Leaderboard

There is no denying the bad of Mao's leadership, but what emerged from the good of it was a focused population ready to take advantage of the opportunities made available by Deng and his policies. Mao was probably a necessary step from a feudal society into what is very nearly a free society today. Having been an early visitor to Deng's China, I am happy for the people. But I must confess that I preferred the early Deng China to modern China, although modern China is better for the people. It is my opinion that China will become increasingly free in the years ahead because it will benefit China. That's not to say that China will ever be free as Americans think of it, but China will be free. Keep in mind that China's leadership is trying to maintain a harmonious society even as wealth and greater freedom is available. There is/will be considerable envy that comes with wealth for some which was less obvious in the older times. Achieving a harmonious society with 1.3 billion plus souls does require careful governance. With good fortune for the Chinese, the once heavy, often brutal hand will become simply a guiding hand. I frequently have greater faith in the good intentions of the Chinese government than our own - despite the well-known and widespread corruption. Never in history have the lives of so many improved so much in such a short time. Of course, the winds of change are highly variable. Hopefully the wind will continue flow gently in a positive direction.

I like Scovitz's idea to sue the government as a group. My friends also suggested to talk to the news reporters. I am working on that now. If you have a friend who is a news reporter for a newspaper, CNN, CBS, or whatever media, we should talk to them and let the public knew how our own government is doing to its citizen. Our immigration attorney also suggested to do so. Media is a powerful tool. Please email me if you like my idea. The purpose of an IV should be re-unite family. We do not know what's happening with the Consulate in Guangzhou. It is a huge black hole.

I agree with everything everyone has said in this thread. My SO is in the same situation. I have sent letters to congressman, senators, state department, guangzhou consulate, all with no response. I think the key issue here is the lack of transparency. The standard immigration process takes a while, but with websites like visajourney.com, you can get a rough sense for what is going on and set expectations accordingly. In the case of the CCP waiver, I don't think anyone knows enough to know if Guangzhou is the problem or if it is the state department in D.C. My feeling is that with some new policy, they are asking the CCP member question of nearly every applicant and given the number of interviews per day, this is creating a huge backlog. The question is what is the next step of the process. A background check would require looking in a couple of databases. I can't imagine that taking 9+ months. I doubt they are doing much more because sending people all over China to perform background checks would be incredibly expensive. Plus, you never hear of anyone's relatives or employers being interviewed for these sorts of things... Again, this is conjecture. Is there an equivalent CCP-like delay happening to others applying for visas from other countries? (meaning is the problem larger than just China originating visas?) I would love to know what people think is the best way forward. Has anyone attempted to ask an immigration lawyer to sue the government to obtain more detailed information? Should we band together as a class action and try to collect data from every person we can find who has gone through this or is waiting for this process for dates and durations of waiting? Should we contact the ACLU to try to obtain representation as our rights to "the pursuit of happiness" as citizens are clearly being trampled upon here. I think if people are interested, we can try something and armed with data we stand a better chance than without.