Saturday, July 28, 2012

The Petition

So for any and all of you out there who might be curious how to get yourself an immigrant visa to the United States, it seems the process can be broken down into two main parts, the Petition and the Interview.

Yesterday, DH and I filed the petition at the US Embassy in Seoul.  It was a rather painless process which required the following:

A.  I-130 Form (the petition for American Citizens to bring in Immediate Family/Spouses)
B.  G-325 Form x 2 (biographical information about yourself and your family member)
C.  Copy of my passport
D.  Passports (original) - bring along
E.  Proof of Relationship, in our case, a marriage certificate
F.  Passport Photos
G.  $420/500,000 KRW Processing Fee

The US embassy in Seoul has two different entrances, one for US Citizen services and the other for Immigrant and Non-immigrant Visas.  The line to get into the latter entrance was out of this world long :/, but perhaps it had to do with it being a Friday afternoon.  Lots of Koreans in line for visas, but luckily once inside we could skip the queue where everyone else was waiting and head up to the third floor for the USCIS dept. where only one other person was waiting.  

We had gone to the embassy last Tuesday to set up an appointment in person because it was really hard to get a hold of someone on the phone and sending e-mails was useless.  We kept getting automated responses linking us to websites we had already been to.  If you have serious questions, just go in in person.  The guy was helpful and we made the appointment at the same time. He told us both petitioner and the person being petitioned for are required to be present and so we were off until then.

When Friday came, we went to turn in the papers and he told us we should hear the results of the petition in about a month and that at that time we'll get the information that we need to prepare for the next step--the Interview.

All in all--pretty smooth up until this point. We were told on average it takes around three months to go through the entire process here in Seoul, which means we applied fairly early, but just to be on the safe side we started the process now anyway.  Once DH gets the visa in his hands (after the interview) then he has six months to enter the US, and that should coincide nicely with the end of my contract early next year.


Picture of the US embassy, Seoul

1 comment:

  1. Hey thanks for the info. I do have a question , though. I thought that you needed to provided a birth certificate (for the beneficiary). Is that not true?

    ReplyDelete