Approval 18 months after starting the application
My wife (F1) and I (H1B) both got out global entry! We applied for this as soon as it was announced in July 2017. Here is our timeline and experience.
Timeline for My wife's application (Mine was similar- PSK was a week later and in Hyderabad):
Global Entry Application - Jul 4, 2017
PSK appointment - Jul 30, 2018 - Bangalore
Police verification - Aug 2, 2018 - Bangalore
Conditional approval - Jan 3, 2019
Appointment and Final Approval- Jan 29, 2019 - Dulles Airport (IAD). Govt. shutdown pushed the date.
Experience:
CBP Application: My wife and I enrolled as soon as the program was announced. Unfortunately, the details about PSK in India and timelines associated with the Indian Govt weren't clear. CBP offered to refund but did say that we could do the PSK stuff up to a year into the future. These were their exact words to my query: "The Government of India (GOI) has imposed the added requirement of having an interview in India. This was imposed after our initial rollout. Therefore, if you submitted an application prior to July 6, 2017 and cannot complete the GOI requirement, then we are offering you a full refund. If you feel that you can complete it, but it will be many months out, that is fine. Your application will remain active for up to a year until you are able to complete. Please reply to this email with your name and PASSID, if you want a refund. We will not offer refunds if you submitted an application after July 6, 2017."Based on this, we decided to keep our application as we had plans to go to India in about a year's time.
PSK Appointment & Police verification: PSK appointment itself cannot be scheduled way in advance but we didn't have issues getting appointments. The process at PSK was fairly streamlined by Indian standards. Took about an hour or so. The head of the PSK was saying that there were tons of applications pending somewhere in the bureaucracy. Police verification followed soon after- the police guy asked me to show up at the police station with copies of passport, PAN, Aadhar etc. Again, very smooth process.
CBP Conditional Approval & Appointment at Center: Honestly, based on timelines posted, I was expecting the conditional approval to come in about 8 months later but it took 5 months for us. I never actually received emails from CBP about conditional approval or final approval. Anyway, on Jan 4th, 2019, I checked my account and there it was conditional approval was granted on Jan 3rd, 2019. We kept scheduling the appointment at IAD (Dulles airport) but had to move it every-time due to the Govt shutdown.
Finally, with the government open, we had our interview on Jan 29th. Since we had moved from our 2017 address- it took a while for the officer to update everything (he was very slow) for the both of us. In addition, my wife had a H4 in 2017 and she moved onto a F1 so he needed to update that as well. Anyway, we never received an email from CBP on approval but the online account showed
I am just super excited to have TSA Pre and GE done for the next 4-5 years. I will need to keep my VISA updated with the enrollment center but those are walk-ins and a minor hassle. I hope that on I don't have to go through the Indian process again the next time!
Last edited by solesix; Feb 2, 2019 at 9:20 am