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I don't know the answer to this myself but if your status changes, come back and share! I'm in the same boat as you are: something is on its way to Johannesburg, due to arrive Friday. Still "At NVC". Here's hoping this week has a banger end for us!

Sounds like some progress! We're still At NVC, just hoping Joberg picks some up today. Otherwise, it's another two weeks til we cross our fingers again. Hoping you see that email this week!

This is only meant as a gentle jab, but strap in cause it's a long ride in general. If you get used to waiting, using the down times to research the next steps and collecting documentation, you'll be able to keep your sanity through it. Best of luck!

Got it. No worries! For South Africa the embassy supposedly sends packets 3 and 4 together so it's not terribly pertinent to me. Even still, it will be nice to have updated info. Thanks for carrying on the responsibility!

Still nada. I was looking through the NOA2 pdf from OP and am confused. References to Greenbaum and checking to see if packet 3s have been sent: is this outdated information? I see @Greenbaum is an account and that they used to run the NOA2 to embassy threads each month, but that wasn't the case here. Does someone else manage packet 3s now?

Thank you! I just needed a quick bit of reassurance, thanks for entertaining my brain fart

Thanks? I'm not the OP though, and have no allusions to my fiance being my husband 😆

Just to be clear, I only need to verify my income for the 134, right? Is it fine if the sponsor puts N/A for all assets, in the case of a K-1?

We're still waiting, waiting, waiting from NVC/Joberg. Our NOA2 came the first week of March, so I'm just trying to relax and let them get around to it. At the end of March, I got our NVC case number and just status check from time to time. I'm not sure how thorough Zambia is, but Joberg just pushes packets 3 & 4 at the beneficiary's email in one fell swoop. Or so I've heard. Hopefully you're on track for your interview now!

Don't be dismayed by an RFE! Those with an RFE statistically, I've heard, get approved more on average than those without, provided they actually advance to RFER (reply in time with the correction). It's usually some additional documentation needed and adds just a bit more time to the case. You'll be RFER and one step closer in no time. ❤️ check out the RFE master list on the K1 thread, pinned messages for information on how to proceed. You got this!

Omg I absolutely missed that lol

There's been a lot of great advice in this thread and I wanted to add my two cents, given I'm in the latter stages of a K-1 through Joberg: Ultimately, I get the OP's sentimentality. It was a big driver to get married in as traditional a sense as possible which, to me, felt like we needed to get engaged and get him permission to move here SO we could get married. Online guides alluded to a spousal visa being more timely (as has been questioned a lot in this very thread) as well as, personally, less romantic a timeline. That being said, if I had discovered these forums last summer I think my fiance and I would've taken an entirely different path. Ultimately, the certificate itself is a process separate from a majority of the wedding rites in all cultures, and so being able to get paperwork done while focusing on having that ceremony after the visa would've made all the other pieces needed to put our life together, so much cleaner. Once he can work we'll be in a good position, but it'll still be a long road to citizenship which I wish we could shortcut. It is what it is. And, if things DO happen to fall through, it might actually still be our contingent path. my thoughts to you OP, is ultimately to do what is in the best interests of what both you AND your fiance want to do. But if you are early on, like in the I-129 petition part of your journey, I'd have a long talk with your fiance about how to make traditions work alongside the spousal visa pathway, as listed prior to my post. Because no matter how much money you have and how much love you have, there is always a sliver of a chance that the K1 petition will be rejected and then you have to start over. Might happen to us too, even this late in the game. Being open to that possibility means owning a flexibility that allows you two to be together and flourishing sooner than my fiance and me. One thing money can't buy, is time. And if you have the worry that this prior K1 might have a negative impact and others on this thread are considering it might too, it might be worth giving the spousal option another good, honest look: and to cut people some slack for telling you things you didn't want to hear, because it's all with good intentions. You're not in a sunk-cost fallacy situation yet, no need to double down on your choices. Best of luck.

Past proof of income through tax returns is helpful (sometimes)--current proof of income is essential. Collect three recent pay stubs and get a verification letter from your employer, attesting to your annual income (even if you are not salaried).

Wishing you the best of luck!

I don't think that's accurate, the blank pages to a passport are not needed. In fact, for ours I neglected to even include my fiance's visa stamp. The I94 served as proof of travel. They simply want a government issued ID, which the bio page of a passport provides. Packaging though ABSOLUTELY makes a difference, and I'm sure aureliano agrees. We were both very lucky to have such great turnaround on the petitions and a big part of this is for all petitioners to be conscientious of how they package their paperwork. Adding sleeves, binders, staples ALL adds time to case filing, and if everyone added these things then it would drastically slow up the number of cases processed per day. Keep packaging as minimal as possible, follow USCIS instructions. It's the kind thing to do in order to keep the processing time down for all.

I'm not sure about photos because I followed the instructions on USCIS and scanned them all to 8 1/2 x 11 letter size pages for easy filing, but I will tell you, that I sent an original copy of my birth certificate and USCIS mailed it back to me.. cannot guarantee the same for photos. Hopefully they were not extremely sentimental or you have digital copies, because USCIS warns that they may destroy photos sent to them. "When providing photos or other attachments, please provide your name at the top of the page or on the back of any photos. If you send original photos with your form, they may become part of the record or be destroyed."

Here's the checklist my fiance and I used (it formatted weirdly, sorry in advance): Form G-1450: Authorization for Credit Card Transactions Form G-1145: e-Notification of Application/Petition Acceptance Form I-129F: K-1 Fiancé Visa Petition Supporting documentation/proof of nationality: Proof of petitioner's citizenship (I used my birth certificate, but passport works) Copy of beneficiary's passport Supporting documentation/proof of legitimate relationship: Photos Any additional evidence (letters/emails, etc) Supporting documentation/proof of visit in last 2 years: Photos Travel documents Copy of Form I-94 Signed declarations of intent to marry from both parties One passport-style color photo of both petitioner and beneficiary (take within 30 days of filing) $267.50 USD each for filing fee (the total is $535 if you don't need to split it up) No need. It'll be the DS-160 and you've got probably around 6+ months until you have to worry about that. First need to get the petition approved and passed from USCIS to the National Visa Center, then on to the embassy. See checklist! I put N/A for anything that did not apply. Place of birth still applies even for deceased parents but current residence would not. It's going to require birth parents (or adoptive) in order to determine your fiancee's current nationality. Provide as much information as is known. Communicate with her family and track that info down. You'll be able to submit changes of address through USCIS at any time during processing. Keep it accurate, update as needed. Nope. Just write legibly. For any address history, I used each box for each address. The USCIS website will have information on providing additional pages for the I-129F. Let me know if you have trouble finding it. Congratulations and good luck!

Looks comprehensive, just a few things I would suggest, to make the USCIS processing as expedient as possible: - Review https://www.uscis.gov/forms/filing-guidance/tips-for-filing-forms-by-mail for recommendations on filing order and methods. For the lockbox I did sticky tabs, but made them the restickable kind and put them along the bottoms of the pages, per USCIS request. With your amount of paperwork, this might help in segmenting the supporting docs by trip. - Consider providing evidence of legitimacy of bone fide relationship separate from evidence of travel. That's a question I keep hearing coming out of the visa interview: where/when did you two meet? If your evidence starts with travel, you're missing the part of the application where it explains how you got to that point. For us, it was a lot of Discord screenshots since we met online. For one page of supporting evidence I picked a random month from each year and shared all the timestamps for Discord calls we did together, showing the length of the call. I provided the math at the bottom for perspective: each month drawn, we had on average spent 15% of the full time in a call together. That's 30-31 days of 24 hour cycles. Every couple is different in proving how they got to the point where they needed and wanted to travel to each other. Giving that background in a section prior to the travel, fleshes it out. -Do you have I-94s for any of the trips? We included some boarding passes for domestic travel once he was in the US, but the entry/exits to the US I found were easier justified with a I-94. https://i94.cbp.dhs.gov/I94/#/recent-search -Make sure all submitted evidence aside from the original passport photos are scanned to 8 1/2 x 11 letter size pages: one sided, and clear. -Make sure letters of intent are signed by their respective parties. That's my two cents. Best of luck! edit: also, hard to say which service center you'll be assigned. I would've thought I'd be Nebraska but my understanding is from the USCIS lockbox in Texas, the workload shared between service centers is what dictates which one gets your case, not location proximity.

Which embassy are you trying to schedule at? Have you tried contacting them? (filling out your timeline helps people on the forum to assist you easier)

You don't have a timeline and it says you filed for naturalization. This is a forum related to the process for the K-1 fiance visa. There is not enough information about your situation to help you, or to know if you're in the right place.

100%. I tried the DHL hack but I'm starting to think I'm looking too soon to know if it's actually a functional tool to use. I do know in checking similar timelines to mine out of South Africa that we maybe should've seen some email out of the embassy this shipment, but no status update from NVC yet. Oh well, just gotta remain patient! Will give ti another go later this month.

Side note: if anyone saw their case status switch from "At NVC" today, I'd like to know. No changes here! Maybe tomorrow's workload?

I actually ran across this snag as well, through various links. However I found that the invoice number is not needed at all to begin the DS160. https://ceac.state.gov/GenNIV/Default.aspx It was entirely possible to file the DS160 this way, even while the case is at the NVC. Hope this helps! edit: I just noticed you weren't talking about the DS160, and you got that figured out as well. IGNORE ME! lol, we'll both just have to wait it out from our respective embassies.

Focus on proof of your own income. The I-134 is used for a variety of visas and the beneficiary income is of no consequence. N/A it all. It is your job as the sponsor to provide evidence of lasting support. It's trickier with self employment but getting tax transcripts from the IRS is a good place to start. Bank statements would also be useful.

I just figured out a couple days ago that it was possible to start on the DS-160 simply with the case number. That was probably the most frustrating part of this whole process: time wasted while our NOA2 was sent to NVC, when after two weeks we could've submitted an inquiry for a case number and gotten to work. A month later, I figured it out and requested the number. We should be in the caseload sent to embassies this week though! Our DS-160 is completed and submitted as well, pending passport photos, which we will simply bring to the interview as stated when we bypassed them. Also, per advice on this site I sent another inquiry to add my fiance's email as beneficiary to the case, just so the embassy can contact him directly (I hear South Africa will send out packets 3/4 by email to him). Good luck to you!