Forward Motion

After receiving good counseling from my brothers and sisters at www.visajourney.com, it has been determined my wife has to make the four hour trek to the embassies of Korea (the relevant one) and Taiwan.  My wife along with her friend made the journey safely to Manila.  Jenny was told by the Taiwanese consular staff it will take 2 weeks for her to get her police clearance in the mail.  At the Korean embassy,  she was told it would take 5 to 6 months to get her clearance.  If it wasn’t for the visajourney members I would have freaked out because from their experience it takes 4 to 6 weeks.  If this is true, time to bury my head in the sand for a long time.  I love being at the mercy of another government.  Thanks State Department!  Not!

The long awaited for packet (email really) with instructions has arrived!  Awesome news!  Now we can submit the last set of papers that will bring me and honey closer together and away from NVCland.  Oops!  What’s this?  Police clearance?  If your spouse has been overseas away from their country for more than a year you need a police clearance?  Wait.  Let me get this straight…  We have to submit ourselves to another foreign government?  Subject ourselves to the whim of another government bureaucracy and their mail delivery system?  Great!  My beautiful wife spent years in Korea and Taiwan.  Time to go to visajourney.com for advice!

The $400 Immigrant Visa Bill payment is accepted into NVC sytem. You’d think with technologies today this would be an instantaneuos transaction. Go figure.  Another positive step in the right direction.

After calling the automated system for nearly 2 days just to get a busy signal, I was able to get through.  6 days after mailing in my AOS I-864EZ, it was accepted into the NVC system.  The automated voice system announced it was waiting for the Choice of Address and Agent form before it could generate the Immigrant Visa bill.  Once that bill is paid my package will hopefully soon after arrive at the U.S. embassy in Manila (USEM).  Things are moving exceedingly well.  Wolverine!

I order to speed things along I decided to choose a not to often talked about form.  Instead of the I-864 (Affidavit of Support) form, I decided to go for the I-864EZ.  Per the instructions accompanied by the I-864EZ, I qualified to submit it.  It is a few pages less than its parent form and I believe simplicity is the way to go.   The scary part is the form instructions and other sources have contradictory information regarding supporting documents to be sent in with the I-864EZ.  In this case, I just sent in the last three years tax transcripts.  The total package looked pretty light and I am hoping it is sufficient enough to satiate the NVC machine. Well, off to the post office!  Bonzai!

After work, this morning I set about with my wife to tackle the second of three obstacles.  Using the DS-3032 email format provided by a fellow VJer, my wife and I collaborated and sent our DS-3032 Choice of Address and Agent form via email.  Once the NVC accepts our request, I will be able to pay the $400 for the immigrant visa.  As a back up, I scanned the DS-3032 provided in the AOS bill packet and emailed it to Jenny for her to sign and overnight mail back to the U.S..  You can never be to careful my friend!  Excelsior!

DS-3032 Hardcopy

Pounced on a chance to speed things up today!  The long awaited for (well not really but it feels like it) AOS bill arrived.  I went out to the mailbox at 2:00pm and just knew that the fat envelope inside  had to be it.  Unfortunately, I had to be at work tonight.  However, I was too excited and went online to pay the bill which amazingly in this day and age takes 2-3 days to process.  One of 3 tasks completed in our NVC journey.

Tonight during the lull in the action at work, I placed a call to the NVC’s automated voice system.  I was ecstatic to find out that on the 2nd of October the NVC had mailed the Ds-3032 aka Choice of Agent form to my sweetheart.  Simultaneously, the NVC had mailed the Affidavit of Support bill to me.  The quicker I pay the AOS bill, the quicker I will get permission to fill out and return the form to the NVC.  On Jennifer’s side of things, the quicker she lets the NVC know who her agent is going to be, the quicker I will get the IV (Immigrant Visa) bill and pay for it.  Once the AOS is submitted and the Immigrant Visa bill is paid our packet will be on its way to the U.S. embassy in Manila…  Things are finally moving quick now…  Dare I say she might be here in November?  Probably just wishful thinking!  Excelsior!

Hopefully our meteoroic progess continues now with our entry into the National Visa Center!  It is on this day we have been finally assigned a case number.  Case number MNL2009XXXXXX (you get the picture).  I’m so happy the USCIS and NVC staff are working so hard to push these visas through so we can be with our loved ones.  So far, I feel that the quick pace is the exception rather than the rule.  Tales of woe and despair abound the immigration world!  Excelsior!

Finally today the NOA2 (Notice of Action 2) hardcopy arrived in the mail.  This is great, my wife will need a copy of this at the U.S. Embassy in Manila.  Now the next hurdle is dealing with the Department of State National Visa Center out of Portsmouth, New Hampshire.  I knew the state of New Hampshire had a purpose!  Before anything else can happen I need a NVC case number.  I will need to call everyday the automated system they have in place… 

Yesterday night my wife was able to upload this picture onto the Yahoo mail server.  Not such an easy feat as it is here compared to the rural part of the Philippines where she is from.  This picture was taken the day after her birthday at a picnic by the river.  Her family is spending more and more time with her as her time there is running out.  can you blame them?  Anyways, I thought I would share.

Encore of my wife's birthday the previous day.

September the 18th was a great day! Upon waking up before work, as it is my daily ritual I check my emails for anything from CRIS (Customer Relationship Interface System) from the USCIS. Through the fog of waking up I was able to discern we have been approved! To make things even sweeter it was my wife’s birthday back in the Philippines! I was really excited about the fact that things were finally moving forward. Since it was early morning in the Philippines, I put my excitement oh hold deciding to call my wife from work. Now if I could only get my hands on the hardcopy of form I-797 otherwise known as the Notice of Action…

Much of the knowledge and help that I have benefited from has come from the website visajourney.com.  It continues to be a wonderful resource and support in my journey to be reunited with my wife.  Through the advice of this site I have filed an I-130 otherwise known as the Petition for Alien Relative form and the G-325A Biographic Information form on July 7, 2009 to the Chicago lockbox.  It was received by the government on July 13th and sent to the California Service Center (CSC) to be processed.

Best Immigration Page Ever!

This blog primarily deals with our journey through the immigration process.  My wife Jennifer and I married in her home town of Pozorrubio in the province of Pangasinan, Philippines.  I hope the immigration process is unusually favorable to us!