Wednesday, October 26, 2011

National Visa Center

On October 15th we received our I-800 Provisional Approval. On October 20th we learned that the fastest way to get our child's visa paperwork hand-delivered to the US Consulate in Guangzhou was to call the National Visa Center and ask that the letter of approval be sent to us via e-mail in a PDF format. Thus, we called that same day.
 
On October 26th we received the approval letter from the NVC via e-mail, and we immediately forwarded the PDF letter to our agency. They, in turn, had their staff in Guangzhou hand-deliver our documents to the US Consulate on October 27th.
 
If we had waited for the letter to arrive in the mail, it would have severely delayed us in getting Andrew. (The NVC approval letter can be known to take 4-6 weeks to receive in the mail vs. 5 days to receive via e-mail.) Therefore, when we are doing the paperwork for Hope, we need to remember to call for the e-mail version of the letter!
 
Anyone in the process who is awaiting the letter via snail mail, call the NVC and ask for the letter to be sent via e-mail. You could save yourself weeks of waiting to pick up your child!

2 comments:

Unknown said...

We are in the process of sealing our documents for our dossier, so not quite at this stage. Can you explain about this visa in PDF format. Who exactly do we call. Thank you so very much for sharing your expertise with us.
Natalie

Derek, Julie, Cherish, Hope, Andrew, Daniel, Matthew, and Samuel said...

Thanks for commenting on my post. I do not have your contact information, so I will answer your questions here.

All you need to know can be found by clicking http://www.china-adoption-online.com/National-Visa-Center.html. This site offers explanations about the NVC, the letter, the cable, etc. in layman's terms. The site also offers the phone number you seek.

Regarding the .pdf attachment, that is just the way the NVC will attach the file to an e-mail.

I'm so happy for you! I look forward to journeying together.
Julie