danswayne

Our computer is a Toshiba with XP Home edition installed and it reads and types Chinese very easy even for a laowai like me. All you have to do is set it up in the language option on control panel and you can choose on the language bar you will get which language you wish to type in. Menus stay in English 99 percent of the time also. Daniel

I h ave been in China for almost 3 years now and have not filed a tax return for that amount of time because I have made no money. I have a family member who is going to be my co-sponsor so the poverty guideline is no problem. My only problem is what do I do about my tax returns when I don't have any????? Daniel in Changsha

I only wish it was as simple as that, but nothing here in China is as easy as it is in the states. I know if I go to the local hospital they can give me everything that I need to know in a matter of minutes. But because there are so many people here they don't care about names or dates everything is done be extraordinarily long numbers. On here birth certificate there is one of those numbers. She needs that number to get the required records. Does she have to prove that she had childhood shots at the required doctors checkup or do they just ask if she had them and take her word for it.

Our main worry is the shots and vaccinations. There is a long list of required shots on the forms and she of course does not want to have these shots again especially since some of them do not feel too good and take a long time to administer. How does she prove that she already had the shots I guess is the question we have right now.

We are CR people.

We are at the stage of waiting for packet 4 and can not find her original birth certificate. We have the notarized one from the chinese notary people. Our concern is that she needs the certificate to get proof from the local hospital that she has had her immunization shots. Does anyone know a way to get medical records in China without the original birth certificate. Do we really need it right now is another question also.

I got in touch with someone in GZ yesterday and they told me they made a mistake with some info they gave me last week. They told me that after Dec 16 nobody at all could get into the IV section at all to hand in things for their Chinese better half . They also said that noone could get in to ask questions. When I talked with the same lady yesterday she said she made a mistake and that people could only come in Tuesday - Thursday, in other words Mondays and Fridays are off lilmits. They also let me know if I refaxed the required documents they would immediately process them. I guess after losing all my papers for at least a year they figured that some of the papers in their office probably should have been after mine in the order received. I just hope it means that they are finally doing something about our case.

Is it a sign that you post too much if you have to use "A serious issue" to get people to take the message seriously?

I am afraid I probably can not give you the answer you want but I will ty anyway. I do know for sure that my wife is a CR-1 candidate. It is a spousal visa where both the American and the Chinese person are legal residents in China which lets me the American do something called Direct Consular Filing. I think that is what it is called anyway. It lets me go to the INS office here in China and file my I-130 there. Which by the way got approved in 5 days instead of the year or two it takes some of you poor souls back in the states. The INS office then sends the approved petition directly to GZ and they then prepare things to send my wife Packet 3. From there on it is about the same as a K3 or K1 visa except for the fact my wife goes to America and can skip a few of the steps that the K3 and K1 people have to go through. If I have understood right so far she is already a legal resident when she enters the states because of the CR-1. If I am wrong or left anything out please let me know so we can get things right ourselves. And don't feel too bad about the 5 day thing mentioned in this post it doesn't matter when GZ lost all your crap for almost a year. If they had not lost our paperwork so many times we would have been in America together long before the August 1 doomsday hit. B)

I agree with your post, except for the adopting part. I already have parents and grandparents now in two countries and who speak two completely different languages. And let me tell you now that my American mom is here in Changsha teaching for a year, I do not know where to turn, between wife, mom, and mom. I am being ordered around from all sides. Anyway more seriously now I said something a little sarcastically funny about Jim and Eric just a few minutes ago and maybe he was blushing so much that he put the wrong name on your post. Sorry if I caused any confusion. Since I have been in China so long now sometimes my sarcasm has detriimental effects.

Joe sorry if I was rude Joe, but I get tired of some of the people on here and other boards telling us to stop calling GZ and let them work. I believe that I have not wasted one minute of GZ's time with anything illigetimate. I have not bothered them too much to begin with. It is the senators and congressmen who will not return my e-mails that really get me ticked off. I have been waiting for a month now for a phonecall from the office of Senator Bill Frist, from my lovely homestate of Tennessee. Through family connections I have finally found someone who can get answers and am now in direct with government offices in Nashville, and the State Dept. in D.C. I know that at least some of the people who have shown interest in leaving GZ alone has at some time in the past bothered the crap out of someone who had nothing to do with the delays. And yes I agree that GZ could do much better in many things, but hell so could 95% of the government all over our country.

It seems only Joe needs the point to be made clearer.

Hey guy it seems at least one or two people got the point, but I will try to make it more simple for you. Guangzhou IV unit answers phonecalls a total of ten hours per week. Even simpler that means 2 hours a day 5 days a week. The people who answer the phones are doing that and that only. They are not opening letters, or sending letters, or putting pretty stamps in passports they are picking up the phone and reading from their papers the answers they were instructed to give to the petitioner or the applicant, they were probably given these papers about 100 years ago since the answers never change and they sound so bored when they give them to you. If you call during the time they will answer the phone you are not bothering the job of anyone in GZ, because they are doing their job by talking to you. If you call any of the other 30 official hours they are open then you bother noone except the machine that you get to listen to. People are trying to get visas everyday and the same questions get asked everyday, but by many different people. I myself have called GZ a few times and gotten real answers sometimes and other times I have gotten the aforementioned paper answer. On a sidenote I have always been treated nice by the person on the phone, but maybe that is happy they are at least a little relieved to get someone who is not blaming them for once. I am sorry if I have rambled and made this too comples again, if you want to e-mail me guy just let me know and I will try to make my point as simple as can possible be done.

For all of those who are saying leave GZ alone now I was just wondering one or two things. First of all have you left GZ alone for the past 6 months or year. Second was it their fault they were following orders from stateside, that made you wait, the whole time you were bothering them.

My wife and I are waiting for a CR-1 visa together in the frozen wasteland of Changsha China. We hope we will not be here next year when it will be a scorching desert, but only time will tell. Are there any other Cr-1 people out there who would like to communicate your visa trials and victories, and listen to the woeful story of two poor pitiful people at the mercy of the big bad wolves in GZ. Daniel and Diana

Talked to GZ IV today and was told that after Dec 16 noone would be allowed to enter the IV section of the consulate to inquire about their specific case. This includes personally handing in forms and things of that sort. When asked how long this would I was given the idea that it would be indefinite for now. I don't know if this affects anyone here but it might so here it is anyway. Hey maybe this means they are serious about wanting to give out visas. NAHHHHHH who was I kidding I am talking about my government here, why would they care about me. Daniel

We received Package 3 from GZ 7 days after we faxed the downloaded forms to GZ. I called GZ Wednesday last week and they said they had mailed P3 to us so we faxed and sent the 230 and 169 form to GZ on Thursday Dec. 5. We are going to send the one GZ sent us tomorrow and see if they get it before the first one. Just in case you want to place any bets on which one they get first, I accept RMB and meiyuan. They said if the background check was finished before the interview she would receive her visa on the same day as the interview. Does anyone know who we can call in the DOS to get that done faster if it is possible. Any help would be appreciated

I got off the phone with a nice lade in the GZ consulate just 30 seconds ago and she confirmed a rumor for me. I asked her two or three times just to make sure she understood also. First she told me that my wifes background check will start in the states after we return the two form from packet 3. And then she told me some more good news, because it gives me hope. She said that at least one or two people have received their visas on the same day as their interview this week. It gives me hope because our interview is still at least a couple months away and it gives us something to shoot for. Also I will say I am sorry to some of you because it looks like things are being done randomly and not FIFO. Also I have heard from a few people in the past week or so that they have gotten rude people on the phone when they called GZ. Maybe I am just lucky but I have gotten a nice person everytime. This is not a rumor I am spreading by the way it is either the truth or the lady from GZ should be shot for lying to a desperate American. Daniel B)

It is true about 5000 visas were approved maybe more. When I asked the lady on the phone if it was true she laughed a little nervously, and said yes. She quickly said that just because 5000 were approved they could not handle all at one time. So be happy that things finally are starting to happen, and at the same time do not stop praying that the process will go faster. B)

I have to login everytime I enter this group. Am I the only one having this problem. It does not take too long, and maybe I am just being lazy, but I would like to know if it is a problem with my computer or something else.

Hello is anyone on here in Changsha or know anyone here. My wife and I live here and we hope to be going to Tennessee together in July of 2003. I came here as an ESL teacher. After I got here and met Diana I knew that I would be in China much longer than the one year as planned. Anyway we are here and would like to get in contact with some others who might be doing things like us. A little extra info also I am a legal resident of China since I work here which makes some things go much faster. I applied for my I-130 petition in Beijing at the INS office there and it got approved in 4 days and then sent to Guangzhou. We are now waiting on Guangzhou to open a CR-1 case for us since they lost the original petition during the last six months. Daniel

Diana tells me that it does mean candle love, and it is close enough for what you want it to mean.

I would be happy to put it there but let me make it better first. That was just something I typed up in a few minutes, and probably has a few mistakes and important details left out.

I am brand new here, but I thought I would let you in on what Diana (Zhang Yu) and I have been doing for her visa for the past few months. We were married November 8, 2001, and I filed the I-130 petition at the Beijing INS in March of 2002. I now know waiting to file the petition was a mistake, but I was misguided enough then that I believed in the American government and thought they would actually do their job. Anyway the INS did pretty good and my petition was approved 8 days later. Yes I said 8 days. They sent me a letter here in China letting me know that I was approved and they were forwarding things to Guangzhou. We might both be in America now except for the fact our documents have been lost for half a year. We had to get Beijing to send the forms to Guangzhou again and hope they got there this time. Well to make a long story short I called Guangzhou today and they told me they opened a case October 25, and had sent the package to my wife. She has received nothing yet, so I have downloaded the forms and we will send them to Guangzhou tomorrow. If you are a legal resident in China you do not have to deal with anyone in America which could possible speed things for you incredibly fast, if your papers do not get lose along the way. It is easy to become a legal teacher over here and it is also a good way to spend time with your spouse also. Sorry this is so long, hope it doesn't bother anyone. Daniel in Changsha