Counting down a visa wait together

A visa wait rarely has a fixed end date, so count what you know: the days since you filed, the stages you have passed, and a hoped-for date you are willing to move. Take timelines from the official sources rather than forums, and share progress with each other in a way that keeps case details private.

Count up until you can count down

Early in a wait there is often no honest end date. Counting the days since you filed is still a countdown of a kind: it marks time passing and makes each step feel earned. Once you have a reasonable estimate, add it as a hoped-for date and the count flips to days to go. Treat that date as yours, not the government's, and move it when the case moves.

The free visa-wait countdown does both: with only a start date it counts the days waited, and with a hoped-for date it adds the days to go and a progress bar.

Get timelines from the people who set them

Processing times change and differ by office, so this guide does not quote any. For a U.S. visa the official sources are USCIS processing times for petitions such as the I-129F and I-130, USCIS case status for your own case, and the U.S. Department of State's visa appointment wait times for the embassy step. Other countries publish their own on their immigration and foreign-ministry sites.

Forums and timeline spreadsheets are good company and poor forecasts: they are made of other people's cases. Use them for morale and the official pages for dates.

Give the wait a shape with stages

A long wait feels shorter in steps. For a U.S. K-1 fiancé(e) visa the steps people usually track are the I-129F petition being filed, the receipt notice (often called NOA1), the approval notice (NOA2), the case moving through the National Visa Center to the embassy or consulate, the interview, and the visa being issued. A spouse visa (CR-1 or IR-1) runs through the I-130 petition, its receipt and approval, the National Visa Center, the interview and the visa. The State Department's K-1 page describes the current process.

Date each stage as it happens. Looking back at a list of passed stages is one of the few things in a wait that only gets better.

Share it with each other, not with everyone

• Keep receipt numbers, case numbers and documents out of anything you share. A countdown never needs them.
• Send each other a share link; it carries the date after the # in the address, which browsers do not send to the website. A private link carries no date at all, just how far along you are.
• Agree on how you will tell family when something moves, so nobody hears news second-hand.

Look after the relationship, not just the case

Waits are hard on the person abroad and the person at home in different ways. Keep a call rhythm you can sustain; the time-zone overlap finder shows your best windows, for example Manila and Los Angeles or Mexico City and Houston. Plan something for the day after each stage, not just for the end. And if a visit is possible during the wait, it often helps more than any countdown.

What The Long Goodbye does

The Long Goodbye is a presence app for two people apart. Once you pair, each of you sees the other's local time and time of day, a “thinking of you” tap lights up the other's home-screen widget, and a countdown to the next time you are together sits on the home-screen widget and the lock screen. It works from each phone's time zone, never GPS, and everything stays between the two of you.

More guides: Together · all Adelyons guides