cmeeks

So I waited a month for my spouse to return to Japan and obtain her police certificate. We submitted it to NVC last week and I just got this message from NVC today: "The police certificate required for JAPAN is not needed in order for the interview to be scheduled. However, the police certificate must be obtained and submitted before the visa interview. For information regarding an acceptable police certificate, please use our Document Finder at https://nvc.state.gov/find." Am I supposed to respond to this???

Exactly. I knew we needed the police certificate for the interview. I was surprised when I realized we needed a scan of the envelope for NVC. But yeah, makes sense.

Thanks everyone for the feedback. I think we'll just wait until she gets back to Japan and get it done then. It's not a big loss. This is for a spouse visa btw, not AOS. We've been pretty liberal with visits throughout the process... she comes and visits me in the US for 89 days, back to Japan for 90+ days, then back to the US again for 89 days, etc. Immigration only gave her grief on the most recent trip, but this is the last one before she gets her visa.

NVC just received our case from USCIS. My spouse is currently in the US on a 90-day tourist visa, and we forgot to get her police certificate before coming. I understand we need this to submit our documents to NVC, and it takes 2-3 months from the embassy here, but only a week or two in Japan. So, we plan to wait until she returns to Japan to get it, which will delay our NVC review by about a month. Is this correct? Can we proceed without the police certificate, or is there any way to get it faster while in the US?

Any issues with my beneficiary visiting the US on a tourist visa after NOA2 / I-130 approval?

Just want to check if this is normal. Submitted I-130 in September last year. For the first few weeks, the website would give me an estimated date. Ever since about 6 months ago however, it just says "Case Is Being Actively Reviewed By USCIS". Should I be concerned?

That's correct. All the attempts to submit it were there when I went to finalize the I-130 submission.

Alright, so I submitted I-130 and when I go look at the documents list, the native language document is in there 20 times 🤦‍♂️

Thank you everyone for your help. I-130 is now submitted!!!

I'm planning to submit I-130 to USCIS today, but I still have not resolved this issue. Surely I'm not the only one who's experienced this with the online system? For now I uploaded the 'Information about beneficiary in native language' document in the additional proof of marriage section. I put a disclaimer on the 1st page of it to explain why it was uploaded there. Then in the additional information section, I put a note explaining the document would not save to the correct section. I really don't know what else to do. Do you think this will end up causing an RFE?

Tried asking this in the region specific forum, but no response. Does the Osaka consulate do visa interviews? Or will my spouse have to travel to the embassy in Tokyo? Just want to be sure before I submit the I-130.

Hi Everybody. I wanted to thank you all for all your questions and responses here. It has been super helpful. I'm a US citizen preparing to submit I-130 for CR1 for my Japanese spouse who's currently living in Osaka. I think I read somewhere that the Osaka consulate doesn't process immigrants, but wanted to check before submitting the online I-130. Anything else I should be aware of - especially around Japan specifics?

I'm the US citizen and my spouse is a Japanese citizen currently living in Japan. I have the marriage certificate as well as a translated copy uploaded to the proof of marriage section. For additional proof of marriage, I'm uploading the following: 401k beneficiary designation Life insurance beneficiary designation Health/dental/vision insurance coverage Photo of same credit card in both our names (I couldn't add her as joint, but was able to add her as authorized user) Joint checking account ownership Jewelry receipts Travel documentation (photo of my Japan tourist visas and her I-94 travel history) A PDF containing ~30 photos of us with family members as well from throughout our relationship (we met 9 months ago) Would it be overkill to add her to my lease? Or would that potentially create confusion regarding where she's actually living? Any additional evidence I should consider???

Am I seriously the only person experiencing this? I've tried PDF. I've tried jpg. I've tried another internet browser. In both edge and chrome, the website shows the file as though it uploaded correctly. But next time I log in, it's no longer there. What are you guys doing different??? What are you uploading anyway? Can I just type the native and english versions on a page and upload it? Or does it need to be more "official" than that??? Can I load the file to dropbox and put a link to it in the I-130 'Other Information' section? This is super frustrating and it's the only thing keeping me from submitting.

Only ~50kb. I typed out her name and address in Japanese, then again in English, then saved that word doc as a pdf.

Has anyone had any issues with evidence (PDF's) uploaded to the online I-130 application not saving? Every time I log back into the USCIS website, the PDF I uploaded of information about my spouse in her native language is no longer there. All other information and uploaded PDF's are saving just fine.

Thank you all for the detailed responses. Extremely helpful!

Just returned from marrying my spouse in Japan and hoping to have I-130 submitted soon. Is now the time to change her last name? I noticed the I-130 form asks for the beneficiary's current legal name. The marriage certificate still says her maiden name. Also, what translation company/service do you recommend for translating the marriage certificate.

Planning to travel to Japan in August to get hitched and then submit I-130 shortly after to begin CR1 process. I wanted to go into it eyes wide open and decided to build a schedule to understand the process better. To make it as accurate as possible, I downloaded the last ~5 years of data related to spouses immigrating from Japan (about 150 cases) and did some benchmarking. Luckily, it seems the Japan timeline is a little quicker than average, but please critique my schedule and tell me if I'm missing some steps or if they're out of order.