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New OCI Washington DC
Here is one more...

Date Of Acknowledgment 11-JUN-2019
Documents Printing Status PROCESSED On 26-JUL-2019
Dispatched From MEA (OCI ) NEW DELHI On 01-AUG-2019
Document received At WASHINGTON DC On 01-AUG-2019
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Minor OCI, Washington, DC
Gov Site

Date of Acknowledgment: May 02, 2019

Documents Printing status Processed: July 16, 2019

Dispatched from New Delhi: July 17, 2019

Documents received at Washington DC: July 17, 2019

CKGS

OCI in transit to CKGS from consulate: July 30, 2019

OCI received and sorting: July 30, 2019

Dispatch of Shipment: August 1, 2019
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New OCI Card Washington DC
Date Of Acknowledgment 23-MAY-2019

Documents Printing Status PROCESSED On 26-JUL-2019

Dispatched From MEA (OCI ) NEW DELHI On 30-JUL-2019

Document received At WASHINGTON DC On 30-JUL-2019
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New OCI card - New Born - New York CGI
Overall it took 30 days for receiving the OCI card in NY centre and it was faster than expected.

Completed the application and made online CC payment of $351.90 that includes Shipping and Handling.

June 24, 2019 (1.00 PM) - I mailed all documents through FedEx overnight mail.
(for firsttime mailers - Print the label and barcode, go to FedEx office, get a prepaid envelope for free, mail all documents in checklist with original passport. weight could go beyond 0.5 lbs mine for 0.9 lbs. But that is still fine. Avoid any metal clips to reduce weight. I used only paper sticky notes to put together any set of pages)

June 25, 2019 (2.49 PM) - Application received.
Package received but contents to be verified. Verification outcome will be mailed.

June 25, 2019 (3.12 PM) - Application Verification is ‘Complete’.
Processing of your application will continue. The Consulate may request for further documents over and above those already submitted as per the Document Checklist.

June 26, 2019 (3.09 PM) - Application is ‘Under Process’ at CKGS.

June 27, 2019 (6.01 PM) - Application is 'In Transit' to the Consulate.

June 28, 2019 (11.01 AM) - Application is 'Under Process' at Consulate for decision making.

June 28, 2019 (11.18 AM) - IN TRANSIT US PASSPORT TO CKGS FROM CONSULATE
Passport 'Reviewed' by Consulate and is ‘In Transit’ to CKGS Application Centre.

June 28, 2019 (11.19 AM) - SORTING OF US PASSPORT
Original Passport ‘Received’ at the CKGS application centre and is at the ‘Sorting Facility’ where it is being processed for delivery.

June 28, 2019 (11.23 AM) - DISPATCH OF US PASSPORT FROM CKGS.
Passport picked up by FedEx. Your AWB number is ZZZ

July 1, 2019 (11.00 AM) - Received Original Passport delivered by FedEx.

July 22, 2019 (3.39 PM) - IN TRANSIT TO CKGS
Application 'Reviewed' by Consulate and ‘In Transit’ to CKGS Application Centre.

July 23, 2019 (9.02 AM) - SORTING
OCI Card ‘Received’ at the CKGS application centre and is at the ‘Sorting Facility’ where it is being processed for delivery.

July 23, 2019 (9.49 AM) - DISPATCH
OCI Card picked up by FedEx. Your AWB Number is ZZZ

July 24, 2019 (2.30 PM) - RECEIVED OCI CARD delivered by FedEx.
All Replies (0)
New OCI Foreign Spouse - New York Office
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
All Replies (0)
OCI application for US born minor
Hello,

Recently i applied for my five month old US born daughter's OCI application which is still in process. Since the processing time is like around two to three months, thought of sharing the experience from preparation to submission of the application.

Application submitted at CKGS (San Francisco) with walk-in : July 3, 2019
Received the submitted US Passport: July 9, 2019
OCI status: in process

I did a lot of research online for every little thing whether its about the form filling or required documents or anything else. My goal was to submit the application in the first attempt. Because i have heard many applicants were sent back for minor corrections and one of my friend had to go four times to submit the application successfully. As far as i have heard, if there is a mistake in the application, they don’t take corrected application on the same day and you have go there next day or get a new appointment. I think if the case is about incomplete documents then they accept it on the same day but i am not completely sure about this. In my case i had to drive for an hour to get to the CKGS office so i really wanted get done with the application in the first try.

APPLICATION PREPARATION:

Prepwork:
The best starting point is to read “BEFORE SUBMISSION” and “POST SUBMISSION” sections throughly on https://www.in.ckgs.us/oci/how-to-apply and i would say don’t ignore even a single line. Make a note of the important points for e.g. left thumb impression for boys and right thumb impression for girls.

Whenever you are not sure about what to fill in the form, i recommend you to go through the CKGS FAQ section https://www.in.ckgs.us/faq/oci and if you don’t find anything then you might need to research online. If you are not sure whether you need to get a thumb impression at one place or both on some form, take multiple copies of it in a different way. For e.g. one copy of page with single thumb impression at one place and other copy of page with two thumb impression at two different places. Basically, different combinations of thumb impressions.

There is a sample government OCI form on the CKGS website https://www.in.ckgs.us/resources/pdf/sample-oci-application-form.pdf which you can refer to. This is very helpful because you can avoid some common mistakes such as entering something other than “USDOS” as the place of issue for the US passport.

For me, what helped the most is that there is a video on youtube which talks about the whole process. Just search for “OCI application process” and you will find it. The video is divided into two parts (part 1 and part 2).
Since the videos are little old, little things have changed in the form but they are not that critical.

Photo:
You can get it in the Costco either a hard copy and later scan it for online upload or just get both hard and digital copies.
In either way, you would need to resize the photo and reduce the size to match the requirements. I tried Costco but the photo was not that great because they put white towel on the car seat on which i had to place my baby and then take a photo. Since the towel was not plain i could see it clearly in the picture and the picture was little dark too. The total cost for this was $15. Also, if you are planning to get the photos done from such places like Costco, Walgreens, UPS, or anywhere else consider carrying a plain white sheet along with you because not all the places have arrangements for the baby’s photo and we were actually sent back due to this. If the applicant is old enough to sit on a chair then there might not be any issues since in such case they will use the sliding white background which they typically do for the adults. After visiting multiple places, i finally went to a photo studio where i got both hard copy and digital copy. Best part is that they gave me a resized and reduced version of digital photo which met the online upload requirement without any issues. The total cost for this was $25.

When you upload the photo on government website, it will notify you right there whether your photo meets the requirement or no.

Signature:
For the baby’s thumb impression, if you are planning to buy an inkpad then buy a removable ink one because we got the regular one and it took some time to remove the ink from baby’s thumb. Take multiple thumb impressions on a plain white paper. We took them when the baby was sleeping.

I followed these steps to resize the signature image and it worked without any issues:
1. Open the image in Microsoft paint application
2. Select the signature area such a way that it will properly show up in a rectangular box on the form
3. Crop the selection
4. Press the resize button
5. Here in the resize and skew window click on pixels
6. In the resize and skew window, deselect the maintain aspect ratio checkbox
7. Type 360 in the horizontal box and 120 in the vertical box. This will give you 1:3 aspect ration for height and width
8. Save the image as JPEG image and make sure that it's less than 200kb
9. The image is ready for the upload

When you upload the signature on government website, it will notify you right there whether your signature meets the requirement or no.

Notary:
First of all take multiple print outs of the pages where you need a baby’s thumb impression because that needs to be done in front of the notary person. If the thumb impression does not come as expected, you can also use the extra print outs.

Documents checklist:
Carefully read each and every line especially the things that are in bold. For e.g. copy of first three pages of parents passport. For some of the Indian passports, the first page has state emblem of India and some stamp with signature so take a copy of this page too. I would say just do as they say. Though they returned most of the extra pages during the application submission but it's always better to carry them because you never know.

Documents upload:
Since there is a 1000kb per file limit for the document upload on government website, don’t try to crop or resize the high quality scanned image instead scan the pages at low quality level. In my scanner i had set 100 DPI for the quality so it resulted into a single scanned file with 150kb size. Eventually, put all the scanned files in a single file to generate a single PDF file. When you prepare parents passport pages, make sure to put them in a single pdf file as there is just one document upload option for this.

APPLICATION SUBMISSION:

I had an appointment at around mid July but i did a walk-in on July 3rd as one of my friend suggested it. Reached at 7:30am to the CKGS San Francisco office because i heard sometimes there is a huge line. Fortunately, when i went there there was no one and i think its because next day was a July 4th which was a holiday (may be because people usually plan vacations around these dates). So, may be you can try to do the walk-in at around holidays so that it will be less crowded. The office opened at 9am and i was done in 15 minutes also because i was the first in the line. For your information, they charge $17 for walk-in visit and they take that only if your application is accepted. After they accept your application, they cancel your appointment.

ADDITIONAL NOTES:
- You don’t need to take your child or spouse in order to submit the application even if any of them is an applicant.
- I think the CKGS San Francisco accepts walk-in applications from 9am - 11am
- You can always re-upload documents on government website but only until certain stage of your application process. Mostly this stage is when the consulate accepts your application from CKGS but i would say double check on this because i am not very sure.
- Take extra prints and copies just as a backup
- Consider doing a walk-in at around holidays

Hope this helps.
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Moved out of state - NY to CA
Hi,

We moved out of state from NY to CA and I am trying to apply new OCI card for my infant and already have a US passport applied and received when we were in NY. The question here is

I select California as Live in state and it shows San Francisco as Jurisdiction When I try to start the application but after entering the details in the first page and click on proceed to next page the Jurisdiction changes to New York and it is not accepting my current address so how it chooses the jurisdiction and how can I change it? Please let me know if anybody experienced this.

Thanks.
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Amazing experience - OCI processing - India Rocks!
For all the millions of Indian Born Naturalized American Citizens/NRIs processing OCI for their American born kids - I have had nothing but the best experiences while processing VISAs/OCIs with CKGS/Indian Government. Get your paperwork right and do your bit before complaining about Indian VISA/OCI processing services. My kids' OCI was processed in San Francisco and was received back to me in exactly 20 business days (start to end - Jun 8th to July 18th). It's amazing how Indians living abroad have double standards of expectations from American Vs. Indian processing. It takes thousands of dollars/hundreds of pages of documentation/attorney involvement to get Green Card/Citizenship. But OCI application and supporting documentation seems like such a daunting task for such people. STOP complaining and do your bit - CKGS and Indian Government services Rock!!
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Oci card San Francisco
Applied OCI card

Application Received-26th May 2019

Oci card processed-24th jun 2019

Oci card received - 8th jul 2019

Thank you
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OCI houston
Jul 08, 2019 - Monday 03:46 pm OCI Card picked up by FedEx.

Jul 08, 2019 - Monday 03:10 pm OCI Card ‘Received’ at the CKGS application centre and is at the ‘Sorting Facility’ where it is being processed for delivery.

Please continue tracking your application status online.
Jul 08, 2019 - Monday 03:09 pm Application 'Reviewed' by Consulate and ‘In Transit’ to CKGS Application Centre.
 

Indian Website timeline

Date Of Acknowledgment 12-JUN-2019
Registration Status at Mission HOUSTON
Documents Printing Status PROCESSED On 03-JUL-2019
Dispatched From MEA (OCI ) NEW DELHI On 03-JUL-2019
Document received At HOUSTON On 03-JUL-2019

Please continue tracking your application status online.
Jun 12, 2019 - Wednesday 05:06 pm Passport picked up by FedEx.

Your OCI Application will continue and take the pre-defined processing time. Please continue tracking your application status online.

Jun 12, 2019 - Wednesday 04:51 pm Original Passport ‘Received’ at the CKGS application centre and is at the ‘Sorting Facility’ where it is being processed for delivery.

Your OCI Application will continue and take the pre-defined processing time. Please continue tracking your application status online.

Please continue tracking your application status online.
Jun 12, 2019 - Wednesday 03:15 pm Passport 'Reviewed' by Consulate and is ‘In Transit’ to CKGS Application Centre.

Please continue tracking your application status online.
Jun 07, 2019 - Friday 04:28 pm Application is 'Under Process' at Consulate for decision making.

Please continue tracking your application status online.
Jun 07, 2019 - Friday 04:27 pm Application is 'In Transit' to the Consulate.

Please continue tracking your application status online.
Jun 06, 2019 - Thursday 12:03 pm Application is ‘Under Process’ at CKGS.

Please continue tracking your application status online.
Jun 05, 2019 - Wednesday 04:31 pm Application is ‘Verified and Reprocessed’ at CKGS.

Some documents were missing in between

Please continue tracking your application status online.
May 28, 2019 - Tuesday 04:14 pm Application ‘Received’ by CKGS and 'Not Verified'.

You will receive an E-mail advising you of the outcome of the verification process.

All Replies (1)

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