cards. Just to be safe we are going to drive the seven hours to the USCIS Office at Doha, Qatar on 29 December so the prints can be uploaded to the system and verified that they’re acceptable instead of waiting to hear that the cards were smudged and unreadable. Just now we received a notice that her visa packet recreation was accepted and her permanent green card is being produced, so that is great news. Just wish we had gotten it back in April/May. And that we had applied for the N-400 back in March when she received her LPR status. Posting all this for any other 319(b) or OCONUS military filers. Appreciate everyone’s help and will continue to update as the N-400 process develops for us.

Through her USCIS account we received Notice of Receipt of the N-400 application and part of that notice says that the notice itself automatically extends the I-551 24 months past its expiration date, so hopefully that also works for the temporary I-551 in the passport. Following your link to the state dept, they have a lot of helpful information that I haven’t seen before, including a statement that the N-400 can be submitted using the passport temporary I-551, and they recommend using the Washington DC office as they are used to processing expeditious N-400s and are next to a passport facility. I had selected the San Antonio USCIS facility because I think it is likely that we are stationed at Fort Cavazos, Texas next. Not sure if the selection can be changed now, but we will see. I will call the Riyadh Embassy RSO tomorrow for fingerprints, or we can possibly drive to Doha’s USCIS office and do the biometrics digitally and maybe be able to give them the documents for the visa packet at the same time.

Her N-400 has just been submitted! Will let you all know how it plays out 🤞🏻

I do have copies of everything we submitted to the embassy, the I-130, 864, 485 just aren’t stamped at the top. I also recall that they may have been stamping the copies of the birth certificate and such as verified and giving us back the originals. That is a good idea to send it to my congresswoman. I would also hate for 20 Jan to roll around and then timelines move even more slowly as the agencies adjust to whatever comes.

You sound pretty confident about the N-400 so I will go that route as, if successful, it would solve multiple problems at once. I don’t have family in the states where she can go to ride this out so we will cross our fingers with the N-400 and hope that we aren’t throwing the application fees down the drain. I appreciate everybody replying. It boggles my mind that the consulate here can’t just spend ten minutes on the phone with me to talk through the situation. My boss has weekly meetings with ambassador so I will bring this situation to him tomorrow (Sunday is the first day of the work week in Saudi) and maybe that will help me get a phone call with the consulate. I hate that it would have to come to that though.

It seems like filing for an I-90 might be the right answer if we are able to get the automatic 36 month extension they started offering in Sep 2024. That could at least get us into the U.S. in June 2025 if the embassy can’t help us. I just worry that USCIS will say that she doesn’t have an LPR to replace/renew because their system says it is pending receipt of visa packet to be created. It’s like she is stuck in limbo with having but not having residency status and she is stuck in limbo between USCIS saying to go to the Embassy in Riyadh and the Embassy saying to go to USCIS in the states. There is a USCIS office in Doha, Qatar that we can drive seven hours to get to, and get her a visa to enter Qatar, but they haven’t responded yet if they are able to help in this situation. I have also called the USCIS military helpline which can get you to a rep, but they are not able to do anything other than file a ticket for someone to call within 30 days and they only generate an email saying to recreate the packet. I have called my congresswoman for assistance in being able to talk to the embassy but her office only says someone will get back to me. I have looked at filing a FOIA but it wouldn’t get anything back to us in time and looks to be an unknown few hundred dollars at least. Ironically, I am here as military but technically work for the Ambassador, however, consulates are cordoned off from being influenced by ambassadors so he has no authority to intervene.

It makes sense that it would be somewhere electronically, but I would think that they would still have a he physical hard copy of the I-130, I-485, etc that they stamped at our appointment, or that they could restamp a new one that we bring in. my main concern is that because it took USCIS five months to tell us the visa packet wasn’t received and it is taking months to get additional responses from the embassy and USCIS, her I-551 will expire and then my tour in Saudi Arabia ends before we figure out what exactly to do. I have been told that she needs an actual permanent I-551 before she can file for her N-400. I am not sure even how to convey the info from the temporary I-551 into the format they ask for on the form as if it were coming from a permanent I-551. When she gets her perm I-551 would the creation date be the 26 March 2024 date that she entered the U.S.? It seems like the N-400 will be rejected because the system shows her LPR is pending receipt of a visa packet. I can’t afford to pay the N-400 and it be denied. While we are in Riyadh we have a U.S. APO, AE address and it counts as her being in the United States because she is on military orders. If we don’t figure this out by June, I will have to fly her at our expense back to Ecuador where the country has been shutting off the electricity for 14 hours per day for months now and the crime and homicide rates have exploded over the last couple years. She has a very real chance of being kidnapped and held for ransom because she is married to a U.S. citizen. All of her family has been robbed at gunpoint, some have also been beaten, some extorted, some murdered.

Local File is what the embassy has been calling it here, probably means Direct Consular File We entered together on 26 March 2024, her passport was stamped by CBP/Immigration at the Phoenix Intl Airport. We are back together in Riyadh where we live until my tour of duty here ends in June 2025. The embassy did not give her a visa packet, only a paper in Arabic/English for the airlines explaining that her visa packet is digital and referenced nvc.state.gov/ceac which results in 404 page not found. When I do find CEAC and enter her case number it says her visa is complete. When we login to her USCIS account it says her green card fees are paid and pending. USCIS sent us an email saying that her packet needs to be mailed to Lexington, TX or that she needs to recreate the packet. We can’t afford to send her to the U.S. again right now and it looks doubtful we would be able to get an appointment before her temporary I-551 expires on 26 March 2025 anyways. When I called USCIS on 27 Nov, the agent said she needed to recreate her visa packet at the Embassy in Riyadh. I asked him if he could provide an email stating that and he said he couldn’t provide one and that I just need to convince the embassy that they are supposed to recreate the packet that they lost or didn’t upload or that they uploaded and it fell out of the system. The Immigrant Visa consulate section of the embassy doesn’t seem to understand or care.

If my wife has the temporary I-551 but her green card was never created because her IV packet was lost, I’m assuming that we can’t file her N-400 yet. Seems like in the system she doesn’t have an I-551 yet even though she has the temp I-551 in her passport. If the N-400 fee wasn’t so high I would try it. Right now we can’t figure out how to recreate her visa packet as we live overseas (military) and I don’t know how to extend her temp I-551 that expires in March 2025.

My wife local filed and received her CR-1 visa in March 2024 at the Riyadh embassy. In August we finally were told that her green card hasn’t arrived because her Visa Packet was never received and it needs to be recreated. We still live in Riyadh until June 2025 with the military but the Riyadh Embassy will not help us recreate her visa packet. They say that she has to do that in the states but she can’t get to the states before her temporary I-551 expires. I called USCIS and they said to recreate the packet at the embassy but the embassy refuses and are rude. I have called my congresswoman each week for three weeks to ask them to intervene but they also just keep saying that they will get back to me. Now I am worried that her temp green card is going to expire before this problem gets resolved and I don’t know how to renew it since she technically doesn’t have an I-551. As overseas military we could have filed her N-400 by now.

I think you mean to be added to DEERS as a dependent so then you can be added to PCS orders. You do not need an SSN or tax number. I just added my non US spouse who is living in South America to my DEERS with a photocopy of her passport, National ID and an original apostilled marriage certificate. Next I will need to have her do a medical exam (using the form for those who cannot acces or get to a US medical facility/doctor) and submit that to EFMP. Once we both get to the foreign country I will start the I-130 and visa process as we will be overseas together for 24 months. I am hoping to use the DCF process and go through the Department of State instead of USCIS