Originally Posted by Jomo's girl

OK, then you still have a ways to go, I. It has to now go to the National Visa Processing Center, still here in the US. That took us roughly a few weeks. However, if can take a lot longer depending on if they have any visa number left in your category for the year or if you need to wait till the next year. There is no way to know this until they send you out the letter. Once you get that letter from the Visa Processing Center, go make a copy of both approval notices you get and mail off those originals to Gregory (right name?) immediately. If you want to speed them along in JA, he MUST go to the embassy with those approval notices (between 7:15-10 a.m. M-F, no JA or US Holidays) and get his next bunch of paperwork. After he gets that paperwork (a technicality) he can turn in the DS-230 immediately and make an appointment for his visa interview. He has to go pay the $100 fee at this time, in order to make that appointment. If you choose not to go this route, it will take weeks to get the notice and paperwork from JA. He then must still either mail or take the DS-230 to the embassy, and then wait for them to mail him a notice of his appointment. It was 3 weeks after Jomo was gone, when he got his notice in the mail.....which means for us, it took about 7 weeks for him to get the first approval notice in the mail.

He must take the DS-230 Part I to the embassy with him to make that appointment. The other parts go in with the Visa interview.

There is no packet 3 at all. In fact, there is no packet 2. Just 1 packet. That packet contains all the forms I mentioned up above, plus the info. on the doctor's visit, and all necessary associated info. needed.

Packet 1 may refer to the first mailing with the DS-230. The 2nd would then be the appointment information. We bypassed all that by going to the embassy.

The only associated fees is the $100 for the appointment. The other $405 is what we paid here when we filed the permanent papers and biometrics fees.