JamesnYuHong

There is a glandular difference such that most Asians do not produce the characteristic underarm smell when they sweat. So for the most part, Asians don't need deodorant. My wife could sweat until the proverbial cows came home and there would never be a scent.

Even at RMB6.4/$1, your retirement plans should be fine. Maybe get a 27-inch TV instead of a 32-inch.

An acquaintance of my wife is a naturalized citizen. She wants her parents to come over here for a visit from China. What kind of documents will be needed in order for this older Chinese couple (around age 70) to obtain tourist visas? Specifically, the woman was asking me if she will need to show certain financial documents.

She has CR-1. She has a temporary I-551 stamp in her passport and is waiting on her green card to arrive in the mail. Well today she got a "Welcome Letter" in the mail from USCIS and a number with which to track her case. What's up with that? What's it for?

I've seen a young Chinese woman get a tourist visa to the U.S. before. She was living in Japan at the time and was rejected multiple times before finally getting approved.

I would not circumvent the process. I would not want to live in fear due to having violated immigration law.

In my China travels, we have received the occasional untoward comment, but nothing too major and not too often. There's a certain element in any country that will do that. I am white and I can recall some years ago walking with a white girl in my hometown and having some drunk (white) guy on the street downtown loudly advise me to "f*** her in the a**!!!" I can also remember walking into a McDonald's here in the U.S. with a friend of mine, a Chinese guy who has lived here for 20 years, and his white girlfriend. Some white guy in the parking lot saw fit to walk past her and say "dirty whore."

You also could buy your ticket online when you're in China. You may need to buy from a company that can provide e-tickets, because there may not be enough time to have the tickets delivered.

My wife arrived here on her CR-1 visa a couple of weeks ago. Is there anything we need to do now? Just wait for her green card to come in the mail? I know we need to apply for her Social Security number. (Do we need the green card for that?) Anything else? Thanks, James

Great! How about a Social Security number? What will it be necessary for, and what should I take when we go to apply?

I apologize if this has been covered 100 times already ... if someone could give me an answer or a link, I would appreciate it. My wife came in on a CR-1 and now I don't know what to do. How do I get her authorized to work?

They won't generally intervene until your cas eis past-due, according to the posted USCIS dates

and for learning chinese you might try the Pimsleur series. it is all-audio, though, so i recommend supplementing it with a text that will at least teach you the pinyin romanization system. i think Yong Ho wrote a pretty good beginners' book.

The danger is that other Chinese women are not always well-intentioned. During your visa process they will tell your SO things like: - "He'll never be back to China" (said between your first visit and second). - "He doesn't love you." - "He never filed any paperwork." - "It takes three to five years to get a visa." - Etc. Ask her. I bet she's heard things like that. Be prepared to do some damage control from time to time.

My wife got her CR-1 and she is coming alone through Los Angeles airport next week ... Anyone have an idea what she is supposed to do? Where she is supposed to go? What papers she needs? I don't want her to get lost, and I don't know what to expect or how to prepare her.

And actually I believe you should send two I-130s ... one for her and one for any child that is coming.

Yeah, what he said. Get them filed ASAP, because the wait is long enough as it is. Make sure everything has original signatures. Also make photocopies for your own records, in case our government loses anything. While you wait, make sure you save all e-mails, letters, chat logs, gift receipts, Western Union receipts, airplane ticket stubs, and other evidence of your relationship. You'll need to present that stuff at the interview. Don't want to give you too much to think about right now, but after you've filed the initial I-130 and I-129f ... something to think about: If your I-130 should be approved first, which is possible, be familiar with the NVC shortcuts, about which there is a thread or two on this site. They can save you a month or two. There are some forms you probably ought to print off and send to her to pre-sign, so you'll be ready to send them in when asked for. Or if she has a computer, she can print them herself and send them to you.

Isn't Memphis supposed to be pretty cool?

Ours took 13 months. The most frustrating thing was waiting for the NOA2 for both our I-130 (five months) and I-129f (seven months). The I-129f was the one that ended up counting, because it got to Guangzhou first and established our place in line. Our interview ended up being CR-1, though. We just got caught in a particularly slow time for the USCIS. Processing for both forms had pretty much stopped completely when we filed. It was maddening. Anyway, after such a long wait for the NOA2, the rest of the process didn't seem too bad. Because our times at the NVC and in customs at Guangzhou were relatively short, and our time in queue at Guangzhou was maybe shorter than some had been in the past, our timeline still came out somewhere in the neighborhood of average, though probably a little on the high side. One thing I am thankful for is that her interview was exceedingly easy -- they asked very few questions and didn't look at a single bit of our evidence, though we had plenty on hand (pounds of it -- I know because for many blocks I lugged the suitcase that contained it.) I just don't know how, after waiting so long, we could have handled a denial and having to go through another ordeal to overcome. Although we would have persevered. Anway, if there is a point to my post, it is that you are in good company -- many of us here have experienced long delays, and all of us have waited longer than we would have liked. Your case does not appear unusual, and it is likely to even out to a fairly average timeline. I like to remind myself that whether my case took nine months or 11 months or 15 months, the difference is not a huge one (though those months feel reallllllyy loooong at the time).

Anyone ever get the post-China blues? The street culture in China is so lively. You can walk down the street and buy fruits, vegetables, meat on a stick, junk trinkets. Family and social networks are so strong, like I guess they once were here, though I'm too young to remember. Life just plays out as it will over there ... sometimes here everything seems so sanitized ... people hole up with their DVD players in their suburban houses, and if they need something they get in their SUV and head to Target ... you might have dinner with some friends, but it has to be planned well in advance so as not to conflict with anybody's soccer games ... I like where I live, and I love my job. I just sometimes wish America could recapture the vibrancy that China has retained. If we started building all developments as mixed-use, stopped driving and stopped building big-box stores, I think that would help. How have your wives adjusted to things over here in that respect? What do they think of suburban life, if that's where you live?

Joanne, Our interview notice said CR-1, I am pretty sure. I don't have it in front of me right now, but I am 99 percent sure.

Hey, Congrats on that visa. Question. You married in China and submitted both the I-130 request for alien petition AND a I-129, fiance visa petition. Why both? DId you do teh I-129 first and then change when you got married? We canceled our I-129F when we got married in China and then re-submitted the I-130 later. 157966[/snapback] Chad, The I-129F is used for two different things -- the K1 fiancee visa, and the K3 visa for people who are already married. The government should have separate forms, but hasn't come up with a separate for for K3 yet, so it uses the I-129F as a stand-in for now. The K3 was created at a time when CR-1 processing was even slower than it is now, if you can believe that. Much slower -- two to three years, I think. So they created the K3 as an interim thing that would allow the spouse to come on over to the US and wait here while the CR-1 finished processing. (Why our government would choose to address the problem of CR-1 slowness by creating a new thing for its adjudicators to process in addition to the old thing, rather than simply speeding up the CR-1 processing in the first place, is beyond me.) Lately, K3 processing has not been clearly faster than CR-1 processing -- the two have been running sort of neck-and-neck. The way our case worked out, my wife was actually issued CR-1 when all was said and done.

She got the visa! It was a CR-1 interview (though the interview date seems to have been established by the I-29F K-3 paperwork). She gave the visa officer her passport and mine. The only questions he asked were where and when she met me. He commented that on the original paperwork it said I had no job; she told him I had gotten a new one. The he told her she passed. She said he had actually already started signing the paperwork before he asked any questions. She said he was a nice guy and smiled a lot.

I am about to go join my wife for her journey to Guanzhou to have the visa interview. She has a daughter, pre-school age, who does not live with her. When my wife and her ex-husband divorced, her daughter went with him because my wife had to work and did not have daycare or the means to pay for it and didn't see a possibility of getting child support payments. So she sees her daugthter, who is well taken care of mainly by her paternal grandparents, once a week. Her ex-husband never did agree for this daughter to leave China, so at least for now, my wife is coming alone. (We would take her daughter if we could, but a lawyer told us this is not possible without explicit agreement from him.) Because of this, we didn't file visa paperwork for the young one. Do you think this will be an area that will receive a lot of questions at the interview? What are your thoughts? I told her if she is asked, just explain things clearly and honestly.

Thank you for such a positive post! I have been looking for these positives ! My SO gives me so many green flags. In fact, I have been searching for red flags and the only ones I have found are on flagpoles there! Some of the green flags: ***Meeting her parents, then her whole family *** She spent all her money on me. Paid for taxi from the airport, bought me food, bought my mother a gift, and when she ran out of money, she would not let me give it back to her. When we met with her family at a restaurant, she was so concerned making a good impression, that when she got her monthly salary deposit of 2000 yuan, she took out 1000 (1/2 her monthly pay) and gave me the cash and told me to use it if I needed to. We didnt, and I gave it back of course *** We talk on MSN every day, and she uses an internet cafe, and that costs her about 400 to 500 yuan a month. We talk 6 to 10 hours per day! She has only missed one day since we first met and that was in the beginning ! Every day, she is there, online ! ! ! *** She has bought other things for me, pants, a book, all on her own *** She has never knitted, and is making a scarf for me, her bao bao, to be ready for my December trip. *** She talks with my mother online too. *** Her eyes light up every time I schedule a trip there *** When I first came to China, I went for 10 full days. She told me she would not leave me alone, and wanted to get all the time off from work. She ran into some difficulty, and told me not to worry, she will quit her job if they did not give her the time off! ! ! She said if I am coming all the way to China to meet her, she will spend every minute with me ! ! And there are many similar things that others have said in their posts. Can you imagine an american woman doing these? I can't ! These women know how to give, and they deserve the very best we can give them, and what they want most, is to be loved and respected ! ! 153581[/snapback] My wife did quit her job the first time I went to China. The boss wouldn't let her leave to go pick me up at the airport, so she quit. Toward the end of my visit, her boss called and asked her to come back to work, so she did, after I left. Also, when I got laid off from a job, I called her and told her, and the very first thing she said was, "Come to China!"