Our I800, which is approval by US immigration, was approved on 8/5/11. After approval, it is supposed to be sent by 2nd day air to the National Visa Center (NVC) for the next step. By 8/12, I was really beginning to wonder where our paperwork had gone because the NVC had not received it yet. (We received our copy 8/9.) I got rather anxious about our daily e-mails from NVC, "After searching our records, no information was found regarding this case at this time." I finally got a tracking number from immigration (USCIS), which showed that they mailed our approval to NVC on 8/15/11. Yep, 10 days after approval. It got lost on someone's desk for 10 days? Someone went on vacation? Grrrr. Seems that they didn't mail it until I started repeat e-mails and phone calls to USCIS and NVC.
NVC did their part very quickly. They received our petition on 8/17 and cabled it to the US embassy in China on 8/18. We got an e-mail copy of their confirmation letter, which gets sent to Lily, our China liaison, who takes it and some other paperwork to the US embassy for review of Wynn's visa application. When they approve it (approval="Article 5"), it goes to Beijing for travel approval.
What a lot of extra steps created by American bureaucracy! The letter we got from NVC simply says that they have received our I800 and forwarded it to the embassy. Um, so why couldn't it go directly from USCIS to the embassy? And why does Lily need to take a copy of this NVC letter and visa application to the embassy? All of this information (and much more) has already been "cabled," mailed, and e-mailed to China prior to this step. I don't get it, but this is the process!
Article 5 processing takes a standard 2 weeks from the time that Lily delivers our paperwork to the US embassy. Then, travel approval. The end of the bureaucratic endurance test is in sight!
And it will be worth it.
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