BenNomad

Besides a genuine life/death situation, proving your need for a transfer is not easy. Having a Schengen visa denial is good proof that you can't get to Warsaw. It might also help to describe your case briefly, like what documental proof you have of relationship, lack of prior marriages, etc. I think the simpler your case is, the more likely an embassy will be willing to accept your transfer request. I don't know for sure, but I think it may have helped in my situation. But before putting too much hope in getting a transfer, try your best to get to Poland. Research the Forum Vinskogo site for tips on getting a Schengen visa. It's a huge site and you could literally spend days reading it, but it's organized by country and the threads related to getting visas are at the top of each country's section.

Try getting an appointment in another city like Kazan or Nizhny Novgorod. You'll learn a lot by reading Forum Vinskogo where there are threads devoted to the topic of getting Schengen appointments. Some people chose to pay for a bot service that searches for available slots and automatically assigns you. No doubt it's partly because of these bots that makes it so hard for everyone else to book an appointment. Apparently, the BLS-Spain visa center makes appointments available toward the end of the month for the following month. I'm attaching a screenshot of where I got that info. In other threads on that forum you can read how fast each country tends to make a visa decision, which is an important thing to consider since some of them take a month. Hungary may still be the best country to get a visa to, and maybe you should to look at other cities where Hungary has visa centers with more available slots than SPB.

My wife got her card in five weeks after arrival. The border agent said it could take up to six months though. But in fact you don't have to wait for the plastic card in order to travel in and out of the U.S. because the i-551 stamp in the passport is proof of permanent residence and can be used temporarily while you wait for the plastic card.

My wife and I always use aviasales (dot) ru to check for the cheapest flights to/from Russia. You don't need a VPN to use that site. But we usually buy the tickets directly from the airline and then you do need to use a Russian VPN. There are free Russian VPN apps for Android devices (I had a harder time finding a plugin for a PC web browser but I'm sure they exist). The bigger problem is paying for the tickets. We would buy the tickets between Istanbul and the rest of the world with a U.S. bank card, but the Istanbul-Russia tickets have to be purchased with a Russian bank card if you're flying on a Russian airline (maybe it's more accurate to say that U.S. bank cards don't work). The work-around would be buying a ticket with a non-Russian airline that flies to Russia (like Armenia's FlyOne or FlyDubai). We flew out of Russia once via Yerevan and I used my U.S. bank card to buy that ticket, but the connection times and prices may not be the best in many cases.

It does seem like it's getting trickier to get to Poland, even more than before, and also more difficult in general to get a Schengen visa (to any country). Did your friends try entering Poland by car, train or air from the Czech Republic? I totally understand the risk of making all those arrangements, paying for tickets and hotels in advance - only to be denied at the border. It has been discussed over and over what to do in this situation, and I wonder what happened to some of the people who came on here looking for help but never came back to say whether they found a way out or not. I never contacted my Congressional rep for intervention in my wife's case, but sometimes that is the way out, if you have a good rep I guess. It has also been suggested to write a joint letter to the Bureau of Consular Affairs, but in the end there has to be an embassy with the ability to take on cases. There have been isolated cases of embassies taking transfers without requiring residency, but they seem few and far between and not any one in particular stands out as consistently taking transfers - except for Jerusalem, which is not taking new transfers apparently. Jerusalem accepted our transfer on the basis of having a Schengen that we couldn't really use to get to Poland (Greece's explicit conditions). I also explained that our case was simple document-wise (U.S. citizen kids, no previous marriages, no criminal record, etc).

Hi, the email from the Polish Consulate won't do anything for you unfortunately. The State Dept is well aware of the situation, but hasn't provided a solution for IR/CR-1 applicants. If your husband is in Russia, try to get a Schengen visa. Hungary may be one of the better options to try for. Almaty stopped taking transfers a long time ago (except for IR-5). We successfully transferred to Bishkek but I suspect that was because our case was in Jerusalem when the embassy suspended operations there. Jerusalem is processing cases again but I don't know if they are taking transfers. They were the only embassy that was consistently taking transfers prior to the war. If an embassy accepts a transfer it happens quickly, like a few days or less. The IR/CR-1 cases are electronic so there's no physical mailing. If your husband is not in Russia, he'll have to return there to apply for a Schengen visa if he doesn't have residence anywhere else.

My wife had her interview on Friday in Bishkek and was approved. They told her right away the day and time to come pick up the passport, which was a nice surprise and allowed us to buy tickets to the U.S. already, in time for New Years. Yay! Unfortunately, I don't think Bishkek is accepting transfers anymore, at least from what my wife is reading.

Congratulations! 🤩

If you select the reschedule option, does it let you continue to choose a new date? If so, then I would go for it despite their rule. But I wasn't in that situation so I can't confirm that there will be no issues. But what could they possibly do?

If it allows you to schedule a second, later interview date, go for it. Then just let them know you won't be attending the earlier interview. At one point my wife had two interviews dates scheduled in Warsaw (one scheduled by us and the other by the consulate) and I had to contact US travel docs twice to get them sort it out.

It is illogical but that's Warsaw. I also contacted them to cancel our interview date and they just sent me a standard reply about waiting until after the interview date.

Do you know cases where people have been given EU humanitarian visas (Schengen LTV visa?) for the purpose of attending a U.S. immigration interview?

Oh, ok. Thanks. I was looking only at P2P. I thought P2P was the only way to withdraw to a Russian bank account. I sent a small amount of USDC to a new account I opened on ByBIt and it just vanished! It was sent succesfully but it never arrived.

The only exchange operating in Russia that supports USDC for P2P transactions seems to be ByBit. Am I missing something? I registered on HTX (Huobi) - no USDC listed for P2P. Same thing with CommEx. I couldn't find USDC on Garantex either. USDT seems to be widely supported though. Also, the only mutually available network for transferring USDC to ByBit or HTX is Ethereum. Solana network is not available. As far as I could tell, there is no zero-fee transfer option for USDC, but the fee using the Ethereum network at the time I checked was around $5. And that's a flat fee, not a percent of the transfer amount.

If ustraveldocs is showing you Russian addresses for delivery/pickup, you need to contact support and they'll update your country to Poland.

It's not possible. We tried. You have to apply in your home country or where you have permanent residence. Bishkek - they might still be accepting transfers. Response time in our case was about one week (after an initial automatic response) Jerusalem - are they taking new cases? The most logical places to try are where Russian language is spoken. We got declined by Dushanbe (Tajikistan) however. Another one you might try is Ashgabat (Turkmenistan) because probably nobody tries to transfer there. You need a visa to enter Turkmenistan though, even as a Russian citizen. How about Baku? Did you contact them?

I was looking at the same page and I added up all the visa categories including Diversity Visas (DV).

I wrote to BishkekIV@state.gov with the transfer request (stated reason being the Jerusalem situation) and got an automatic reply which sounded like a denial. Then I got another email a week later accepting the transfer. My wife has been following a Telegram chat group for Bishkek, which I think is mostly people who wanted to transfer out of Jerusalem, and recently people are saying that Bishkek is not accepting transfers. I'm sure they got overwhelmed with requests. Looking at embassy stats, they generally issue more visas than Jerusalem.

Maybe Lady Gaga says it best: I've got a hundred million reasons to walk away But baby, I just need one good one to stay

My wife got a transfer to Bishkek and we are waiting to find out the interview date. This is our third transfer already and hopefully the last one (four transfers if you count the automatic transfer from Moscow). I wonder what is the all-time record? 🤔 Glad to hear that Jerusalem is working again. Congrats to those who got their interviews done recently and good luck to everyone headed there or waiting for final approval.

I was able to transfer euros from Chase Bank to a Raiffeisen Russia account. The currency gets converted twice, USD->EUR->RUB so it's not great, but it works.

My wife got denied by Germany. Took the consulate one day to make a decison, and 10 days to deliver the passport back. The reasons were: inusfficient proof of funds and doubts about the applicant leaving the EU. Greece gave us a visa based on the same financials (more than enough $$$ in a US bank) but Germnay didn't. The woman at the German visa center said the hotel reservations should have been fully paid in advance (are they crazy?). Maybe Greece put us on a black list. Who knows?

Have her look at Forum Vinskogo (Винского). There are many "we told you so" comments directed at people who used agencies and later regretted it. If you make your own travel arrangements (airline tickets and hotel bookings) it's going to look a lot more authentic (to the consulate) than if you do it through an agency. The travel planning is the most time-consuming part, but it's not that hard if you have an idea of how to plan a trip for yourself. Besides the bookings, you need to print out proof of your finances, passport copies, marriage license, take photos and buy travel medical insurance. Would she really want to trust all of that to an agency? I did all the paperwork for my wife and she printed everything and went to the appointment. The visa center should also be able to help fill out the visa application itself for a small fee, but it's not hard to do yourself online (to be filled out in English - at least in our case). I'll admit, it was a lot of paperwork, but there's nothing really difficult about it.

Starting a new thread for those who have been assigned to Warsaw and haven't been able to transfer their cases elsewhere. *** If your case is IR-5, you can transfer to Almaty (if it hasn't been transferred there automatically) *** I'm sure most people are very familiar with the current situation, but here's a quick summary: - Poland does not issues visas to Russians, and Russians cannot enter Poland directly through an external border. In other words, you can get to Poland only by entering another Schengen country first, and then travelling to Poland from there. - Generally speaking, Schengen visas are being issued for the exact dates of your intended travel (how strict this is varies by Schengen country and the applicants visa history) - You can apply for a Schengen visa only in your home country or a country where you have residence (your residence in that country should be valid for at least three months after your planned return from the Schengen zone). Keep in mind that if you have residence in a country where there's a working US Embassy, you should be able to transfer your case there. - The stated purpose for your travel is most likely going to be Tourism, and therefore it is NOT recommended to mention in your Schengen application that you are planning to go to Warsaw for a visa interview. An excellent source of info about getting a Schengen visa is "Forum Vinskogo" (in Russian language). The country most often recommended to try for is France, because apparently France is less strict than other Schengen countries. However, it's very hard to get an appointment to apply for a French visa. In fact, some Russians are running a business booking appointments automatically using a bot. Seems like the price is around $70-80 to use a bot. Because of those bots I wasn't even able to create an account on the French visa center website. Another one to try for is Italy, with a lot of success stories of people going there. My wife and I have decided to try for Greece. From what I've read, Greece makes their visa decisions relatively quickly (around 2-3 weeks I think). It's also closer geographically to us. We don't know yet when our Warsaw interview date is, and we don't want to guess at travel dates, so we decided it's best to wait for the interview letter before applying for the visa. That means she's in Russia with our kids (and without me) until we get the interview letter. I don't like that our family has had to separate just for the sake of getting a visa to travel to the Warsaw interview, but I'm not going to preach to the choir here Another reason why we decided on Greece is the possiblity for me to get a residence permit through the Digital Nomad program. If I can get a residence quickly, then my wife could apply for a long-term national visa through "Family Reunification" (ie, not a Schengen visa). And that would allow us to travel freely in the Schengen zone. I don't know how long it takes, but I'm flying to Greece next week to start the process. I figure it's better to be working on an alternate plan as long as we're just waiting. A related question here is how to send money to Russia to support a family member. My wife was able to withdraw $2000 from an airport bank machine on her way back to Russia, but that's not much money to live on if we still have a month or so to wait for the interview letter. We left very little money in her Rusisan account when we flew out last year, not thinking that we'd be back any time soon. I heard that UniCredit bank is the last remaining bank that can take transfers in USD or Euros (without enormous fees). Has anyone made USD transfers to Russia recently?

Hi everyone, I've read the threads about needing to print out, hand sign and rescan the i-864 form as a PDF, but what about other documents like translations? For example, I have PDF files from a translation agency that are editable in Adobe Acrobat (meaning I can select "Edit PDF" and all the text fields become editable). I'm assuming the NVC will reject those kinds of PDFs. I can restrict editing in Adobe Acrobat, though. The document will be openable and readable, but editing will require a password. Will the NVC reject it for being "password-protected" if I do that? Is it best to print out all the PDF translations and rescan as new PDFs? Thanks