immigration to America- U.S. embassy in London

Hi everyone. I have a question that might be better for another board, but as I've
been happily lurking here off and on for four years I'll give you a go. I'm American, living in London for four years as my Russian husband's student dependent. Our visas expire
by November, as he is supposed to finish his PhD. He would like to apply for the Highly
Skilled Migrant Visa and stay on two more years. I, however, am feeling absolutely desperate to leave (I am visiting my hometown of New York now and loving it) and want to very quietly apply for a green card for him- actually, I should, as I don't even know yet whether our visas to stay in the UK will be approved and if that falls through we will each have to go back to our respective countries! We've only lived together in the U.K. My question is, can I apply for his green card at the U.S. Embassy in London, or do I need to mail off the application to Chicago? I'm not even sure where I'm legally resident in the U.S. as I've been in London a long time. I know it costs $355- does anyone know anything else or has anyone gone through the process of getting their spouse a green card? Thanks so much!

Check out the links in my signature below for the Embassy and also the USCIS site. You should be eligible to file through London but even if you were to file now I wouldn't expect it to be completed by November.

Your husband will require police certificates from any country he's lived in for more than a year since the age of 16 so you might want to get a jump on that one now.

For further support and advice you might want to check out both visajourney.com and diveintoamerica.com.

Best of luck.

I second visajourney.com.
What you are interested in doing is called something like "Direct consulate filing".

http://forum.diveintoamerica.com/

Is also good .... and if I remember correctly Geally would have some useful things to say re your situation.  Though not about the PhD.

Thanks for the link! I see there are Americans who lived in the UK and moved back to
the US- looks like a good place to look around.