OCI Card

Hi,

Here's the timeline for processing OCI Foreign Spouse. I am an OCI holder, and applied for foreign spouse (European nationality).

Per CKGS:
June 6 - Application accepted
June 7 - In transit to Consulate
June 10 - Passport returned to us in the mail

***NOTE: Though this was not a part of the pre-defined process, CKGS New York called us in for a spouse interview. Both spouses were separated and asked questions about relationship, marriage, and our reasons for applying for spouse OCI. An email was sent to my spouse on July 8th to schedule an appointment, but we missed it in our spam folders. Luckily, they then called us to come in to schedule it. PLEASE BEWARE AND CHECK SPAM FOLDERS! I have never heard of this process, and was surprised. This does NOT show up on CKGS or the Gov't website.

July 11 - Interviewed at Consulate of India NYC

Per Gov of India www.ociservices.gov
June 7 - Date of Acknowledgment
July 18 - Documents Printed
July 18 - Dispatched from MEA in New Delhi and Received at New York CGI

Per CKGS:
July 19 - Application reviewed by Consulate and in transit to CKGS
July 19 - OCI Card Received at CKGS and sent to sorting
July 22 - OCI Card received in the mail.

The biggest pain points were:
-obtaining an "Apostilled" marriage certificate. We got married in the US and we just had to check with the state authority where we got married. We had to mail it to them with $5, they turned it around to us the next day with the Apostilled stamp.
-preparing and translating foreign birth certificates to be accepted by Consulate. We've had to do it before, there are accredited services who will make the appropriate copies etc., just make sure they know what they're looking at.
-THE INTERVIEW - the interview was easy, no difficult questions. If you have an authentic marriage, there's no issues; it was just a surprise that we needed to rearrange our schedules.

Cheers,
RM