Extending I-129f Petition!! Help!!

[marpaul0625]

My fiance and I were approved in July of this year, which means our Petition is only valid until November of this year. We're not getting married until June (and he cannot come to the US before then), which means we need our validity extended for a few more months. How do we do this? What if we don't apply for the Interview before it expires, do they automatically revalidate it?

Any help would be greatly appreciated!!

[tinkam1]

My understanding is that it basically expires and there is no way of extending it: you will ahev to apply for it again. I could be wrong.

[marpaul0625]

No you can definitely revalidate it, as it says here on the travel.gov website:

"My petition expired - Can it be extended?

The I-129F petition is valid for four months from the date of approval by USCIS. A Consular Office can extend the validity of the petition if it expires before visa processing is complete."


Problem is, nowhere on the internet does it say how.

[nichole]

Your petition should be in the embassy's hands by now. That is no longer USCIS, but the Dept of State. It would help to know which embassy since they have different procedures. But here's a general example suggestion:

Respond to visa instructions before the petition expires. Get the DS forms sent in (if that's your consulate's procedure.) That will keep your petition active. It could take two months for them to get to your interview. If you're waiting on them beyond November, they don't worry about the petition date since you did your part before the expiration. So that could be a mid December interview. So you pass and get the visa. It is good for 6 months, so until mid June in this example. He has until then to enter the US.

I know London has a checklist to mail back with a place asking the wedding date and intended date of travel. If you put a June date, they wouldn't be in a hurry to give you an early interview date.

Other stall ideas are reschedule your interview if it is too early to fit your timeline. Or include a cover letter with your DS forms saying your will not be able to travel to an interview before <date> so could they kindly schedule yours after that.

It's when the embassy has your petition and they don't get any response from you, they can consider your petition abandoned. So if don't think the above examples will work, then write the embassy before the petition expiration requesting an extension and explain the reason.

Also the embassy can extend a visa that isn't used by 6 months.

If you ask for a petition extension, each party should for sure write new letters of intent for the interviw stating you still wish to marry each other.

[marpaul0625]

Thank you for your info! I actually got up bright and early and made the $16.00 phone call to the Embassy. They were very helpful! Really as long as we mail our documents in, all I have to do is write a letter to the Embassy saying I still want to marry my fiance, etc. and everything will be fine!

Basically we just need our documents in in the next month and we should be good to go!

Thanks anyway for your help!

[nichole]

Hi!

I am worried because when our Petition expired, we never sent letters to the Embassy asking for revalidation. We didn't know we had to And, what's more, the Embassy never requested such letters from us! The visa was issued 2 months after the Petition had expired. I don't know whether the Petition was revalidated... and whether I need to have it revalidated for the POE

You said the ***** words - THE VISA WAS ISSUED

That's all you need. The person who started this thread was concerned about their petition expiring before they applied for a visa interview and maybe not getting a visa because of that. You don't need your petition now that you have a visa.

The petition gets you to the visa. The visa gets you through POE.

Edit: see my answer to your other post because I understand your question better.