Could This Really Be Moving that Fast!

[screamneagle]

Yep! That's what I am hoping for too. It could be as soon as the end of August! Got my fingers crossed and rosary in hand. Hope it comes soon for all of us. Hopefully we'll all through one hell of a bash on interview night. Keep thinkin' them positive waves, Moriarty! Pink will be the order of the day at GUZ!

[screamneagle]

My lady received her P-4 on Saturday, July 24th! She did not know about it until last night because a heavy rain storm in Chengdu prevented her from checking her mail box. The gate keeper of apartment unit informed her that she had a large blue envelope in her mail box and she raced to to get it in the pouring rain. She gave me an excited call last night to tell me that the eagerly awaited P-4 had arrived and was now in her hands. Our interview date is set for Tuesday, August 24th at 7:15 a.m. Everything is just about ready to go! We have all the necessary documents and are now coordinating travel plans. She will fly from Chengdu to Guangzhou with her daughter and then take the #6 bus to the Yangs. I will fly to Hong Kong and take the train to meet them in GUZ. It is inconceivable to me that this whole process from the initial mailing of the 129F to P-4 in hand took only 114 days! Unbelievable!!

 

I was on the GUZ website early this morning and learned of the new DS 160 non-immigrant electronic visa application form. Has anyone had experience with this form yet? It says that by submitting this form online that there is no longer a need for the DS 156. It is also supposed to speed up the process. I checked it out and it seems straight forward but I'd be interested to know if anyone else has used the DS 160 and how advantageous it might have been in the process.

[bullmastiff]

Well, like the rest of the relative "new guys" I'm sitting here waiting for the K-1 visa to run its course. If its one thing any of us have learned from this experience it is the old adage, "Patience is a virtue!" So with that in mind I settled in for the long wait after making my initial I-129F submission to the USCIS Processing Center in Vermont on April 2nd. As I mentioned on here before, I was astounded when I received my P-2 approval notice on June 14th... just 63 days after it was received.

 

This past Saturday, June 19th, I received the notice from the State Department informing me that they had received my file, assigned it a GUZ case number and would be forwarding it to Guangzhou soon. They also said that my lady would be receiving an information packet (P-3?)with an instruction sheet and a visa application shortly.

 

OK, so I'm now into the long and frustrating wait that everyone here has mentioned and experienced. So now its my turn, right? I am figuring that the NVC out date was going to be sometime in the middle or end of this week so for the heck of it I called the State Department last night and was informed the my file was sent to the consulate at Guangzhou on June 15th. Again I was surprised by the very fast NVC turn around time!

 

This morning (night in Chengdu) I received a phone call from my lady informing me that the Chengdu post office had called her and told her that there was a piece of mail for her there from Guangzhou and that she had to come to the post office to pick it up tomorrow. Both of are thinking ... Could this be the P-3 already!? Can this really be happening that fast!?

 

So my question is ... is there some other notification that Guangzhou sends to the beneficiary in the mail prior to sending the P-3 or could this be the P-3 itself? Am I reading more into this then is actually there? Is this too much to hope for?

 

This process seems to me to be moving very much faster than I had anticipated or thought possible. Love to hear your thoughts on this one.

 

Richard

 

Thanks For sharing this info with us.

My wife is also from Chengdu .

Just a question : Is there any way she can rent a mail box at the post office ? I think this is the best in handling mails in China unless one has a good established business address . As you know, mails in China are really snails , not like in the US .

Thanks .

[Amaro]

Nice man, good luck with the interview. My girl has not even received the P3 yet.

[Stepbrow]

Eagle, that's terrific news. I think you have set a record! Best of luck on the interview.

[screamneagle]

Thanks For sharing this info with us.

My wife is also from Chengdu .

Just a question : Is there any way she can rent a mail box at the post office ? I think this is the best in handling mails in China unless one has a good established business address . As you know, mails in China are really snails , not like in the US .

Thanks .

 

Bull:

 

Not sure about the P.O. box. It would probably be best for your lady to go to the post office and inquire about this. For our P-3, my lady had to go to the post office to retrieve it. As I already mentioned, the P-4 sat in her mail box at home for a day and a half because of the sever rain storm. She sent me a scan of the appointment letter and it was dated 21 July from GUZ. We were online talking about how we could find out if we had an interview date scheduled by GUZ yet. While we were on line at 8:45 a.m. China time, I called the visa branch at the consulate in Guangzhou. I was told that they do not answer any questions about visa cases (go figure) and that if I wanted to get any information about our case I would have to email them using the email form on their website. Prior to this, I was told by DOS that I would have to contact the consulate in GUZ directly to learn anything further about our case once it left NVC.

 

I had everything in place to send the email to the consulate on Monday morning when I got the excited call from my lady around midnight this past Sunday (US time)she had received her P-4. Now I am trying to get a ticket to Hong Kong and the cheapest I have found is on Cathey for $1420.00 ONE WAY!!! After September 1st, it would cost $720.00. I'm not even going to think about trying to reschedule the interview. I will just have to suck it up and open my veins. Anyone out there know where I can find a cheaper ticket in August with out taking over 48 hours to get there?

 

Good luck to you Gentlemen who are still waiting. My heart is with you. The anxiety of waiting from day to day is enough to drop you in your tracks! I think I have been very fortunate in respect to the amount of time I have waited for this day to arrive... very quick! I will keep you posted on how things develop.

[wawayu]

Give Eva Air a try...might save you a few hundred bucks.

[Lee VD]

When we were waiting for P4, I called the DOS line in the U.S. and they happily told me the interview date had been set, and this was before they even put the letter together to go out in the mail! So, it must have just been set. So you can get this information. I am wondering what other things they can tell about the processing (and will tell you). Sorry you didn't see that earlier or you would have known sooner! We found out almost 2 weeks before she got the P4 so this should be standard practice for the P3->P4 waiters!

[Amaro]

It turns out they sent my girl the P3 packet on July 22nd, I sure hope they send it to the right address. You guys said that EMS usually contacted your fiance before they actually deliver it?

[wawayu]

Depends on which local post office I guess.

 

My fiancee didn't get a call for P3. I don't think GUZ remembered to write down her number on the label so EMS wouldn't know which number to call anyway but they left a notice in her mail box. They did call her for P4 because she weren't there at the time, and came back and delivered it on the second attempt.

[screamneagle]

Still wondering if anyone has had experience with the consulate's new DS 160 electronic Visa Application form. Like I mentioned, they say it replaces the DS 156. I started to fill it in the other night. You have to electronically scan in a passport type photo ... it has to be accepted by the website after you click "Check to see if photo is acceptable" and you need to have your ladies name in Chinese characters for her signature line. This is where I stopped. I had to contact my lady to ask her to send me an email with just her name in her native alphabet. I am planning to cut and paste it into the signature line. Hope this works! The consulate say that they will use the information from the form in a number of different ways and that it is supposed to "speed up the process" (their words). Anyone gone through filling this form out online yet?