Numerically Limited Family-Based Visas

Step 1
A U.S. citizen files the Form I-130 petition with the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) office that covers his or her permanent place of residence.

Step 2
The approved I-130 will be forwarded to National Visa Center (NVC), where it will be stored until the petition’s priority date is nearly current, at which point it will then be forwarded to the U.S. Consulate General Guangzhou. Note that visa petitions typically take 3-4 months to arrive at the Consulate after being sent by NVC; this is largely due to unavoidable delays in Chinese customs resulting from a bilateral treaty with China limiting the movement of official documents into the country.

Note: Once NVC has received your immigrant visa fee, it will send you the immigrant visa instruction packet (Form DS-230)(PDF #K) along with further instructions.

Step 3
Once the petition reaches the Guangzhou Consulate, and your priority date is current, it will be queued up for the visa interview. Interviews are typically scheduled for a date within 2 to 4 months of this time.

Step 4
Once the interview date is set, the Consulate will send the beneficiary an appointment packet (known as Packet 4) providing instructions on how to prepare for the interview. The beneficiary will need to have a medical exam completed at one of a list of designated hospitals (PDF #K) before the interview takes place.

NVC Pilot Program

The National Visa Center (NVC) has started a new pilot program of electronically processing visa petitions.  Under this program all documents related to your case will be sent to Guangzhou electronically, rather than by mail. This should greatly improve the speed and efficiency of visa processing by avoiding delays due to postal service delivery.

Electronic processing is available only for immigrant visa applications processed at the U.S. Consulate General in Guangzhou, China and is currently available for the following visa categories: IR-1, IR-2, CR-1, CR-2, IR-5, F1, F2A, F2B, F3 and F4.

If you have heard from the NVC and have chosen to participate in electronic processing you should not mail any physical paper documents to NVC.  Doing so will result in a delay in the processing of your case. NVC will send instructions to all e-mail addresses you provided.  Please follow all instructions from NVC for submitting documents electronically and bring the original documents to the interview with you.

For more information, please go to the Guangzhou Electronic Processing webpage.