What do I need to give the National Visa Center after I submit my fees?
Hi, I'm Jim Hacking, immigration lawyer, practicing law throughout the United States out of our office in St. Louis, Missouri. And, soon to be San Diego, California. We're opening up in our new satellite office in San Diego on January 1st, 2021.
In today's video, it comes from [Starboy Rube 00:00:23]. Starboy wants to know, "Hello, good afternoon. What are examples of documents I need to submit after I paid the NVC fees? And thank you."
Starboy, so, after your case has been approved at USCIS and sent to the National Visa Center, as you noted, you're going to have to pay two fees. The Affidavit of Support fee and the Immigrant Visa Fee. Currently the Immigrant Visa Fee is $325. The Affidavit of Support Fee is $120. So the total is $445 that you're paying at this stage.
Once you've paid those fees, then it's time to submit the DS-260. Now the DS-260 asks for much of the exact same information that you've already provided when you submitted your I-130 and I-130A to USCIS. But remember you're going from one agency to another. You're going from USCIS to the National Visa Center.
Now that you're at the National Visa Center, you have to basically redo everything. The good part is that this is done electronically. So the DS-260 used to be a paper form, now it's online. It is a lot more thorough than it used to be, but basically you're going to give all the background information about you, about your spouse or your fiancé. You're going to submit all that evidence and get that part of the case rolling again.
Document-wise, what you're going to have to submit are digital copies of everything. You're not going to submit originals to the National Visa Center. You're going to submit copies of things like birth certificates, the marriage certificate, the relationship documents, and all the other evidence that you need to submit. First you submit the DS-260, and then you submit the checklist. With the checklist you're going to send in all the identity documents, all the documents that demonstrate that the relationship is valid.
Then from there you might get a checklist back from USCIS asking for more documents, but hopefully you submitted everything correctly. Your case will then be documentarily qualified and then sent on to the embassy for adjudication. The checklist and the documents that you have to submit can be onerous. That's a lot. So you want to be very detailed. They'll tell you what they need and what they want, and they'll also tell you if anything's missing.
If you need help with getting your documents together at the National Visa Center, you can give us a call at 314-961-8200. You can email us at [email protected] You can join us on our Facebook group, which is called Immigrant Home. We're going live every Tuesday and Thursday in Immigrant Home, and answering people's questions for free for a solid hour, twice a week. Tuesdays, Thursdays, Central Time, noon.
And then of course you can find us on Instagram at hackinglawpracticellc.
Thanks a lot and good luck to everybody.
Peace.
