hoby

Thanks, yuehan123. I actually should give an update on this, since they've had their interview now. They passed, and without needing to show much of anything at all. Basically, once the visa officer heard how many apartments they own (which is where all their money is), he didn't even look at their bank statements, or our I-130 (which we did decide to submit). They hope to come to visit in a few months!

I was in China with my spouse, and my mother signed an I-134 for her. But it seems a little strange to me to have my mom, who lives halfway across the country, sign an I-134 for my parents-in-law to visit us in Texas. On their DS-160 forms, they marked down that they were paying for their trips themselves. Perhaps I'll prepare the information but tell them to only provide it if asked for? I would also like to avoid including a letter from my employer since my job ends on Wednesday, but it says so explicitly in the form instructions on USCIS's website, so it seems a bit of a stretch to not include it¡­

I believe form asks about past income, as for current simply sho what you made so far this year, you made an income so list it, blank line is not a correct answer. Hmm¡­ The more I think about it, the more I'm worried that an I-134 would actually hurt my parents-in-law's chances. With the form you are supposed to submit proof of employment from your employer, including whether the position is temporary or permanent; you are also supposed to submit bank statements showing money over the past year and how much is in the bank presently. We literally have about $200 in the bank right now, with a bad-looking history over the past year. And my letter from my employer would state that my position terminates on next Wednesday¡ªtwo days after my parents-in-law's visa interview. My impression is that the I-134 isn't required, so is it possible it would be better not to submit it? Simply say in our letters that we will provide them with a place to stay and food and they will pay the rest, and leave it at that?

Thanks so much for the reply. They have plenty to show ties to China, especially lots of real estate. But I am concerned about money. We have next to nothing at the moment (I'm between jobs and a student, and my wife is a grad student paying her own tuition), so I don't know if the I-134 would help. We literally have a couple hundred in the bank right now. Should we still fill out an I-134 just for room and board? As I said, the truth is that I hope to have a good job by then so that they don't have to pay for their insurance and other expenses, but I imagine that this is useless information for the VO, correct? Most of their money is tied up in real estate, so I don't think they have a lot, as far as the VO will be concerned, but I'm not sure. That's exactly what you do with the I-134 you indicate your income level and that you ar providing a place to live. In this case there is no income level requirement, they are not immigrating, the I-134 is a tool showing partial support. Parents show that they are paying the rest of expenses, airfare, etc... Thanks, dnoblett. So would you recommend we just leave the income part of the I-134 blank? Or what should we do there? Since currently I have a part-time job but it will end next week and I haven't found a replacement yet, and my wife has no income¡­

Thanks so much for the reply. They have plenty to show ties to China, especially lots of real estate. But I am concerned about money. We have next to nothing at the moment (I'm between jobs and a student, and my wife is a grad student paying her own tuition), so I don't know if the I-134 would help. We literally have a couple hundred in the bank right now. Should we still fill out an I-134 just for room and board? As I said, the truth is that I hope to have a good job by then so that they don't have to pay for their insurance and other expenses, but I imagine that this is useless information for the VO, correct? Most of their money is tied up in real estate, so I don't think they have a lot, as far as the VO will be concerned, but I'm not sure.

My SO (permanent resident) and I helping her parents apply for a B2 visa to the States. We need to provide them with supporting documentation, but we're not sure about a few things. I would greatly appreciate help with any of the following questions. 1. We're both students, and are currently extremely tight on funds. Her parents don't exactly make a lot of money either. In our current draft of the letter, I say that they are paying for airfare and travel insurance, and we will provide free lodging in our apartment and pay for food. Does this sound okay? (The actuality is that I am currently looking for work and hope to be gainfully employed full-time by then.) 2. My wife and I got married officially in China in 2006, but didn't actually do a wedding until this past summer, when we held a ceremony in her hometown. Should they take pictures of the wedding, or will that just confuse the issue? We have lots of pictures of us together without needing the wedding to prove anything. Also, my parents didn't go to the wedding this summer, so we don't know if it's bad to use pics from the wedding because of thid. 3. Is it necessary to provide both a letter to the consulate and a fake-sounding letter of invitation to her parents?

Awesome!

Not to dig up a dead horse (is that the saying?), but we're now worried again about this $380 thing. When my wife did her interview, she wasn't asked to pay the $380 fee. Also, the more we thought about it, the more we realized that we didn't pay it at any other time--we did DCF, so the interview was definitely the time when we should have paid it. My wife said that just tonight someone on 001 told her that they were told to keep the receipt from their payment (they did DCF), and that it's definitely important and we should get in touch with GUZ about it. Was anyone asked to see this receipt by the immigration folks at the border? Could this possibly be a hindrance to her entering the country next month when we go over?

Thanks a lot, you two. Good to know it won't take too long. Wish I could be in line with her though

We're trying to plan our trip to the States, and we were thinking of taking a long layover in San Francisco or LA to make a quick trip into town. When I travel by myself, I usually plan on about 45 minutes to 1.5 hours for customs. Will it take longer since my wife will be entering for the first time on her CR-1 visa? Does she need to go through the visa holders line the first time? Thanks a lot!

Do you need to wait until you get your green card before applying for a social security number? I was reading in the AOS FAQ, but I couldn't find anything about this. Also, the AOS FAQ has an overview of what you do after arriving in the US for K1 and K3, but I didn't see anything of the sort for CR1. Is something like that available somewhere? Thanks a lot.

I figured I would get on here and post some more about my wife's interview experience. Her appointment was for 7:15 AM. We got in line outside a little after 7:15, and she actually got to the entrance to the Consulate around 7:50 or so. I went to the coffee shop on the fourth floor to wait. People started to come down from the Consulate around 9:00 or 9:30 (I can't quite remember clearly). My wife, despite her 7:15 appointment, didn't come down until 1:15 PM. That was definitely some of the most agonizing 5+ hours of my life. Same for her; since they don't call the numbers inside in numerical order (why on earth don't they, by the way?), she had no idea when they were going to call her. She didn't even dare to go to the bathroom in case they called her number while she was gone. As for the interview itself, it sounds like she did an awesome job. She says that she spoke English the whole time (the VO said Ni hao when she walked up, then switched to English when she started speaking it). Also, the VO only looked at our picture album; she said that she kept talking the whole time, volunteering information about any picture that he paused on, so that she actually spoke more than he did. It sounds like she came across as very confident, which I think helped a lot. After over 5 hours of waiting, her interview lasted only 5 minutes. We filed through DCF, and have been living together since early 2005, so this interview might not be very representative of what some CFL people will have to deal with. The thing we were most worried about was domicile. My driver's license expired last year, I didn't have proof of voting any elections while over here (I only voted in the presidential in 2004), nor did I have any kind of job lined up. What we did prepare were a bunch of things sent to my permanent address in the U.S., including credit card and bank statements, a letter from the career counseling service I'm using now to look for a job in the States, and a few other random things. I gave her my driver's license with a letter explaining why I let it expire. Turns out the VO didn't look at any of that stuff; we think it's probably because of my job over here--my first year here I was on a U.S. government scholarship, and the next two years I was doing English teaching--not exactly the kind of sweet gig that you don't want to give up to go back to the U.S. Perhaps if my job were better or more permanent there might have been more trouble on the domicile front. Anyway, here's how the interview went, as best as she can recall: Well, that's everything. Hope this is useful to someone here. We had a lot more stuff prepared than we needed; in fact, my wife says that she had the most stuff of anyone in the room.

She says that she saw a lot of blues, but she saw a lot of pinks as well. Of course, that covers all types of immigrant visas. Also, she saw a lot of older people getting pinks. Regardless, at least according to what she saw, there were definitely more than 10% of the people getting pinks. We basically prepared everything suggested on 001 by a couple of "homeworks" (as the kids over there like to call them). My wife happened to meet a woman she knew from 001 at the Consulate, and both of them passed--the other woman only had a 1 minute interview. So my wife suggests that people prepare the stuff suggested on 001 and their chances of success will be pretty high. She also said that the "1-minute interview" woman submitted almost all of her materials with her original application, which I know was suggested on here before. She was basically asked 3-4 questions and then given her visa.

I've seen these mice many times in other people's threads. It's great to see them in ours, Ling-Curt As for the money, I really don't remember paying it. I know we paid $190 (I think) when we submitted the I-130 at the Shanghai consulate, but that's it, I think. Regardless, we're holding onto it...

My wife got pink!!!! We had her interview today (or yesterday, actually, since I'm posting this at 2:00 am). It was an incredibly nerve-wracking experience. We were up all night last night preparing our forms and getting everything organized. Then, despite being in the 7:15 group, she didn't get out until 1:15. Those 6 hours were some of the most stressful 6 hours I've experienced, that's for sure. But, the good news is we passed! Her interview was really short, too. She's going to do a big long post on 001, and then I'll use that info to put a nice post up here about her interview, what all we prepared, etc. Until then, just wanted to share our results and say THANK YOU, CFL!!! We really owe you guys so much for all of your patience and help. We couldn't have done this without you all. I'm just so happy that my wife will be able to make it in time to start school this fall. A quick question: We haven't paid the $380 fee yet. We had the money prepared but my wife never got asked for it. After getting her pink slip, she asked one of the guards about it, and they said that we must have paid it, or they wouldn't have given her pink. Then they said that even if she didn't pay it, she'll be able to pay it later--even in America. Anyone ever heard of anything like this happening before?

I called them multiple times a week, but that's because we missed my SO's first interview date by not calling DOS, and we wanted to make sure that didn't happen again. If you've got everything prepared already, once a week like the previous two posts said should be fine. If you will need to do a lot more prep work after getting your interview date then you might want to call more often, as sometimes people get as little as two weeks notice (although we got about a month and a half).

This method is supposed to be acceptable... but I've seen a rare case where they asked for transcripts anyway. The only 'TurboTax' problem I've seen was someone forgot to sign it after printing.. you should like you went one step further and got a notarized letter... should be ok. Just wait and see... Thanks a lot, David! She also provided W-2s, etc, so I think it should be alright¡­

Hi everyone. Reading this thread, I just noticed that my mom (who is our co-sponsor) didn't submit tax transcripts from the IRS. Instead, she printed out her tax forms from Turbotax and signed them over again. Then she wrote a letter explaining that these are the copies she had and that she signed them again to show that they are official. She had this letter notarized. Is there any chance that this will not be enough? Should I have my mom get the tax transcripts instead? I'm really annoyed at myself for not having noticed this thing about tax transcripts earlier¡­

http://guangzhou.usconsulate.gov/kvfaq.html You will be starting from scratch on the DCF since it requires different paperwork I-130 verses the I-129F Thanks a lot! I appreciate the help you dnoblett and Randy W, although it would have been nice if the updating option would have worked Guess I'll keep working on our application for her CR-1. I'm almost done!

Hi, everyone. I've posted on here before about applying for a CR-1 through DCF in Shanghai for my wife (recently married) and canceling our previous application for a K-1 fiancee visa. We applied for the K-1 fiancee visa in March of this year, and it's currently in Guangzhou (supposedly), although they don't have it in their system yet, as they apparently only update their information once a month. I called Guangzhou on Friday to try to cancel our application (I had called once before), and the woman told me that I should call back in the middle of November to check whether it would be possible to update our K-1 application to a marriage visa application, or whether we would need to cancel the application and reapply for a CR-1. This surprised me, because I had never heard anywhere before that it might be possible to update our current application rather than submitting a new one. I asked the woman on the phone whether this was possible, and all she was able to tell me was that I would need to ask that question when I called the next time, after they had our application in their system. Has anyone ever heard of this before? Has anyone ever done this before? What is involved? Is it possible, or was the woman who spoke to me misinformed? This is a crucial decision for us because our time for the CR-1 visa is very tight. We need to get over in time for my wife to start grad school in August or September, and we would like to get over early enough for me to have time to find a job in the area where she will be attending school, preferably in the spring so that I can look for teaching jobs in private high schools in the area before all the available positions are snatched up. If it would be possible to simply update our current application, it could save us a considerable amount of time. However, if it's not possible, or even if it's very unlikely, we will submit our application for the CR-1 this week so as to get the ball rolling on that as quickly as we can. Thanks to everyone on this forum for all your help so far, and I appreciate any advice you can give on this issue.

Thanks a lot for your help and suggestions, everyone. I would have replied sooner, but the past few days have been kind of crazy. I have to say that reading some of your posts (especially yours, frank1538), I'm starting to wonder how easy it will be for me to prove domicile in the U.S. I've been here for over 2 years (arrived in June, 2004). I did a fellowship through the U.S. State Department for my first year, then I found a job with an English teaching company here in Shanghai. I quit after 10 months or so and went back to the States to defend my MA thesis and get my degree. Then I came back here and have been working with another company (on a one-year contract) since August. In 2005, I was out of the States long enough that I didn't have to pay federal taxes. I also recently let my driver's license expire, because I never had a chance when I was home to get it renewed. I have, however, let my landlord here know that we will be leaving sometime next year, and she agreed to let me pay rent on a month-by-month basis rather than signing on for another year. Is that the kind of thing I should let them know? More importantly, should I submit information like that (and proof¡ªperhaps something that my landlord has signed?) along with our initial I-130 application? I suppose that currently this is my main question: how much of this stuff do I need to prepare now, to be sent along with our initial application to Beijing? Again, thanks a lot, everyone. I really appreciate all of the help.

Hmm¡­now I'm starting to get a little nervous. The problem is that it all depends on the time of the interview. If she is interviewed after she has decided on a school, then we'll be able to say exactly where in the U.S. we'll be going. I doubt, however, that it will happen that way¡ªmore likely when she is interviewed she will know of a few schools' decisions, but not all of them, and we will have not yet made a decision on where we are going to move. As far as showing that I plan to domicile in the U.S., my understanding is that proof of job applications is one way to do so; yet if I have applied to any jobs at the time of the interview (not a guarantee, depending on how quickly we reach that stage), they will certainly not be anywhere near my mom's house, where our "domicile" supposedly will be. Rather they will be in areas with schools that my wife has applied to. Would it be better in that case to simply not show any proof of having applied for jobs? Or perhaps to apply for some jobs near my mom's house that I have no intention of taking?

Thanks a lot for the information. Our plan with regards to the U.S. is to wait until we know where my wife will be going to school, and then head over. We may live with my mom for awhile, or we may go straight to the location where she will be attending school. Unless we're in a huge hurry, though, I imagine that we'll go to my mom's house first, if only for a week or two. Would you recommend that I get my mom to prepare an affidavit now stating that we will be moving there to live with them until I find a job (as well as testifying to our relationship and maybe a little something about how much she misses me)? Would it be better to submit that now or wait until the interview?

Thanks a lot, you two. Reading your posts made me think of one more thing that might warrant mentioning. My wife and I do not have a joint lease on our apartment¡ªit's leased only in my name. Should that be a problem at all?

Hi everyone. I am busily preparing the application for my wife's marriage visa to be filed with the Beijing DHS via the Shanghai consulate. In my preparation, I noticed a link in one post to an article that suggested one disclose all potential red flags in one's initial application to the DHS, thus providing less reasons for Guangzhou to turn the application down after the interview (CFL post: http://candleforlove.com/forums/index.php?...&hl=article. Original article: http://www.ilw.com/articles/2006,0323-ellis.shtm). I have since made a list of all of our potential red flags, and I thought maybe some of the people on this forum could give me some feedback on which (if any) to include in our cover letter, as well as how best to address these issues in the letter. My list is as follows: 1. I formerly filed a fiancee visa application for my wife when we were still engaged. Although I was in China at the time, we preferred to wait until we got to the States to get married, for many reasons, although I think the two main reasons were that 1) she was still in university at the time, and 2) she hadn't met all of my family yet, and I feel like my being in China already makes my family feel far enough away from me without me marrying someone that they haven't even met yet. However, in the end, a visa lawyer suggested that we get married over here, as the K-1 is not intended for situations in which the U.S. citizen resides in China, and thus our chances of being rejected at Guangzhou would be pretty high. 1.5. We haven't actually cancelled the K-1 application yet. It's currently on its way from the NVC to Guangzhou, and so there is no way for us to cancel it at the moment, but we would like to get the I-130 in as soon as possible, so we're not planning on waiting until after we cancel the K-1 before we apply. 2. We haven't been married for very long (we got married on 9/27/2006 to be exact). Does that matter? 3. We didn't have an actual wedding ceremony. We're waiting until later when we have more time and money to do it right. We want to make sure that all the important people in our lives are able to participate in our wedding. 4. We haven't taken our wedding pictures here in China yet. You know, the hunshazhao where you go and dress up in borrowed clothes and run all over the city taking pictures in natural settings (as if those actually exist here in Shanghai). We're planning on taking them next spring. 5. We don't have wedding bands yet, although we will by the time of the interview. Do they usually ask to see the receipts for those? 6. My wife wants to do grad work in the States, and will be applying for schools this fall. Does this make it look like she's going over there for reasons other than simply to be with me? 7. I have a job in China, and have lived here for almost 2.5 years. Do we need to make a strong case for why we want to go to the States rather than remain here? Does the fact that I hate my job here count as a good reason? 8. I also don't have a job lined up in the States yet, and most likely won't have one lined up when she goes for her interview. However, my parents will be willing to serve as our sponsor. Also, I don't have a house or any other "assets" to speak of in the U.S. Alright, those are all of the red flags that I can think of. As always, I really appreciate everyone's help here! With everyone's help here, I'm sure eventually my Sichuan la meizi and I will be in the States together