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Be prepared for more of a 40-50 day wait just for your case to get sent to the Department of State. These stages are extremely delayed. Research your embassy and what documents it asks for, I would say be aware of preparing these if you want them to be dated closer to the interview I'd hold off because the interview is still several months away. If you live or work in Canada, it can be Montreal *only Canadian embassy that does k1* but you can change it to Philippines if you want. Be aware this forum has several threads about Montreal Embassy being widely known for significant periods of administrative processing and delays. (Search ds-5535) 3. Yes any country you've lived in longer than 6 months. So Philippines and Canada if you've lived in both for over 6 months. 4. As long as you have some form of it you'll be fine - original or photocopy. I'd recommend scanning it so you don't lose or misplace it.

Same here, I misread and thought they were naturalised. Thank you to @EatBulagafor the info & correction.

I 2nd this, we're still undergoing the k1 process and if I could re-do it I would definitely go spousal visa. But particularly in your situation (OP) I would say go the spousal route simply because it would make things *less* complex rather than applying for another k1. That's just my opinion, I know a lot of people here will recommend spousal over k1 anyway. As Edward said, it's a higher bar than the k-1, less expensive, no adjustment process and being able to work and travel straight away is a huge benefit.

Congratulations. Please fill out your visa timeline so that it can be useful to other people

In this situation, have you considered marrying and going the spousal visa route? It doesn't eliminate the potential scrutiny but in these circumstances it might be more appropriate or "better" for you considering a previous k1 with you as the petitioner/sponsor has happened. All the best!

As someone who was skipped from the feb/march cases, I wholeheartedly agree with this. We got skipped months before they moved offices so I highly doubt it's the reason for the skip. They claimed moving offices would help improve processing times and "streamline" the process but statistically you can see nothing but a decrease in processing speed and just an overall decline in productivity. They used to approve 200-300+ cases per day, now it's lucky if it hits over 120. (source: trackmyvisanow has a discord bot set up in the K1 discord to provide daily updates on case productivity every day). I 100% believe that they purposely skipped that feb/march section to make their data look better; they were approving April/May filers in under 90 days - hundreds of them even in under 40 days. So when you look to file at that time you're seeing under 90 day visa in hand be so common - you're naturally gonna wanna file then because it "looks" fast. But officially the processing times still are above 8 months. When I filed it was 14 months, when I was approved it had reduced to 9 months. They keep their official websites projecting those times on purpose; so they don't have to be held accountable. So you may see cases approved in 4,5,6 months but you can't do anything until your inquiry date passes (when I filed mine was May 2025, reduced to April 25 2025 around the 4months waiting mark). Congressmen and senators just give the same responses about it being normal and USCIS can proceed with no accountability. There's no way they didn't know about the feb/march skip - hundreds of us were calling regularly and complaining, pointing it out, getting congressmen and senators involved. They had to have known. It's such a specific skip too - it wasn't like a few cases were getting approved from that block, the entire block was skipped and not touched at all. We may never know their true processes and how they do things, but I refuse to believe such a specific period of skipped cases was an accident. and our skip definitely wasn't because of an office change because it happened months before the office change. Fingers crossed for you guys to hear back soon - I know first hand how awful this is. Please hang in there - there's a light at the end of the tunnel - I promise.

Usually, the embassy correspondence lists the evidence required. As most countries will ask for this (and some countries even want to see more evidence regarding the i-134 - it really is embassy dependent) it's recommended to bring the tax transcript regardless of country. Better to have something that is listed as required evidence, and not need it, than to not have it, and they ask for it. (Not to mention the i-134 instructions lists this as one of the forms of evidence) In addition, most embassy will send (either via email, physical letter or their website) the list of documents that they require (again, this can vary from country to country, but most of them will say I-134 and evidence). Some countries are known to not ask for it, or have a less chance for the officer to ask for it, but every officer is different and it's better to have it than to not have it and they ask for it. Regardless; many say the focus in general is on current income, but there are so many countries on here you can read interview experiences' for that state they were asked for the tax transcript.

Easiest way to see others' timeline on here in relation to interview is, go to immigration timelines, filter by country - Canada, click advanced search then sort by interview date descending. Then you'll see all the dates; noa2, nvc, embassy and interview date. Edit; upon doing this myself for Canada seems as if the average / shortest you can see is just under 2 months between Consulate received to interview date.

Same here, contacted USCIS and they told me a worker just used a generalised approval template, and that all i-129f / k1 go to NVC then the embassy and to ignore the generic template that didn't reflect the actual k1 process. My case also went from approved, to sent to DOS, through NVC then arrived at embassy.

Wow, I never actually knew this. It's actually terrible an organisation can do that. But then again there are only limited sources that can actually do something about their obscurity and inefficiency, and even when you contact Congressmen or senators, they usually accept any generic response USCIS provides. I never knew they hid data like that, thank you for sharing, but sorry that happened to you and others. Either way it's really terrible USCIS is able to do that type of thing without any consequences or accountability.

If you file when in the U.S, then you would answer those questions because it is applicable to you, because at the time of completing the form, you are in the U.S. If you are filing when in the U.S, and requires the i-94, then include the i-94 to show your entry. As, at the time of filing, your i-94 shows the entry, and you are in the U.S so it's accurate at the time of filing. Edit: if you're really worried about it, then you can always use the extra pages to include an explanation and just say you're leaving on X date.

As someone who was a part of that feb-march skipped batch, we tried literally everything and nothing worked. Congressional aid, senator aid. Calling USCIS. nothing worked. we even had screenshots and proof that they skipped the period - USCIS took the stance that they didn't skip any cases, that it's impossible that that happened and that there's no way for us to prove or know we were skipped because cases are processed in order of when they are received. Which we all know in reality this isn't true. We all know we had proof, but USCIS refused to acknowledge any of it. I know for a fact dozens if not hundreds of us called regularly and tried congressmen etc. They just essentially gaslight you on the phone lol. I'm fully aware the customer service people are only tier 1 officers and have nothing to do with adjudicating cases, but to us at the time we all felt like if they just put their hands up and said "hey, yea, you guys were skipped, we'll get back to it eventually" it would've felt less upsetting. But they just denied it was even happening and then any congressional or senator aid responses were "USCIS has informed us that you filed on [insert date] which is within normal processing times" and that I could re-request assistance after my inquiry date - as a March 4 filer, my inquiry date was April 25th 2025. At the same time, people who filed just a week after me, up to May filers were getting approved in under 90 days - so many even under 40 days. It was heart breaking. The situation now is with June/July filers is still the same in terms of being skipped, but generally processing times aren't as fast as they were in early 2024. It seems like they're slowing down. The initial feb/march skipped period filers speculated that we had been skipped to make their data look better; processing times looked so much faster but they had skipped over 3k cases from feb-march at the time. that could be what's happening here -who really knows haha. As much as it is upsetting and unfair, please hang in there. It isn't the first time it has happened, and unfortunately with how USCIS processing behaviour works, it is unlikely to be the last. For a bit of hope/motiviation; we got approved Aug 23, (I was extremely lucky compared to others skipped in this period, some of my friends from the same filing day as me had to wait until October or even November to get approved) and booked the 2 days ago for Jan 23rd. So there definitely is light at the end of the tunnel - we went into the process saying anything under 12 months would be considered a huge win for us, since the processing times for k1 were, in previous years, atrocious compared to what we have in 2024. Hang in there! ❤️

Whilst there are mixed responses in the past on trackmyvisanow - my personal experience was that it was inaccurate.. The most appropriate advice and thing to keep in mind is that all of these website and services to track are essentially using data to make an estimation - when USCIS is historically known for being an unpredictable organisation in terms of their processing behaviours. So trying to predict when a case will be approved is going to have its limits when the organisation itself is so unpredictable; USCIS skips weeks, jumps back, speeds up, slows down - all on a regular basis. Best thing to do is to try and focus on work or hobbies, and take the tracking methods with a grain of salt. We've all been there, the wait is awful. But it'll all be worth it in the end!

Unfortunately not all immigration journey's are fast. Try to keep hold of the positive; approval is a wonderful thing and a big step of the way is now checked off, and it'll all be worth it in the end once you and your fiancé are together and getting married!

Whilst this is true this is on the rarer / less frequent side to happen. People have been religiously tracking and posting updates regarding cases being sent to DoS & even making little graphs/tables to share for everyone to keep up to date with what cases are being sent to DOS and when, across the facebook groups, reddit and k1 discord. Either way, it's taking an extremely longer time to get sent to DoS - averaging at around 50-60 days and that has been the case since October. (October it was taking around 40-45 but this has increased since then) and hasn't decreased since & so only waiting 2 weeks since approved is still too soon in these circumstances. Most recent cases that were sent to DOS were cases approved Oct 16, sent to DOS on December 5 & 6th.