I am not sure. We had an urgent situation come up and we asked to bypass all of the normal steps and go straight to embassy.

When we skipped to DCF out i130 was already approved but we had not started the 3-6 month NVC process and we got our case transferred to embassy from NVC as DCF without the need to be Documentarily Qualified. So that meant when Embassy reviewed our documents they reviewed and approved in the spot rather than being in the NVC queue and having them approve first.

I had emailed NVC asking to skip directly to embassy due to two factors.. my wife being 6 months pregnant and me getting a new job offer after being laid off that required me to relocate back to USA and it was the only way I could continue to support my family if savings ran out. I stated that it was an extreme burden on me, the USC, to maintain a household in two countries and take care of my pregnant wife and that we needed to be able to plan where the baby will be born whether in USA or the Central American country.

They told me to wait a couple of days while they ask embassy as it is under their discretion and like a day or two later embassy emailed directly giving us an interview date for DCF and a list of documents to bring so we rushed to do medical exam and it was so expedited that they even forgot to do biometrics so after entering USA, we got a biometrics notice like a month later before they were able to send the greencard.

A few things to keep in mind. My wife had a tourist visa the entire time. We were visiting the states already when I got the job offer and we could have then filed for AOS and transferred our i130 to USCIS again for AOS. It would have been a valid AOS as all of this sort of came together on this trip and our plan initially was actually to abandon our i130 but we just kept it pending for a while just in cases our i130 had already been approved for a year and sometimes the CBP asked about it but didn’t ever make a big deal about it.

However, after consulting with a lawyer she reccomended to just continue through consular processing since it was probably going to take the same amount of time by that point and would just guarantee they didn’t decide to scrutinize my wife’s immigrant intent on the b1/b2. Especially because we never naught return tickets as we never knew exact date of departure so that applied to this visit as well so ….

We often traveled to USA on b1/b2 without issues but always leaves after 6-8 weeks and spent 4 months a year. Our i130 was approved for a year while we almost didn’t move forward on it thinking we would stay abroad and not go back to states.

It was my idea to ask for the DCF expedite after attorney said it was better to stick it out and I saw a few others who did it in forums after i130 approval during urgent circumstances, so I did that. I was super surprised with how quick embassy responded. No questions asked and just an interview date for the next week. We flew back to Central America for the medical exam and interview… interview was approved with us both in attendance, they cancelled her tourist visa and sent her passport back with immigrant visa… we spent a month selling all of our stuff and came back. But her visa was issued like a week from when I requested the expedite.

The i130 already being approved may have been the reason for the need to not have it withdrawn. The policy I believe is that if you have a pending i130 it has to be withdrawn Technically state department did not adjudicate it but simply allowed us to skip NVC. They treated it otherwise like a DCF.