Please visit State Department’s website.

Your child may be able to receive a visa even after the age of 21 under the ”Child Status Protection Act (CSPA)”.  We will determine whether or not the CSPA applies for your case during the interview.

U.S. regulations require each visa applicant who is 16 years or older to submit a police certificate. The term “police certificate” refers to a statement from the law enforcement authorities of a country which certifies whether or not any criminal convictions have been ascribed to your name in that country.

Please follow these steps

1- Determine the countries from which a police certificate is required. You will need a police certificate:

If you have been living in your country of nationality for more than 6 month and you are 16 years old or older

If you lived in a different country for more than 12 months and you were 16 years or older at that time

If you were arrested for any reason and you were any age at the time of the arrest
(Note: Police certificates from the United States and Iran are not required)

2- Contact the appropriate police authorities. Additional information on how to obtain a police certificate can be found on the Reciprocity by Country page.

Important Notice About Police Certificates: Some countries require a specific Police Certificate: Request form to properly request and obtain Police Certificate(s). The Reciprocity by Country page indicates those countries. Please be advised, police certificates from certain countries are unavailable.

3- You must submit police certificates which:
– cover the entire period of your residence in that area;
– have been issued by the appropriate police authority;
– and include all arrests, the reason(s) for the arrest(s), and the disposition of each recorded case.

For your country of residence, a police certificate is considered valid for 12 months from the date of issuance. Police certificates obtained from other countries where you previously resided are valid indefinitely, provided that you have not returned to the country and resided there for six months or more.

Applicants should arrive at the Embassy’s Consular Section no earlier than 10 minutes before the time of their scheduled interview. Applicants who arrive late may miss their interview.

 

You should allow approximately two hours for the visa appointment.

No.  Due to our workload and limited resources and in the interest of fairness, the Consular Section cannot entertain requests to expedite interview appointments, unless there is an urgent medical or humanitarian need In such cases, please contact Immigrant Visa Unit by email explaining the urgent situation. Each expedite request is evaluated in its own merits.

If you are not able to attend your interview and would like to obtain a new appointment, you can put in a request to reschedule an immigrant visa appointment through https://ais.usvisa-info.com 24 hours after the interview date passes. The requests coming through this web site will be evaluated by the Consular Section and you will be informed by email.

All visa applicants need to select a visa pick-up location before coming to the Embassy for their interview. To select a passport pick up location please visit the CSC web page at https://ais.usvisa-info.com/. Applicants/petitioners can also call the Visa Information Service at 0850 390-2884 from Turkey or (703) 520-2490 from the United States to register their pickup locations.

 

No. If all the paperwork and administrative processing are complete at the time of the interview, preparing an immigrant visa and packet will take up to 3-4 workdays. Your passport and visa packet will be returned to you by Turkish Postal Service (PTT) for you to pick up from the PTT branch you have registered before your interview.

Please Note: K1 fiancé(e) visa processing may take 7-10 days.

In most cases, the priority date is the date the petition was filed with U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS). Immediate Relative (IR and CR) and Fiancé (K-1) cases are not subject to numerical limitation; so, they immediately become current once USCIS approves the petition.

Other immigrant visa categories are numerically limited and priority dates which became current can be viewed here: https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/legal/visa-law0/visa-bulletin.html

I received a letter/e-mail from the Embassy’s Consular Section indicating that my case has “retrogressed” and that my priority date is no longer current. What should I do? 

Retrogression occurs only when the State Department has pushed back the monthly cutoff of priority dates because the current demand has exceeded the visa numbers available for issuance.

Understandably, all applicants wish to obtain an immigrant visa as soon as possible, but U.S. immigration law requires that immigrant visa numbers be made available strictly in order of priority date. The numerical limitation cannot be waived, regardless of the circumstances.

The Affidavit of Support is a contract between a sponsor and the applicant that is required for some immigrant visa applications. The sponsor agrees to provide financial support for the applicant until the applicant becomes an American citizen or can be credited with 40 quarters (ten years or more) of work. The sponsor must show that he/she has income equal to or greater than 125 percent of the Federal Poverty Guidelines for his/her household size. Depending on the type of visa, either the Form I-864  or I-134   will be required for this purpose.

Yes. All petitioners must accept legal responsibility for financially supporting the family members for which they petition.

In the case that the petitioner’s financial resources are insufficient to meet the necessary legal level to sponsor their beneficiary or beneficiaries, they will need to find one or more person/s willing to take on the same legal responsibility and file an affidavit of support for the beneficiary or beneficiaries in question. If an additional sponsor is a qualifying household member of the petitioner (a “co-sponsor”), then they must provide an I-864A Form as well as the necessary supporting documentation. In the case that the additional sponsor in question is not a qualified household member (a “joint sponsor”), then he/she must provide an I-864 Form and the necessary supporting documentation.

According to U.S. law, a sponsor must be at least 18 years old and either an American citizen or a Legal Permanent Resident (LPR). The sponsor must also have a domicile (residence) in the United States. Petitioners living abroad may still be eligible to be a sponsor if they can show that their residence abroad is temporary, and that they have maintained a domicile in the United States. For more information about domicile, you may follow this link https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/us-visas/immigrate/the-immigrant-visa-process/step-1-submit-a-petition/i-864-affidavit-faqs.html#aos18

• Biological (natural-born) children of American citizens (IR-2 immigrant visa category) who will enter the United States before the age of eighteen and will by law automatically acquire American citizenship.
• Orphans adopted by an American citizen abroad (IR-3 immigrant visa category) where the adoption is full and final.
• Self-petitioning widows or widowers of American citizens (IW immigrant visa category).
• Immigrants who have already worked or can be credited with 40 qualifying quarters of work as defined in title II of the Social Security Act.

For further information about what constitutes a domicile and how domicile requirements can affect immigrant visa applications, please visit State Department’s website at https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/us-visas/immigrate/the-immigrant-visa-process/step-1-submit-a-petition/i-864-affidavit-faqs.html#aos18