willesd

Hi,

What kind of immirgation service does National Visa Center do? We got a mail from National Visa Center yesterday, addressed to some stranger. Obviously somebody messed up and sent it to a wrong address. The only thing we could read through the address window except a name and our address was "AOS Fee." We are sending it back, but I am curious what the mail is about.

SecretGarden

Hi,
Petitions that are approved get sent from the service centers to the National Visa Center (NVC) in New Hampshire. From there, they are then sent to individual consulates for the scheduling of visa interviews.

Mail service where I live is generally pretty bad---we get the neighbor's mail all the time and I am constantly walking down the street to give it to them. The other day, we got an envelope in our stack of mail from some guy several subdivisions away, attempting to pay his water bill. Put it in the mailbox and sent it for him.

Anyway, I'm wondering if you could look up this person's name in your phone book and see if you can locate him or her. If it were me, I'd attempt to find that person before putting it back in the mailbox after marking it, "not at this address".

~SecretGarden

willesd

What kind of petitions are they? I came to USA as a student and was offered a job after graduation. So my case was F-1 to H-1 B to PR based on marriage to a USA citizen. So I bet there are lots of things that I do not know about immigration process.

We did look up the phone book and try to find the addressee for nothing. I certainly understand how important this mail can be to the person.

jamie_nluv

You can ask Mr Udall. He was there a few months ago and took a tour. He posted his story here and a few memo's about his beer drinking trips while he was there. Apparently he likes to drink beer.

All hail the beer drinking attorney .

Jonathan McNeil Wong

willesd wrote:
    >>Hi,
    >>Petitions that are approved get sent from the service centers to the
    >>National Visa Center (NVC) in New Hampshire. From there, they are
    >>then sent to individual consulates for the scheduling of visa
    >>interviews.
    >>Mail service where I live is generally pretty bad---we get the
    >>neighbor's mail all the time and I am constantly walking down the
    >>street to give it to them. The other day, we got an envelope in our
    >>stack of mail from some guy several subdivisions away, attempting to
    >>pay his water bill. Put it in the mailbox and sent it for him. :)
    >>Anyway, I'm wondering if you could look up this person's name in your
    >>phone book and see if you can locate him or her. If it were me, I'd
    >>attempt to find that person before putting it back in the mailbox
    >>after marking it, "not at this address".
    >>~SecretGarden
    >
    >
    > What kind of petitions are they? I came to USA as a student and was
    > offered a job after graduation. So my case was F-1 to H-1 B to PR based
    > on marriage to a USA citizen. So I bet there are lots of things that I
    > do not know about immigration process.
    >
    >
    >
    > We did look up the phone book and try to find the addressee for nothing.
    > I certainly understand how important this mail can be to the person.
    >

NVC is a unit of the Department of State. (Actually, I believe it is
staffed mostly by federal contractors, not government employees.) NVC
handles preprocessing for all immigrant visas of any type except,
perhaps, for DV immigramt visas which I believe may be shifted to the KCC.

It used to be that all immigrant visa applications were completely
processed by consular staff. That got to be expensive after awhile, and
some small posts didn't have the humanpower to get it done. So they
either had to hire foreign service nationals or additional consular
personnel; the latter was particularly expensive given the extra foreign
service allowances that consular personnel are paid compared to people
who work stateside.

NVC was designed to take the paperwork load off consular staff and
centralize it in the U.S. where it could be done with more efficiency
and with cheaper labor. (Irony: the American labor was cheaper in this
case than the foreign labor.)

Initially, this was done as a pilot project (NVC was then called
"TIVPC", for Transitional Immigrant Visa Processing Center). Over the
years, more and more of the visa processing has been shifted to NVC.
The end goal is to have it all done there, have no paperwork at all (or
very little) submitted to the post, with the role of the post limited to
the interview.

As someone who has experienced the phase in from post processing to NVC,
I have to say that I do think NVC is much more efficient overall.

--
Above intended as general commentary, not specific legal
advice. Your mileage may vary.

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Jonathan McNeil Wong Voice: 510-451-0544
Donahue, Gallagher Woods LLP Facsimile: 510-832-1486
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