Meelo

Your wife will take care of most things you need to worry about. I made sure that we had our kylintv set up for Chinese tv for them and made sure the Vonage was working on calls to china. The mother in law needed to have qq games working on the computer which was a pain in the ass on a English language computer. The in laws have been out here multiple times. Be prepared for a bigger fight about the thermostat haha!

+1 If you are going to go to the hospitals in China (even Shanghai) I recommend this. The class of Doctors and Patients are much better. You will not have as much of the other visitors pay attention to you. When my daughter was born in Shanghai, we went to a good Chinese hospital. But we would get random people who would walk into our room just to see the mixed baby. that gets old really quick when you have been up all night with the baby and the wife. In Hangzhou, the "expensive" hospital is only like 10% more than the cheap one, but the crowds are wayyyyyy less there.

Thanks for the heads up. Here is what happened: PPD was positive. Chest X-ray was negative. Quantiferon Gold test was positive. Quantiferon test is the new blood test that is done to diagnose TB. It knows the difference from the vaccine they get in China and if they were actually exposed to TB. Lao po has latent TB because she was exposed to it :-( Did lots of research on this and found that this test is new and is actually included in the Technical Instructions for Civil Surgeons.

You right about the cost. It was good. But the office girls there are very rude and they don't know the proper procedures. That is why I say nay! EDIT: I even got them to charge my insurance for the vaccinations.

Do Not See This Civil Surgeon! I am in Phoenix and we went to see this guy: DR. Larry Sobel SOBEL FAMILY MEDICINE & PHYSICAL THERAPY 4550 E. Bell Road Suite 114 Phoenix, AZ 85032 The total cost for the exam was $240. This included the needed vaccinations. LeiLei needed a whole new exam due to being over a year removed from the last exam in China. She failed her TB test and was diagnosed with Class B latent TB. The Doc said everything was fine as long as she took the meds. We received the exam packet for USCIS to open. Last Friday we received an RFE due the the Civl Surgeon not signing the I-693. I called them yesterday to find out why. They told me that since she has TB they cannot sign the documents. I spent all day yesterday researching and found that in the technical instructions for giving immigration exams in the TB section that in fact they should have signed it. Today, I went down there and showed them that they were wrong (which they didn't like at all!) and was told that they would sign the I-693 but they didn't feel comfortable doing it. Sounds like these guys need some retraining! These people were rude and treated my wife like dirt! Do Not Go Here!

DW has at least 2 apartments in her name in her home town. Her Aunt has no children and has told my wife that she will be giving her 3 more places in the future. Not to mention her parents places too. We are looking into having DW become a US citizen in 3 years. I know that China does have strict strict rules about laowai owning houses. How would DW becoming a USC affect her ownership of those places? Can we keep them and rent them out or should be liquidate them? We would like to keep one of her places for the future because we may end up back there someday.

DW found a guy that installed our pirate dish for dream network for only 1200rmb in Shanghai. The card needed to be replaced every 6 months which was included in the price, but I usually tipped him 100rmb because he came out the same day. Since then, we moved the dish to our house in Hangzhou and the guy just mails us the card. But we havent been back for 18 months so not sure if he is still able to get us the cards. I also used the slingbox to stream video from my brother's house to our apt in Shanghai. That was awesome! Full control over my TiVo!

Yeah you are right on that one. At the time, I was stateside and she was in Hangzhou with our baby. I guess all we cared about was getting back together here. I understand that one, this is typically the K-3 was originally meant for, but the primary reason the K-3 exists, (WAITING for I-130 approval) no longer exists your I-130 was approved before the K-3 was issued, since then NVC has started closing K-3 because of the approved I-130. I would have filed the I-485 just prior to 2 years of marriage, so the spouse would have green-card to be able to do things like travel, work, apply for a driver's license, etc... Luckily we are in AZ. Here they let anyone who has had a US Driver's License get one. Also here K-3 visa allowed her to get one but it expires the same day her i-94 expires. Normally it expires when you are 65. Tons of snow birds come here and they get their license and then go back to the midwest where they are not allowed to get a new one. Crazy! I almost got hit by a driver with a "Pearl Harbor Survivor" license plate. That was almost 70 years ago!

Yeah you are right on that one. At the time, I was stateside and she was in Hangzhou with our baby. I guess all we cared about was getting back together here.

Green-card will allow visa free travel to our neighboring countries like Canada, Mexico, and the Caribbean. Europe, and any place that a PRC citizen needed a visa for will remain the same and still need a visa. Will it be easier for her to get the Shengen visa or a visa to the UK being a LPR?

From your timeline, you paid NVC fees, did you get a CR-1 or pursued the K-3? OR are adjusting status from the K-3?? Would not make much sense to do K-3 if had paid all the CR-1 fees to NVC. If removing conditions (I-751) more than likely there will NOT be an interview. Also the I-751 extension letter and expired 2 year green-card will allow international travel, however there have been some posts about having problems leaving China with the extension letter, so getting an I-551 stamp in passport may help there. AOS from K-3. We got the first Visa that we could. At the time, I just moved back to the States from Shanghai. Looking back we should have just waited the time to get the CR-1 visa. Stupid! DW hasn't needed to travel back to China because her parents were able to get visas to come stay with us. So we have been lucky. We are looking into a cruise to the Bahamas for our 4 year anniversary and our celebration for the GC. We should be getting the 10 year green card

Thanks for the help guys! We will be happy when she has the green card in her hand so we can do some traveling internationally again. Where to go...

We sent in our last "White Books" for our Marriage certificate and my wife's birth certificate with our AOS packet. Do we need any more copies of these documents for our AOS interview? I guess it is a pain in the butt to get them when we are not in China. Do we need these for any other steps in the process to become a USC in the future too? Thanks for any help.

Our interview is on the 25th of November. Since the interview is the day before Thanksgiving, I am assuming that my wife wont have a visa until Decembe right?

My Daughter was born in Shanghai. The process of getting her a Chinese birth certificate was a bit difficult only because they wanted to shorten her name on it. The birth certificate isn't meant to fit western names. Getting everything from the consulate was very easy because we were married. It will be more difficult if you are not married. I would reccomend waiting until she gets to america because the hospital we went to was a chop shop. Something like 66% of the babies came by way of C-Section. Also the rooms were terrible! But my wife was scared as first moms usually are and it made her feel very comfortable being with Chinese Doctors and having nothing lost in translation for her. We will have the second baby at Scottsdale North.