In general, U.S. immigrant visa applicants will be issued a sealed packet with civil documents and information, which she / he should present to the Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officer at the time of first entry into the United States for further processing.

We recently reported that the National Visa Center (NVC) started accepting civil documents electronically for certain cases. For these cases where the civil documents were submitted electronically, the U.S. embassy / consulate no longer issues the sealed package along with the visa. The visa application is processed electronically and required information is transmitted to the CBP directly. These immigrant visas will have an annotation “IV DOCS in CCD”. Such immigrant visa applicants need not worry if they did not receive the sealed package. Other immigrant applicants and applicants who do not have the annotation “IV DOCS in CCD” on the immigrant visa should check with the relevant consular section if they need a sealed package prior to travel.

This update can be found here (Questions 19 to 21).