Eric739

Kim, Thanks. I am trying to get to know you guys better being a newbie. But I agree with Carl on the start of WWII. Hitler's main motivation for the war from Mein Kampf to his Last Will, confirm that he viewed the world as a struggle to remove the Jewish people from the earth completely. Although he used Lebensraum ("living space") as the reason for his aggression, religion was his real motivation. The Japanese felt the same about the Chinese and other Asiatic peoples, not quite for religious reasons but their Bushido code might be called a religion. They, like Hitler, felt the rest of the world were their slaves. The Rape of Nanking (Iris Chang) is a great book on that subject. Am I a Spanish citizen? Maybe in spirit. We were one of the first military families to go to Spain after Eisenhower signed the treaty with Franco bringing the Cold War to Spain in the mid 1950's. (I have had many lives....) As for the comment by feathers about how bad the government is and how politicians ignore poverty: yeah, they do. Another great book on that subject, speaking of America, is Broken Government by John Dean. I know it is easy to condemn the government and blame it for all the problems, but we need good government, not no government. The Spanish Civil War was a good example of why. Franco started the rebellion when he and other generals felt the government was going the wrong direction, and unfortunately they may have been right. Many of the so-called "leaders" of Republican Spain at the time were anarchists. They wanted to abolish government and almost did. Many people were killed even before war broke out in Spain by the "government" and for blatant anti-religious reasons. (I think communists and anarchists confuse their doctrine with a simple need for power.) Nuns were raped, priests were killed. One Catholic cemetery was desecrated; the corpses of nuns were unearthed and displayed in a courtyard. That war almost killed all of Spain itself. For many years afterwards, one third of the country was starving and living under a brutal dictatorship. Every time I see the King of Spain or see pictures of my old country (Spain will never leave me) I get teary eyed when I think of how far Spain has come -- proof that things can change for the better. America has its problems but at least we talk about them openly and work for the better. At least there is a modicum of freedom, something my wife is so proud to be a part of. This democracy may be bad but it's the best thing we got.

Manifest Destiny may well have been the policy of the government but it was greed over land, not God. Some fanatics may have justified it using God but Custer and Meade and Sheridan didn't get down on their knees and pray before they slaughtered thousands of Native Americans. I don't think people who post here don't like the US. In fact, quite the opposite. It shows a lot of self concept in your own country to marry someone from another.

I would like a few examples of wars that we cannot "count." And help me understand why 1798 was chosen as a cut off date. No doubt religion is a major factor and sometimes the only factor, but not always. To say we are number 1 in anything is really a misnomer. We have the highest GDP. That will change someday I am sure.

I don't agree that the rape and plunder of Africa was done in the name of God. There may be individuals who may have said so, but slavery rarely has anything to do with someone who is truly "religious." It was simple greed; slaves for molasses or tobacco, molasses for rum, rum for more slaves. That's how it started anyway: the Golden Triangle of trade between Africa, America (the Indies), and England. Nor do I agree Manifest Destiny was either, although some historians might say so just because some religious fanatics were quoted as saying the land was given to "us" by God. http://articles.mibba.com/History/171/Mani...-Right-Or-Greed http://www.let.rug.nl/usa/E/manifest/manif2.htm As always, it is a combination of factors, greed being the dominant one. The Pilgrims were presecuted the same as anyone in England at the time. There were many religious sects then and they suffered along with the rest of them. To show the temper of the times, Friday was children's hanging day. The "pilgrims" came to America for a better life more than a religious persecution. http://www.plimoth.org/kids/homeworkHelp/pilgrims.php And to say they were any better than what they left, they created a theocracy that was dreadful to live in. In fact, the "cruel and unusual punishment" doctrine in the US Consitution was written as a result mainly of their laws. After all, they were the ones that burned witches. I do agree that religion is a major factor in many conflicts but it is usually more than just religion as the cause. A war to me that is usually misunderstood for its religious tones was Vietnam. The hordes of people who migrated to the south after the 1954 accords were Catholic who were very much persecuted by the northern Buddhists. To see buddhist monks immolating themselves in South Vietnam was incredibly ironic to me. And to know that the commmunists were against any religion, nevermind Buddhism made it even more ironic. And to say that the Spanish Inquisition was not a religious movement is partially true but for different reasons. The Catholic oligarchy at the time wanted to remove that last vestige of Jewish converts (called moronos) from the country. They had already killed or expelled the rest. Most of those who were put to death or had their land confiscated (which is what the church was really after) were moronos. One of them who got by the Inquisition was a Jew who came from Italy (really he was Portuguese but that's another story) was the so-called discoverer of the new world -- Cristobal Colon, otherwise known as Christopher Columbus, a name made up to make him look like he came from Genoa, Italy, a city well known at the time for having a high Jewish population. Religion is often blamed when other factors are more to blame. Trust me, I am no religious zealot and don't deny the role of religion in many catastrophes. (The 100 Year War is the one I would use as an example of desparate wars caused by religious conviction.) I grew up in Spain under Franco so I am very familiar with theocratic government. You could go to jail for holding hands in public. The Guardi Civil could shoot you for looking cross eyed at them. Things that are done now in modern day Spain would warrant the death penalty easily, such as being gay. But who was one of America's greatest allies during the Cold War, the one who was also Hitler's "friend" although Spain was neutral in WWII? Generalissimo Franco de Bahamonde. I am so glad those days are over for the most part anyway.

Larry, The last time I was in China the CP had their 17th Party Congress. The main topic Hu Jintao spoke at length about was how "we" should concentrate on helping the poor in rural areas. What he did not say was the reason for doing so: Mao started his revolution in the poverty ridden areas. I note with interest that most of the agitation in China is in the rural areas. Witness the people who stormed the "palace" doors when the earthquake hit in western China recently. And how the CP responded quickly to their protest. Corruption was also the other main topic. Just this week there was a major crackdown on corruption in Chongqing. And other arrests for child slavery. But yes, there are billionaires in China, mostly Hong Kong and Shanghai. Just as with poverty, there will be corruption and greed. And of course, people who have been in squalor will choose smoking and gambling and drugs anyday when there is no perception of escape. I remember the "alarm clock" myth when I first started work in poverty in another life. The elites in government felt the reason why poor people could not keep a job was they did not have alarm clocks to get them up in the morning. So they got alarm clocks for them in the targeted area. They were not only late more but later than they were before the study. It's ingrained in the lifestyle and difficult to overcome. The term "benign neglect" is usually sold as the most viable way of dealing with poverty. Daniel Patrick Moynihan also supported the guaranteed annual income, which also would have been a disaster. I like Clinton's response: It's the economy, stupid.

The holidays did hold up ours. The response in overcoming was blamed, in writing, on the holidays. Then it was the backlog, and then blah blah blah. The lawyer wrote a summation of the case and we got the pink two weeks later.

I am not sure I understand the argument here. What started out as a very poignant and personal piece turned out to be interpreted totally different. I don¡¯t think the article was in any way self-serving or done out of spite to the writer¡¯s ¡°employer.¡± There have been many such articles, even books. River Town: Two Years on the Yangtze is a wonderful book that describes China from an outsider point of view. It has the same flavor of the piece amberjack quoted. The observation that an English teacher would have any less insight into poverty than a native is absurd. In fact, it could be argued someone new to the situation of poverty would have an even better perspective than someone jaded by years of living in squalor. And yes, there are poor people everywhere and metrics help understand degrees of it. But that does not change the hopelessness people feel when living in such conditions. ¡°Some people live their whole lives in it. Interestingly, it doesn't seem to be as unsanitary as we westerners seem to think. At least, no one seems to die from it, or even get sick from it very often.¡± I do disagree. People living in squalor may not know their condition because they have not lived elsewhere. But they do die from it. I was also a rural paramedic for the military in Laos and Cambodia. I was the so-called village doctor for several tribes there. They do die of some of the most terrible diseases. Worms and parasites ate their insides. Infections, including tuberculosis, are a main problem, especially of the mouth, ears and legs. Try walking in the jungle without any protection for a while. If they cannot get medical care under these conditions, they die slow horrible deaths. And I do think you can get the flavor of poverty by reading such stories and they don¡¯t have to be about China, although that is the country we talk about here. Poverty is a universal condition. The book China Wakes by Nick Kristoff and Sheryl Wudunn is quite a good read, albeit a bit dated. They talk of visitors to the rural areas looking out upon groups of children approaching their car. From afar the children look as if they were wearing a brown coat of some kind. When they got closer to beg for money, food, anything, they saw the children were naked; the ¡°coat¡± was a layer of mud. When the local CP was not looking, they were told many of the children would never see the age of 25. Connecting that story with my own observations of an old Moslem man wiping himself with his left foot and smiling in triumph to a group of us soldiers. The difference between culture and sanitary conditions becomes quite manifest in that one scene. Were we being judgmental or self-righteous? No. We were not trying to change him or anyone. I don¡¯t think pity is the motivation for a lot of idealistic challenges in this world. It¡¯s empathy. If you don¡¯t have it, you won¡¯t ¡°get it.¡± I often hear that people who live in poverty often don¡¯t want to change. I think that feeling is an excuse for allowing you to be aloof from it, to allow distance. And that¡¯s OK too. I did the same when I went to work. I carried just enough cash for lunch so I could pull out empty pockets to a beggar to show I truly had no money. I studied and worked so-called poverty programs for many years and seen poverty in many, many countries. There are no experts in poverty and more than there are experts in anything. And poor people will deny their poverty out of pride. But what I think the writer is really nostalgic about is his experiences in China, not necessarily poverty. My wife misses Fushun and having been there several times, and seen the same scenes described here, I wondered why. And then I remember Thomas Wolfe saying you can never go home again. You want to, but you can¡¯t. FWIW....

I've been in Madrid, Paris, Austrian, Laotion, Cambodia and Vietnamese traffic. Madrid taxis drive as if they were the bull and you the matador, except you got no sword. Nothing beats China traffic in general and the worst in China to me is Fushun. A close second is Jamaica along the Montego mountain way. After that drive, I needed sedation.

PM'ed you.

Discrimination is the unequal treatment of parties who are similarly situated. If a white couple came in and we married by this racist, then the mixed couple has a case. Whether they filed is irrelevant if they were told that if they filed they would not be married. It would help from an evidentiary point of view, however.

Lived in the South for most of my adult life and seen this kind of racism before. It is always couched in words that he used: I have lots of black friends. Or this one: "I'm not a racist. I just don't believe in mixing the races that way,".... If you don't believe in mixing the races, you are no different than the Aryan nation who have different words to describe those feelings. A justice of the Peace should be able to put aside his own bias in order to do his job. If he were a minister that is one thing but in lots of these small towns, he is the one to decide issues that judges normally decide, whether to go to trial, whether to arraign, etc. But am I surprised? No. We still have a long way to go.....

Randy is absolutely right. I had my own business for years and used an accounting statement to show the real picture. Anyone is business knows it is smart to deduct as much as you can. I would use an accountant rather than a bank, one who is certified and must follow the GAP (general accounting practice). Other accountants would recognize that certification. Unfortunately, a VO does not. If fact, many others do not. Getting a mortgage for me was difficult although I made a lot of money in the business. But I got the mortgage. And I would get a sponsor too in order to cover the bases. Right now, it is important to get over the anger and hurt and get to working on what you need to overcome. I think emotions are the difficult part of being "rejected." And do it soon. Time makes a difference. It took us almost 9 months before we finally got the visa after the blue.

Phoenix has no Chinatown, per se, but it does have quite a cultural center, including its own bank and the best place to get Chinese goods. It's at 44th Street just south of the 101. The Golden Buddha restaurant even smells like China.

Randy is right. I wojuld keep my distance until he gets his situation squared away. And watch things without emotion. You might have what is called an "approach/avoidance" relationship. The closer you get, the more you (or he) see negative traits. The farther away, as most web relationships are, the more positive traits show. Tone it down. If you lose him, it was meant to be. B)

By the way, use UPS not Fedex. I work in shipping and freight. UPS and DHL are rated the fastest and most reliable. But Ups is best in the US market.

You are getting a weak signal so you are connected, but is there a password for connecting to the wireless? Right click on the wireless network connection and click "Repair." That usually clears up and problems and with Vista you will at least get a diagnostic telling you what the problem is. Good luck.

I have done a lot of overseas flights and if your ticket shows you are flying international at any point in the flight, you can be asked for your passport. I would send the passport high priority. Have done it before when my office colleagues forgot theirs. If you gamble and send him anyway, just be ready to explain why you do not have one. Have some other form of picture ID. And TSA has a flag for "no baggage" so expect to be delayed even more if someone gets curious.

I have tried most of these suggestions. XP, when adding the language package, is slow and clunky as I said. Babelfish (and others) translate English to Mandarin very well but Mandarin to English is not even close to being accurate. And we need a way for her to type in Chinese characters. Browser is already Chinese. I am a software engineer so I know the internals but I do not know if a package is any good or not unless I buy first. Writing is the problem. I have not tried Twinbridge. Appreciate the feedback on Penpower. It's expensive and practically useless even for someone who is adept at Chinese. SSN when getting in under K-1 is only good for the first 90 days to work and it is work authorization for that period only. Employers may still require authorization but that is technically not a requirement. (If it's only good for 90 days, so what?...) Then you have to have DHS approval. You have 2 months to wait before you get EAD when applying for the full removal. So it's a waiting game no matter what you do. Thanks for the forum ideas. Especially the Chinese TV. That will help. Anymore ideas, greatly appreciated.

Hi Guys: We need some help with the adjustment blues. We waited, as you did, to get the K-1 almost two years. Overcame the blue card and she finally arrived in May. We married in June. Could not get a social security for her, not unusual. She wants to work desperately so she can have her own money, despite my offer to help. So she is quite sad and depressed. It takes a few months to get the work permit and then more months for the restrictions. There are not a lot of Chinese people here (Arizona) to help. She has few friends and she is not computer literate enough to correspond easily using the computer. (I want her to join this forum.) I noticed several people have developed means of typing Mandarin characters on their keyboard. How? The downloads to XP and Vista are clunky and slow and she has trouble with it. Patience is not one of her virtues. Anyone familiar with the Chinese Penpower system? Or any means of getting Chinese characters to the screen quickly and easily? Thanks. Any support is greatly appreciated. She is quite sad and talking about missing China. Concerns me.

Received word that Guangzhou sent a letter indicating approval today. Says to come get the visa. We are having a lawyer in GZ pick it up and send it. Applied to CIS Feb 4, 2008. Approved and sent to GZ May, 2008. Interview. Blue. Get some school receipts. Did so. Waited since then until today -- almost 7 months. Sent a package two weeks ago with new tax return, receipt for phone calls from interview time to present and (the icing) a statement from her friends affirming that they have met me and know that we are anxious to get the visa soon. Visa approval two weeks later. Deliriously happy. Thanks for your help.

All, A long thread but some of the points made are worth a few comments. I worked with an attorney from day one in this process. I am reasonably educated, can write well, and have worked in law offices for a number of years ¨C not that I am doing so now. I am not a lawyer but I would not trust myself to complete the long list of documents needed to file. And, I simply do not have that kind of time. I think most of the petitions I have seen in this site were prepared by individuals, rash generalization, probably. I am not advocating an attorney at all but at least they are familiar with all the details of the submission that I think got a lot of people in trouble. I won't say they were helpful in the interview process or in some of the things that are really our responsibility to know. I wish I had done some research and found this site earlier. I would be one of those you don't hear about. I think what you are observing in the ¡°apathy¡± criticism is partly reflective of the economic times. It takes time and money to go through this process, face it. And I also think that a lot of what you all have done is being taken and used by others, probably successfully. So fewer people need to consult and post here. There is no real handle on the number of total pink cards. And bear in mind, there are a number of sites specifically devoted to Guangzhou visas. Having been active in a number of forums, there are times when activity does lessen as well. That usually is corrected when some cataclysm happens and things are back up and running. Other points. You can sue the government but only if they let you. They can file a waiver when they feel you have made a major point in your filing and wish to make amends. That usually happens when there is great public interest to do so. For instance, the Clean Air Act amendments currently have a provision to allow US citizens to sue the government. Of course, the neo-con elements are fighting that notion. Strange, the friends that ¡°sovereign immunity¡± seems to collect. But I have seen the government sued many times. And you don't have to pay for their legal fees or lawyers or their para-legals. You do have to pay for the service of process. The government has to pay for their own defense. The court can make you pay legal fees after the verdict, but it is rare for them to even try. States, however, are quite different but this topic is not their jurisdiction. The lawsuit we need to talk about is really not a lawsuit. It comes in the form of an administrative hearing and is totally within the purview of possibility. I have been involved in them several times (non visa related) and it is very much like open court. Witnesses are called and testify, all the bells and whistles are there, albeit somewhat less formal, but not always. Another point: the time limit of the petition. When you are denied or given a blue slip, always ask for an extension of the petition. That lets them know you are still serious and will not let this petition expire even if it gets to USCIS. The lawyer I work with sticks strictly to the law. I am not advocating him over Marc or anyone else. But staying within the law, lets the head of the visa unit and the legal department, know they are dealing with someone who is serious, and will take them apart on a legal hearing. And yes, there are legal reasons to dispute the ruling by Guangzhou that you do not have a relationship. They just have not yet been taken to task. Guangzhou is walking a very fine line right now. What is puzzling is why. But the more they act the way they are, the more ammunition there is to bring to that hearing. Just getting a hearing alone gives you the right to a subpoena duces decum to obtain the information needed to show their malfeasance. They will have to produce documentation showing the number of abuse cases, the number of rejections, etc. They do not have to show names so obviously that will be redacted. The Congress does not like its citizens being mis-treated and especially does not like legal battles that cost money, even if they win. As long as the presentation is not inflammatory or biased, there is some chance of winning. But in forums such as these there is a kind of tunnel vision that ignores the outside world because of the injustice done within. I was a bureaucrat for ten years. I admit to making many decisions that involved people's lives similar to the issuance of a visa. But there was no review when there should have been. No regulation when there should have been because they were written in vagueries. And in instances where someone actually made a stink by calling their congressman, you bet your ass I paid attention. The problem is we don't have a cool topic for them. A visa issuance for a fianc¨¦? Not really dicey enough for a congressional hearing. And if they ignore you, they will have all the immigration issues they want to cover their ass. The illegal alien issue with Mexico is blurred by the K1/3 issue. All aliens are illegal aliens to some people. Trust me. I have talked to them. Never mind the publicity that was engendered by the revisions to the IMBRA. All they have to do is bring that up and we will be classed as ¡°losers¡± as some of the articles in the press in Washington (state) did when the Act was passed. So there are two paths: legal and political, logic versus power. Guess who wins, every time.

Forgive the length but it's part therapy for me and I am not pleased with this article. It perpetuates too many myths. How many of them are K1/2's? The author conveniently does not say. (Male or female? What was the length of their stay in the US before the issuance? Were they legal/illegal before this issuance? And so what?) Again, so what? Is he implying that just because more Green cards are issued to spouses of Americans, that there is more fraud than in any other means of getting a visa? Nor does he go into how easy it is to get a normal visa into the US? Just look at the number of immigrants coming over sponsored by religious institutions such as the Catholic church. There are fewer restrictions on these visas than on a K1/2. Again, he has not established the basic premise that marriages with foreign nationals intrinsically causes fraud in the establishment of a Green card. And the possibility of a terrorist getting ANY visa is as great, even greater using another visa such as the H1 or L1. Just walk through any major corporation's back office and you will see how easy those visas are to get. And with little or no screening. . How does he know how many visas are fraudulent if they are not caught? Is there some hidden number of follow up statistics that he is not willing to publish? Of course, not. They don't exist. And what numbers does he have of couples that never met other than the Internet? He can't be talking about an K1/2 because they must have met to even got through the process. A first time meeting over the Internet does not intrinsically imply a fraudulent relationship. The author needs to apply his faulty logic to relationships that are advertised as successful in the US, such as eHarmony or Match.com. He has been out of the US too long. And only 5 years? That is not a qualification for being any kind of expert on immigration. Again, so what about language? Has the author looked into how many marriages occurred in the mid to late 1800's (never mind our earlier migrations) where families married between countries coming here and had no common language other than they wanted out of a dismal life? These people and the migrations before them made America the great country it is now. An issue for law enforcement since the premise starts with "ordered removed." It has nothing to do with identifying illegal and fraudulent applications from the start. You are kidding, right? A VO kills a petition just by saying the words: "You do not have a bona fide relationship." USCIS then sits on the petition and it dies a lonesome death. I don't think this guy is as experienced as he claims. Five years is not long enough to claim the "expert" category. I agree with a lot of points he makes, especially having the couple together for the interview, but I think he has the prejudice that most VO's have that comes from their own distorted view of what a successful marriage is or the pre-conditions necessary for abuse. The facts are that very few K1/2 visas lead to abuse when compared to abuse in the rest of America. Citing an array of cooked statistics the authors and proponents of the International Marriage Broker Act of 2005 attempted to portray an abuse rate of ¡°over 50%¡±. Further examination of the facts revealed it was a telephone survey of 175 agencies dedicated towards providing Spousal Abuse services where over 50% have offered (a key term) services to foreign women who entered the United States through a K-1 or K-3 visa. Given the rate of over 4000 marriages per year since the early 90s, that translates into a rate of 0.22% or 154 times less likely then the average American woman to be abused. Given the number of persons perpetrating immigration fraud each year claiming abuse, that number should have been higher. What is not revealed in their report is that during that same period of time over 4000 persons have engaged in defrauding the American government and unsuspecting US citizens. Proponents of the new laws readily claim the ¡°abuse victims¡± come from poor, economically depressed economies. What they don¡¯t wish to acknowledge is that desperate people often take drastic measures and immigration fraud is one of them. The more desperate the conditions in the country, the more you will have such visa requests. But looking further into our own observations of our own relationships, what are some of the questions that would help a VO not knowing what to ask? I would suggest asking what the beneficiary's life is like now and what events led to the interest in leaving the country. And then, listen as if it were the Art that listening Is. I am finding in this guys' article, no interest in knowing the cultural differences and conditions in the country that led to that interest to leave. I think those motivations are key to understanding why someone would want to be a beneficiary, much less a petitioner. But it's a job to him. It's only a passion after he gets out and tries to sell himself as an expert. The social and economic conditions in Guangzhou today compared to what they are elsewhere in China are remarkable to understand what the VO sees in his/her everyday life. I know your fianc¨¦es come from many parts of China but let's see if we ring a familiar chord. GZ is just a step up from Hong Kong and in some ways is quite similar. I am sure most if not all VO's in GZ, take a trip to HK regularly. HK is not China. It is one, if not THE, most prosperous cities in China. When my fianc¨¦ went to GZ for her interview, she was struck by the prosperity there. She was also stuck by the manner in which she was treated in general, not that she is a celebrity where she comes from. And the prevalent language is different in GZ. (Former name: Canton.) Some people may not know, that when the Tiananmen Square massacre occurred in 1989, the reason why the Chinese government delayed removing the students by violence was not just because they tried to avoid violence (the Politburo had already been debating its use), but because they spoke Mandarin, the same language as the troops then occupying the square. For days, there was little violence between the troops and the students because they spoke the same language and the students entreated the troops not to fire on their own people. The students put flowers in the barrels of the soldiers rifles. Some soldiers were pictured with arms around the students in the square. The Tank Man of Tiananmen Square would have been killed straightaway had he been speaking to a Cantonese squad of tanks. That tank shown in the pictures was commanded by a Mandarin speaking driver. (The leader of the tank group was related to Deng Zhao Ping.) So the Chinese government brought in troops from the south, near Shanghai and the more Southern areas, where Cantonese was spoken. Those troops did not understand the students and were told that they were rabble and needed to be removed. As a result, over 3,000 students (and some local non-students) were murdered on June 4. (See China Wakes by Nickolas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn or Red China Blues by Ann Fong.) Most of the people today applying for a visa have lived either under the Cultural Revolution in China and their parents lived under the Great Leap Forward, otherwise known as the Great Famine. Even though things in China are much better, there are still strong memories of those events. (Interesting that teenagers in China when asked what happened on June 4, 1989 at Tiananmen Square said they do not know. My fianc¨¦ had no idea either. That¡®s how good the Chinese government is at censorship.) In childhood, poverty is especially remembered. My fianc¨¦ remembers many days when there was nothing to eat. They had few clothes, maybe one change of clothes at all to wear. She lost her father in the Revolution, and her mother reared three daughters (after losing two older siblings to famine), one of whom was a Red Guard. That had to have been challenging, to say the least. By most accounts and despite China¡¯s prosperity today, 80-85% of China lives in poverty. Minimum, that¡¯s over a billion people. And the Chinese government even lies about that, witness: http://globalvoicesonline.org/2007/11/10/c...w-poverty-rate/ And why is it women that want to come to America? Obviously some men do too, but let¡¯s face it, women predominate. It¡¯s easy to understand when you consider women are still being sold like cattle or pigs in China today, some under the most incredible circumstances. http://www.stopvaw.org/U_S_Second_Circuit_...cial_Group.html http://www.amren.com/mtnews/archives/2007/...n_sold_as_g.php Those are the conditions, and there are more. My fianc¨¦s ex-husband was a drunk, a gambler, and had several concubines and girl friends. When her mother was in her death bed, she told my fianc¨¦ to find an American man who was polite and treated her with respect. I do so happily, every day. So here are the questions and answers, Mister ex-VO-expert-on-immigration-issues. And by the way, love, a human right and the basis for the issuance of this visa, something you do not understand, has a lot to do with it. Now give me my pink slip, and I will go about the business of making her happy.

No it was not volunteered. I am thinking he saw the receipt for my Mandarin training and thought to ask the same question of her. We were told that you coudl use a translator, which she carries with her always. We communicate very well. I studied linguistics and language in college and speak many languages having lived in Europe when I was child. My interest in language brought me to China. I also have a second degree in English. I have a room in my house specifically set up as a training class for when she gets here. I think her nervousness was a factor. She was very worried about the interview. I trained her for hours over the phone. I could not get to GZ at the time of the interview. My visa to China ran out and I did not get the passport back in time to make it. Guangzhou is linguistically different from Manchuria, where she comes from. There is a bit of an accent that sounds quite starnge to her. She is not well travelled within China. So being in a strange place contributed. If there are any regrets, it is not being there for her. But she insisted she would do OK. She is so special to me. I hope it turns out OK but I am ready for the worst.

There were no questions like "Did you attend school?" or "How did you know your English?" The VO just looked at our pictures and took one of them over to another VO, and they talked. He came back and said, "Your fiance is older than you." She responded in Mandarin, "Does not matter." (mei guanxi.) I am about 15 years older than her which IMO is not that great an age difference. Nor do I look old for my age. This guy was just using it as an excuse to draw out the process. We had everything else, pictures, a receipt from my Mandarin class, receipts of all the calls, copies of almost 1,000 emails, all the hotel receipts (including the little lottery thingies you get in China). Everything. He did not even look at any of them. He just asked for a receipt from English school, the one thing she could NOT get at the time.

I have been reading CFL for some time and finally decided to join in on, should I say fun? We submitted in February last year and finally got the interview in September, 2008. We did not have a receipt for the English school my fiance attended for about three months. The receipt was difficult to get as it was a small school where she lives and the only school she could attend without going to the university many miles away. They did not give receipts as a result. After she got the blue paper with the receipt as a requirement, my fiance flew the almost 2,000 miles and did get the receipt to GZ just a few days later after a lot of literally begging. We have not heard anything for months after many queries. GZ just keeps telling us that we will have our case reviewed again and they will let us know. After reading the posts here, I am getting quite uneasy. I do have a lawyer and he suggested I send a reaffimation of my desire to marry within 90 days along with another query about the status of our petition. So far nothing after a week. Are there any other ideas or are we heading for a white rejection slip? Thanks.