Speaker 1: In this video, I'm going to be talking about the 12 steps of the immigrant visa process, and specifically submitting your documents to the National Visa Center and preparing for your interview at the embassy abroad. Make sure you stick around to find out all of the information you need to know regarding submitting your documentation to the National Visa Center and preparing for the interview at the U.S. Embassy. Hello everyone, and welcome back to another video. I get a lot of questions regarding the immigrant visa process, submitting documents to the National Visa Center, how long processing typically takes. I want to answer a lot of those questions here. So what I'm going to do is go through the immigrant visa process from start to finish, just so you know what to expect. Okay, so let's get started. In order to be eligible to apply for an immigrant visa at an embassy abroad, you must have an approved immigrant petition with USCIS first, be it an I-130, an I-140, or an I-526. Now I want you to be very careful when it comes to filling out those immigrant petitions because that will dictate whether your approved petition gets sent to the National Visa Center in the first place. So with every petition, there is a section that you complete that either says that you are in the United States and you're going to be adjusting status, or you are abroad and you are going to be consular processing. If you intend to consular process, it is absolutely critical that you check the correct box on this petition. If you don't put that you are applying for a visa abroad at an embassy, then USCIS will never send your approved petition to the National Visa Center, you will not get a case number, and then you can't obtain an immigrant visa to come in. You would have to file an I-824 application for action on an approved petition in order to have USCIS send your case to the National Visa Center. Aside from having to pay an additional fee just for the I-824 form, the processing time for it is substantially long, about like eight months or so. This is why it's so important to make sure you check the correct box the first time so USCIS sends it to the National Visa Center automatically or else you have to file that extra form, pay the extra fee, and wait an additional eight months before USCIS can send your case to the National Visa Center. After USCIS approves your petition, now assuming you check the correct box to apply for a visa abroad, within about a few weeks USCIS will send your approved petition to the National Visa Center for processing. Once the National Visa Center receives your case, they will assign you a case number.

Speaker 2: Now keep in mind, the case number is assigned to the beneficiary of the approved petition, so it's

Speaker 1: going to be under the name of the person that will be actually applying for the visa abroad at the embassy. You will receive an email or a welcome letter in the mail letting you know that a case number has been created for you. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the National Visa Center is currently working with reduced staff, so the time between your approved petition with USCIS and receipts of the welcome letter or email from the National Visa Center could take a little bit longer. It's going to vary, so once USCIS from the National Visa Center could take a little bit longer, it's going to vary. So with the fact that they have reduced staff, it might not be a couple weeks, it might be longer, so keep that in mind. If your priority date is current according to the visa bulletin, then you will be eligible to submit your fees and supporting documents to the National Visa Center right away. If your priority date is not current, then you will be notified that a case number was created for you. However, you are not eligible at this time to pay the fees and provide the supporting documentation. Once your priority date becomes current and an immigrant visa number is available to you, then the National Visa Center will contact you again at that time to let you know that you can start the process. Now be aware there is a one-year contact requirement, which means from the time that the National Visa Center notifies you that you can start the process, you can pay the fees and submit the supporting documentation because an immigrant visa number is available to you and your priority date is current, you have one year to pay the fees and submit the supporting documents. Otherwise, the National Visa Center will terminate your case. You will lose the benefits of that petition that was approved by USCIS. You have one year to start the process with the National Visa Center once they have contacted you and let you know that an immigrant visa number is available to you and you can start the process. So once you receive your NBC welcome letter letting you know you can start the process, the first thing you have to do is pay the processing fees for each beneficiary that is going to be receiving an immigrant visa. So depending on the type of application, there could be one or two fees. There's an immigrant visa application processing fee and there's an affidavit of support fee. If you filed an I-140, there's no affidavit of support to be submitted and no affidavit of support fee. If you're the beneficiary of a family sponsored case, then you will need to also pay the affidavit of support fee and submit that appropriate form. In order to pay your fees, you will log into the SEAC system with your case number and click pay now for each of the fees that you have to pay. Be aware that the website won't let you pay both fees at the same time. They will require you to pay one fee at a time, so just be aware that you could only pay one at a time. In order to pay your fees through this system, you must use a bank account number and a routing number to pay it. You can't pay with credit card, you can't pay it by mailing a check, you have to submit the banking information directly online. The NBC prompts you that you have to wait up to about a week for the fees to change from in process to paid. Then you can upload the necessary documents. After the fees are paid, you can now upload the executed affidavit of support, evidencing that the sponsor of your petition has sufficient household income and or assets to sponsor your immigrant visa. This step only applies if you are required to submit an affidavit of support, but if you're not required to submit an affidavit of support, then of course this step does not apply to you and you would skip to the next step. If you are required to submit an executed affidavit of support, you would also have to submit the proof of taxes, the evidence of the income, proof of assets if necessary, if the income the household income was insufficient, then you would submit the proof of assets. You would also have to submit proof of your sponsor's U.S. status, so whether it's their birth certificate, their naturalization certificate, passport, or green card, here's where you would submit the documentation for your sponsor. You cannot begin completion of the DS-260 until your visa fees have already been paid, so as soon as it appears as paid, you will be allowed to start the DS-260 application at that time. This application is to be completed and submitted online. You don't need to print it out and sign it. You should definitely keep a copy of the entire application that you submit after you have completed it and submitted it. Make sure that you save a PDF version of your application just for your own records. You're not required to take it with you at the interview. You're only required to print out the confirmation page and take the confirmation page with you to the interview, but it's very important that you keep a copy of the entire application for your own records just in case you have to complete another one. After completing your DS-260, you and each family member that would be immigrating with you must retrieve and submit the necessary civil documents for your application. The Department of State's website provides detailed information on each civil document you must obtain, and it tells you how to obtain them, what they should look like, who they should be issued by, so all of that information can be found on their website. A good tip is that if you know that you're going to be consular processing, even before starting the consular process, you should definitely take a look at their website and review the documents that you will be required to submit in the future. That way you can obtain the necessary documentation in advance if you're able to. I do want to I do want to caution you that some documents may have an expiration date, but certain things like the birth certificates, marriage certificates, divorce certificates, those can be obtained in advance. They are not time sensitive, so definitely take a look at the website to see which records you need to obtain and figure out if you can obtain them now or if you have to wait until later on. Unless specifically directed to do so, do not mail any documents to the National Visa Center. You must scan and upload them to the SEAC website. Sometimes the National Visa Center will ask you to mail them a document directly. However, you must scan each document that you have and save it to your computer so you can upload it to the SEAC website. Once the documents are scanned and saved into your computer, you'll be able to upload them to the SEAC website. If the National Visa Center determines that the documents you submitted weren't correct or were incomplete, you will receive a notification to upload the correct documents or the missing documents. After you have submitted all of the documents and the documents have been scanned, you will be able to upload them to the SEAC website. After you have submitted all of the documents and the National Visa Center reviews everything and determines that you've paid your fees and submitted all of the appropriate documentation, then you will receive an email from the National Visa Center letting you know that your case is complete and they will be coordinating with the respective embassy to schedule an appointment for you based on the embassy's availability. Once your interview has been scheduled, you can then schedule and complete a medical examination with an embassy approved doctor in your country. Based on the embassy that you will be attending the interview, there are special instructions regarding the medical exam, the doctors that are able to perform the medical exam, and so you must contact that doctor, schedule your medical exam, and either the doctor will directly send your medical exam results to the embassy or they will give you your results in a sealed envelope so you can take it with you to your interview. So you cannot schedule or complete the medical exam before you have an official interview date and it must be in that country. You cannot, for example, perform the medical exam in the United States and then attend the interview abroad so there are specific instructions on who can perform these medical exams for you in that country so you would have to contact them directly. Also, before your interview, you should gather all of the civil documents that you had, all of the documents that you uploaded to the SEAC website. Definitely make sure you have the original or certified copies with you because you will be required to take those with you to the interview. You will not be required to take with you the I-864 affidavits of support or the sponsor's financial information. You only have to take your own civil documents, your passport, your birth certificate, your marriage certificate, your police certificates, everything that you were required to upload and submit, that is what you must take with you to the interview and of course the medical exam if the doctor didn't already send it to the embassy. And you also have to take with you the photographs that were required to be submitted as well. Also, you may be asked to present the public charge questionnaire, the DS-5540, so on their website you're able to download that form and complete it and take it with you if you are asked to bring it. When you attend your interview, you must bring the appointment letter from the National Visa Center that tells you the date and time of your interview. You have to bring your passport and make sure your passport, your current passport, has a validity period that exceeds six months beyond the date of entry. So you need to bring your unexpired passport that is valid for six months beyond your intended date of entry into the United States. You must bring the two identical color photographs for each person, your DS-260 confirmation page, and the original or certified copies of the civil documents that I mentioned previously. If your immigrant visa was approved, you will receive the I-551 stamp in your passport. The stamp will have a validity period of up to six months, so essentially you have six months to prepare all of your belongings to move to the United States and you have that six months to enter the United States as a permanent resident for the first time. Before you travel, before you even get on a plane to the United States, you must pay an additional fee for each person that received the immigrant visa. This is specifically to produce your green card, the physical permanent resident card you will receive. If you don't pay that USCIS immigrant fee after your interview and before you move to the United States, you will not receive your green card in the mail. Either the officer will give you the instructions, but typically the instructions on how to pay that fee will be in a big yellow envelope that has your passport with the visa stamp and instructions, so the instructions will be there. It'll direct you exactly how to pay that fee, so you will go to USCIS's website, pay that fee for each person, and once that fee is paid, you will receive a receipt number. It starts with I-O-E. You need to keep that receipt number for each person, screenshot it, write it down, save it in your phone, do whatever you have to do to make sure you keep that receipt number because that receipt number is what you're going to use to track your green card once you move to the United States. After you've paid that fee and then you travel to the United States and enter as a lawful permanent resident, within two months of entering for the first time, you should receive the permanent resident card in the mail at the address that you indicated on the DS-260. As I mentioned, you can use that I-O-E receipt number for each person to check the status of the green card on USCIS's website. So there you have all of the steps for the immigrant visa process with the National Visa Center and the interview at the embassy abroad after your petition has been approved with USCIS. If you liked this video and you found it helpful, definitely give it a thumbs up. That way YouTube knows to share it across the platform. Thank you for watching and I'll see you in the next video.