shanghaigale

Hi, My information is really old but my wife got a reentry permit back in 2000. She got her visa while I was working in Shanghai, China, in January of 2000 where I was setting up an electronic manufacturing operation for the company I worked for here in the USA. I ended up needing to stay for almost 5 years total. So when she got the CR1 visa in January we ended up entering the USA for 11 days total in early May to get the CR1 for her before the visa became invalid. We went to Social Securityand got her a card number. Then immediately applied for the re-entry permit because I knew we would be out of the country for at least another year as soon as we went back to China. We had the reentry permit forwarded to Shanghai when done. We then flew back to Shanghai and gave the consulate there, the information as to where to contact us when it showed up. It showed up about 6 months later in November and we picked it up. It was valid for 2 years which was why we got it. It wouldn't make much sense to only have 1 year validity! Unless things have changed, she should be allowed to stay out of the country for one full year without the reentry permit anyway. So what would be the purpose of it if it is only valid for 1 year. I don't think only being in the country for 8 months should make any difference at all. We were only there for 11 days and it was issued for 2 years. We ended up just having my son keep the green card in the USA until we got back permanently using the reentry permit to come back in at the POE. We ended up being out of the country for a total of just under 15 months and the card worked perfectly when coming back to the USA. If I was you, I would contact the Consulate and see if you can find out why it is only valid for 1 year. Worst case, you could come back for a short period just before the year is up and then go back again and reset the clock. Thats what we were going to do, if the permit wouldn't have shown up at all. Good luck with your factory setup. I still kind of miss it back there, even after being back here for almost 11 years now. Gale

The observation deck definitely brings back memories to me. I lived there from 1998 to July 2002. If I remember right, the expensive restaurant was on the 86th floor. Around the year 2000, I was ordered by a project manager for an electronic product that we were going to produce for Hewlett Packard to take the HP QC manager to dinner there. As I remember I spent well over 1000 RMB before it was over. The project manager said to spend as much as I needed to, so that he would enjoy himself. I also took my wife along. It was one of the best meals we ever had in China while I was living there for the 5 years I working there! We went up to the observation deck to. I just put it on the company charge card and was reembursed for the cost. One day maybe we will get back to China. I just don't know when. Gale

Hi Steve, My wife got one of those letters for jury duty from the Spokane County court system about 3 years ago. My wife has been a citizen for 5 or 6 years now, so she was eligible to serve. We simplely filled out the sheet and stated that her english was not that great and also that we had at that time a 5 or 6 year old daughter that needed her mothers attention and needed to be excused. We sent it in and never heard another word back from the court about it except to say that she was excused from duty. Gale

I have been married now for 12 years and even when I was living in China back in the late 90s, I always just had them deposit the refund into my US BANK account. You just put the bank routing number and account number you want it deposited to on the bottom of the back page of the 1040 and it automatically gets done. I use snail mail for my tax filing. I didn't have a joint account then and still have not changed that particular account in the last 12 years. I haven't tried efiling yet but probably will this year if it will accept form C information for a business. Then I will know if that way works to. Gale

My wife changed her name when she was naturalized and it didn't cost an additional cost. That was 4 years ago and I don't think the rules have changed since then. Gale

Hi Bcco, I am terrible about paragraphs. I do how to use them but usually I am in to much of hurry to worry about them. I just try to get my ideas out there as quick as I can. On 3rd party tool. I switched over to Auctiva close to 2 years ago. When I switched over to it. It was totally free so all the things I was paying for on Ebay such as Picture manager ended up being free. However, they do now charge $9.95 a month for the membership to auctiva. I do get a free gig of photo storage for that amount though and have managed to just stay below the total. My items are all unique and require a lot of pictures and each listing is different from the next one although some of them can be somewhat similar. I like to preschedule my listings and Auctiva allows me to do it (saves 10 cents per listing) and I can also do relisting quite easily on items that do not sell each week. There are other fees that ebay doesn't get me on either. Auctiva is so much easier to use for me that I would never go back to ebay for listings. It sounds like you started on ebay a little over a year before I did. I agree with almost everything you say. It is a lot of work and definitely not for every product. I tried some of the import stuff to begin with and didn't do very well. So actually I sell mostly unique american items now. This way I don't have to worry about my supply. I used to import a lot from China but that was definitely a hassle. I had a broker that handled everything for me in Seattle but the costs continued to go up and up. Also you really had to be careful with the items you imported. It has been mentioned the fish and game problem. Luckily I had a good relationship with my broker and they always steered me away from problem groups. I knew a guy that had major problems with importing Chinese minerals. You have to have the proper paperwork to make sure that it works right. Anything done wrong can hang it up in a customs warehouse for weeks and they charge you for this. So you want to keep your product moving to your site. I finally quit importing about 2 years ago. The last straw for me was when my regular trucker from Seattle to where I live wanted to retroactively charge me an extra $85 for using a liftgate truck because they had to unload the pallets in my driveway and couldn't do it without the liftgate truck. Luckily I had a copy of the final invoice and a liftgate fee was not mentioned. I ended up changing to regular postal shipping for a while longer and gave up on the broker. I did the combination Sea and Air shipping and could usually get the stuff within about 30 days. Sea shipping could take a long time and I hated waiting that long. I would usually ship in 30 kilo boxes because that kept me below the weight limit that the postal service would handle. Never had a problem doing it that way. I still find that my ebay sales are growing but they probably comprise about 50% of my sales. I found that over the years, large dealers would contact me on Ebay and ask about other items and I would end up setting up wholesale deals with a lot of them so a lot of my on going sales now are with these large dealers who may order several times a year and I never even worry about ebay for these guys. Ebay however, has been a great advertiser for my products so I will continue to use it both for sales and for picking up more customers. I don't have a web site. I did for a while but due to the nature of my products, keeping it up was to much work and I just didn't have the extra time to deal with it. I agree with your last paragraph. Ebay is definitely labor intensive and usually pretty low ball but you can make money at it if you work really hard. I live in the countryside so it definitely opened up a sales method that has benefited me greatly. Gale

Hi Cory, There are so many ways to go thats is hard to even decide where to start. It depends a lot on where you live and the population base you have. Is it a tourist area? If not then what you sell would probably be a lot different then if you are selling in a tourist area. It also depends on the employers in the area (are salaried low, medium or high). It also depends on location where you start the store. You could be in a great tourist location but pick a lousy selling area where the people don't come. Great walk in traffic is needed and sometimes that don't matter. When I came back with my wife on a CR1 back in 2002, I got laid off the after I returned. The company no longer needed me since I had set up their manufacturing operation over in China over a 5 year time period. I did get a large severence payment and also was able to draw unemployment for 65 weeks so we never worried about life money. We brought back a huge amount of different arts and crafts, jewelry, etc. because the company I worked for paid for a container shipment of all my household goods which was delivered to my driveway and unloaded and unpacked for me. At first we didn't know exactly what we wanted to do. We started out trying out a large flea market for about 9 months. This showed promise for a while but it just never got to the volume we wanted it to. So then we opened a storefront in a strip mall, thats primary store was a donut shop. I drove by this shop most every day and it was close to home and it was always busy. A shop was blank right next to it and we though that we should attract a lot of business! Wrong, people feeding their stomach don't buy arts and crafts at all. We only did one month of over $2000 in sales and that was December. We stayed open for 18 months (covered 2 Christmas seasons). The trend didn't improve but we had started doing arts and crafts shows and summer festivals about 8 months before we closed. We started noticing that we did more sales doing a couple shows a month then we did in most of the months of storefront operation plus our costs were way lower than the storefront was. So I started researching more and more shows. Plus I also decided to give ebay a try starting in 2004. We spent the next 3 years sorting out the shows that fit us and eliminated the ones that didn't. I also refined what I was selling on Ebay and noticed that in both cases our sales continued to grow and are still doing so at this time. Ebay does take a lot of time to do though. I probably spend about 40 hours a week on it alone but the nice thing is that I can pick whatever hours I want to do it. As far getting far up in the search on Ebay, you need to structure your titles right for what you are selling. This is easy to do, just type in keywords and see how many hits you get then try to pick the same keywords. I really stay away from keywords that get to many hits because then you could be so far down the list people won't find you or even see you until it is maybe only a few minutes until the auction closes. You also need to pick the best days to have your auctions close. Different products work best on different days. Jewelry is extremely popular on Ebay. So I really don't sell any jewelry at all on Ebay. Its difficult to get noticed in many thousands of ebay sellers. If you are one of a few selling a popular product that will usually work the best. I also have an ebay store and generate a lot of sales there to. I don't use ebay though for any of my listings, I use a third party service because ebays tools work so slow and are really a pain to use. I have noticed that ebay is a long grind. I have been selling now for going on 7 years and each year gets better. Your customer base continues to grow each year and I continue to get more and more repeat customers. So my business is getting pretty good now. I have been a power seller for 5 years now and am a top rated seller which also helps to keep costs lower. However, Ebay does really nickle and dime you to death so it definitely is not free to do. Paypal also takes about 3% to. I should also mention that we still do around 35 arts and crafts and summer festivals each year but they are almost all on the weekend and we do real good at them but we don't import anything now and haven't done so for the past 2 years. We now do many juried shows because we do all our own designs and construction. We really love doing the shows. Our daughter who was born while we were still in China is now almost 9 years old and she loves going to the shows with us. My wife also has made so many friends and loves doing the shows to. We get along great together so even though the shows can be tiring we enjoy them greatly. I might add that I also now have good retirement pay coming in so we really don't feel any pressure to sell a lot at the shows although we do quite well. Well my fingers are getting sore, besides I need to get some work done for a show this weekend. If you have questions, you could PM me. Gale

You face a situation very similar to what we had back in 2001. I went back to our documents and looked at my wifes old Re-entry permit and this is what I found and remembered. I was faced with the exact same situation as you are. I was working in China and my wife had received her green card visa in January of 2001. Then my USA company asked me to stay another year or 2 so we left to go to the USA for a short time on April 25th, 2001 before her CR1 visa expired. My wife entered the USA on her CR1 visa on April 25, 2001. We visited my mother and other relatives and got a SS number issued and also filed for a re-entry permit Somewhere around the 2nd of May of 2001. We had it forwarded to the consulate in Shanghai where I worked and had the consulate notify us as to when it showed up. Looking at the Re-entry permit. It shows that it had a date of expiration of April 25, 2003. So it actually expired exactly 2 years after my wife had entered the USA on the CR1 visa. We went back to Shanghai and was notified that it had arrived about 6 months later. I don't remember the exact date but the permit says that its date of delivery was Nov. 6, 2001. So we filed it in a safe place, then when the company decided to move us back to the USA on July 8, 2002 over 14 months later, we used the reentry permit at the POE. My wife didn't even have the green card because it was in our saved mail back in the states. There was no problem at all at the POE. I simply explained the situation in that I was returning from working for an american company in China and bringing my wife and kids back with us. They stamped her reentry permit and let us proceed without taking us aside at all. This was at San Francisco. So looking at your situation. I would say if you are only going to be working there another 2 years, I would suggest that as you planned take your wife back to the USA before the visa expires in August which will start the process for the green card issuance and then process the paperwork for the reentry permit and have it forwarded like I did. The two year time clock should then start ticking at the time your wife entered the USA. This should give you plenty of time to stay for your two years from right now and still make it back to the USA and file for the removal of conditions on your wifes 2 year green card prior to it expiring after 2 years. Then you will be 2 years ahead of the game. In our case (for Daves situation), we did lose the almost 15 months of time we were out of the country toward my wifes citizenship but as soon as 3 more years had passed after entry she became a US citizen back in 2006. I know my information is pretty old but I don't think anything has changed in the regulations since then. Hope this helps you out. Gale

We lived in Shanghai and my wife is from there. When we had our daughter in China my wife told me about the 30 day tradition but she didn't believe in it at all and neither did her parents. The day she had the baby she decided to get up and leave the hospital after being admited and go and get something to eat. She didn't even tell them she was leaving and just got up and walked out. We walked about a mile to a KFC and had chicken then went back in about an hour. She had the baby 5 hours later at about 8 that evening 100% natural with no pain killers of any sort. In the morning she was up and about and insisted on getting a shower right away. She also wanted to leave the hospital the same day. However, the hospital wouldn't allow her to leave until the third day after the baby was born. She refused to stay inside after we got home and we pretty much did the same as we always did. Her mother and father didn't even come over to visit at all until over a month after the baby was born. She did however, have a close aunt that helped with our 9 year old son while she was in the hospital. The son was from her previous marriage and needed to go to school on Monday and come home on Friday afternoon from his school. To my wife she had no want or reason to stay home for the 30 days. She would have been climbing the walls by that time. Gale

When our daughter was born in China we had a birth abroad certificate issued by the American Consulate in Shanghai and and filed for the passport at the same time. We did have to take her to the local security bureau and get an exit visa to leave China. However, once you have left China, you will have no other choice than to get a visa for your son to come back into China once he has exited. With luck you will be able to get a long term visa for him if you explain the situation. Gale

Actually, children born to an American parent are automatically an American citizen. She just needs to file the appropriate paper work to get the passports etc. There are exceptions to the rule though (see below)! You need to apply at the american consulate for a birth abroad certificate and a passport is usually applied for at the same time as the CRBA. Otherwise you have no proof the children are american citizens. Thats what me and my wife did in Shanghai when our daughter was born 8 years ago. This should actually be done within 30 days of the birth or you can actually get into trouble with the chinese government if you don't. They can fine you for not doing it! Below is quotes directly from the Shanghai consulate web site: When should I apply? The CRBA is primary evidence of citizenship and the basis for issuance of a U.S. passport - it is one of the most important documents you can obtain for your child. A U.S. Consular Officer may issue a CRBA to an eligible child upon receipt of an application made by the child's parent(s) or legal guardian(s) any time before the child¡¯s 18th birthday. However, since the Chinese government requires you to obtain a dependent visa within thirty days of your child¡¯s birth, it is best to apply as soon as possible after the birth of your child. The Shanghai Entry and Exit Bureau has recently begun charging fines of up to 1,000 RMB for children who are not registered within 30 days. If you are unable to obtain a U.S. passport in time to meet the 30 day deadline, you may use your child¡¯s Chinese birth certificate to register. Is my child a citizen? A child born outside of the U.S. to two American citizen parents acquires U.S. citizenship as long as one of the parents has resided in the U.S. prior to the child's birth (Immigration and Nationality Act Sec.301©). A child born abroad, in wedlock, with only one American citizen parent, acquires citizenship only when the citizen parent was physically present in the U.S. for 5 years or more prior to the child's birth, at least 2 of the 5 years occurring after the parent had passed age 14 (Immigration and Nationality Act Sec.301(g)). Please complete the statement of physical presence.

One other thing you would probably want to think about to is your children! You didn't say if they have born abroad birth certificates from the consulate in China and have or would obtain American passports before going to the USA. If so you would need to get an exit permit from the Chinese entry exit section but then when you exited China you would have to get them visas just like you have to do, to take them back to china. As long as they have never left china, this is not required and they can basically stay in China forever. If they don't have american citizenship then they would have to obtain chinese passports and get visas just like your husband will need. Also green cards if you stayed a long time. Gale

One other thing to think about. If there is a chance he could be out of the USA over the one year time limit after getting his 551 stamp. You should definitely file for the reentry permit and remember that it has to be filed before he exits to go back to China, he can't do it after he has left! We did that with my wife because we had to go back to China for another 15 months before permanently returning to the USA. We exited to China again after 11 days in the USA. We had the reentry permit forwarded to the consulate in Shanghai where I was working. It took almost 6 months before it showed up. He would also want to contact the consulate and make sure to watch for it and give them contact information as to how to get in touch with him. Gale I think only staying for longer than one year, do you need to file for a reentry permit. Any stay longer than six months, however, will put the burden on the green card holder, to show that they have not given up the intent to immigrate. Although a reentry permit isn't required for stays less than one year, an LPR can still lose their status (trips for 6 mo + but less than 1 yr) if they cannot adequately prove that they have kept their intent to immigrate as well as lose time eligibility requirements for naturalization. Ok, good to know. These are all the worst case scenarios, but it's good for us to consider all of this in advance indeed! I am basically looking into bringing him to the US as planned but on a round trip ticket instead. Also, once he enters at least his SSN paperwork, GC, etc will get rolling... At least in terms of entering the US this visa business isn't looking as disasterous as we originally thought, so at least there is some good news

It wouldn't surprise me if they might be several days late because this is Christmas week! I would imagine the final papers wouldn't have been done till Tuesday at the earliest and then if you are lucky they would have hit the mail room the next day. Then how much work do you think the consulate would have done on Christmas eve. Then Friday was Christmas. I also imagine a lot of the consulate staff was on vacation for the week making them short handed. So I wouldn't worry about it yet! Gale

You didn't say if you were flying into Hong Kong or Guangzhou. If you are flying into Hong Kong directly from the USA why couldn't you just delay your flight another day and go directly to the wedding in Hong Kong before entering Guangzhou on the Z-visa. You wouldn't need the visa to get into Hong Kong and could stay there the day you went to the wedding with no problems. This would only be possible of course if you can change your flight times so that the timing would work for you. Gale