Willie_Overall

We actually just spent some time in Thailand (we were trying to switch her case to that country, but got denied by NVC despite having a valid visa) and I'm also in California. Small world! Anyway, thanks for the encouraging words! Hopefully, our process will be smooth going forward. Best wishes to you as well!

Thanks for the detailed response, Chris! I really appreciate it. It definitely sounds like you guys had worse luck than most, a combination of extreme incompetence and Filipino corruption. Sorry you had to go through that. I'm sure your wife is probably fine and likely doesn't have tuberculosis (or any concerning condition). Good luck with everything and thanks again!

Also, can you elaborate a bit on this entire situation? It sounds like she was sent home, returned at the 8 week mark, and was told to get a CT scan for reasons unknown? Then she was just told to get some kind of treatment? They forced you to get a CT scan? Sorry for all of the questions. I told my wife about your thread and she's freaking out now.

Thanks. We're IR1 (married just over 2 years now). She has her sputum appointments next week. Hoping that it doesn't go beyond that. And, yeah, that makes sense. If you feel any better, I've seen a ton of "positive" chest x-rays from the Philippines for various things. They were all very obviously negative. I've never seen a CT scan from there. It would be interesting to see how badly they misread those. Congrats on the marriage and having your wife there with you!

I'm a healthcare provider in the US and my wife just found out she will have to submit sputum. Just wondering if your wife ever had that CT scan completed in the US. This entire process is frustrating. It's very clear that the "doctors" at St. Luke's don't know how to read chest x-rays.

I've seen people make this mistake in the Facebook group. Unfortunately, it will likely get denied based on their anecdotal experiences.

I would say to sue, but you've waited so long that you might as well just wait until you could contact the ombudsmen at USCIS. Since you filed in February of 2023, you should be able to do that some time in February of this year, depending on the exact date of your PD.

Couples could be together much faster, which is important to many. I also know people who went to the US on a fiance visa and then was able to get a work permit fairly quickly. The difference in fees is minuscule. I do agree that we don't know what the K1 will look like in Trump's second term. In all likelihood, it will simply get much slower, but CR1/IR1 will also get much slower. K1s are averaging around 5-6 months total, while CR1/IR1 are averaging 15.5 months (and getting worse by the month) even without Trump in office. If I were applying today, I would go the K1 route for sure.

Do K1. If you file for CR1 tomorrow, based on the current rate of increase in wait time, you're looking at 2+ years just at the USCIS stage. K1 is much faster.

$5400

You need to file a mandamus at this point. You've been skipped over. This is becoming more and more common these days. Our PD was July 28, 2023. It was clear we were skipped over by late October. We hired an attorney, filed a lawsuit, and were approved in mid-December. Now we're DQ'd. Highly recommended.

Yeah, if you scroll up a bit, you'll see that I also recommended doing that. My state politicians were useless. So we had to go the Mandamus route.

Well, that's a single person and we don't know if they did anything to push that forward. I have seen some politicians willing to help. So that could be what pushed things forward. Many politicians are not willing to help (mine included). Also, if that guy would have filed a lawsuit at the time that he was passed over (which was May of 2024 since the wait time was about a year at that point), then his wife would likely already be in the US by now. Just depends on your priorities I guess.

Okay, N=1. I get my information from a ton of research and collective experiences. May of 2025 is way too long to wait for someone who applied in August of 2023. August has already been passed over. OP would be best served by filing a mandamus as soon as possible, especially with the incoming administration. Like I said, it's very unlikely that anything will happen without significant force on OP's part.

Strong disagree. From what I've seen (in this forum, Facebook, and Reddit, among other groups), if you're skipped over (meaning that many others around your PD were adjudicated), you will be not be adjudicated unless you take some action. That could mean intervention by your congressman, dealing with ombudsman at around the 2 year mark, or filing a mandamus. Everyone surrounding our PD was approved in the first week of October. Our congressperson was unhelpful (and actually gave me wrong advice, which I knew to be wrong at the time). I filed a mandamus the last week of October at the 15 month mark. Nothing happened at all until last week at the 16.5 month mark. Our result was definitely due to the mandamus. If I didn't file, we'd still be waiting. It's really the best solution if you've been skipped over because it forces USCIS to do its job.

Strongly recommend hiring a lawyer and filing a Mandamus. Our PD was late July of 2023. Hired a lawyer in late October and got approved last week. We definitely would still be waiting if we didn't do that. I would also caution doing it yourself. The guides on this site and elsewhere for filing on your own are fraught with errors and misunderstandings of the law.

Total cost of lawsuit was $5400. To answer your DM question, we're also in Nebraska (as far as I know).

Sorry for the delayed response. I haven't been on here in a while. We're still waiting. They were served the first week of November. So they have until the first week of January. What about you?

Exactly. This is the same thing I was told. USPS is just the method that one can use to serve. It's not the server. Anyone can serve through this method except one of the parties in the case. I just read over the cover sheet that I received directly from the court and it specifically says this.

Hopefully. Keep us posted.

I already did that. Your friends and family can mail it to them via first class mail. You cannot. As an involved party, you are not able to have them served. If it worked for you, you were very lucky. Because you did it incorrectly. As I said, I got this information directly from my federal clerk AND the Federal US attorney's office in my area. Who is more likely to be right? You or them? Plus, like that poster said, every online source proves you wrong. Please stop spreading misinformation. People might be taking your incorrect information and it will hurt them. This will be especially detrimental with the new administration, which will look for every reason to deny applications.

You're asserting that you can mail them on your own, which you can't. And, yes, you can have family and friends serve them. To anyone reading this, I urge you to talk to your US attorney or federal court clerk about this. Do not rely on people in these groups.

Yeah hopefully. But I'm an impatient pessimist. So I sued instead of waiting lol

You really should go on Jim Hacking's livestream and ask about your situation. That seems way too long to me. Especially given the election results, if you need to sue, you should probably do it sooner rather than later.

This is exactly the issue. The person who created this thread is blatantly wrong with their advice, despite creating a guide (and this was backed up by not only my local federal court, but by the US attorney's office). You can't have the defendants served on your own and you can have family and friends serve them. For anyone that has questions about this, feel free to go to your US attorney's office and ask them yourself. Don't rely on random people on internet forums. Good on you, lincclay, for pushing back against that misinformation and best of luck with your pro se mandamus!