Spekkio99

Thank you, very helpful information here as I am getting ready to file the I-751. One quick question, do you actually send complete photocopies of your credit cards and bank cards with this application? Do you grey any part out? Or is just the credit card statement sufficient? Maybe I am too wary of identity theft...

There is a blue "fn" button on the bottom left of the laptop keyboard. And there is a one of the function keys (usually F7) that has a blue monitor icon on it. You need to press both of those keys together while the laptop is hooked up to a monitor with a vga cable.

great site, thanks for sharing! better yet, its one of the only blog not blocked by the webfilters at work, awesome!

i went to the same place we got married couple days after marriage and got 4 certified copies after a short wait. they just put the blank certificates in the printer and printed them out on the spot.

I've put them into 3 clear folders, each folder with its own set of passport photos, copies of passport, visa and I-94. Stuffed the 3 folders into a priority mail envelope. Mailed it out via registered mail today to the Chicago lockbox. She's also gotten her SS card in the mail already, and we went down to the DMV and used the SS card, passport and marriage certificate to get her a non-driving state ID. Once that comes in the mail, we'll use that to get her added to my bank account as a join account. Is there anything else that I should be doing?

G-1145 is the E-Notification form, I'm not doing a G-28. I already bought 4 certified copies of the marriage certificate for this purpose so might as well send 1 in, $10 each + $5 search fee for the 1st one. Thanks Dan, I needed your assurance that I have all my ducks in a row!

I called about 30 Civil Surgeons in the Flushing area, half of them didn't exist or weren't filling out I-693 forms anymore. I went with Dr. Kabul Singh who was able to just transcribe the vaccination information from the yellow booklet onto form I-693 without doing a full medical. I printed out the K-1 instructions and showed him the exact line saying vaccination only, he asked to make a photocopy of it, I said he can keep it. I was quoted $60 on the phone but when I got there, they said they made a mistake over the phone and ended up charging me $150. I just paid it to get this over with. Next cheapest quote I heard over the phone was Dr. Ha for $140. All others were $180+ and needs to do full medical as a "bundled package".

I'm ready to send in the AOS package for my wife, below is my cover page, let me know if i'm missing anything! Immediate (Spouse) Family Based Adjustment of Status Application 1) Form G-1145 2) Form I-485 3) Check for $1010 4) Copy of no criminal history notarized police record 5) Copy of Chinese notarized birth certificate 6) Copy of Chinese passport including K-1 Visa 7) Copy of I-797 and I-797C, approval for I-129F 8) Copy of I-94 front and back 9) 2 Passport photos 10) Form G-325A 11) Form I-693 in a sealed envelope completed by Civil Surgeon 12) Certified copy of Marriage Certificate 13) Form I-864 completed by spouse/sponsor 14) Sponsor¡¯s W-2 form and copy of Federal income tax for 2009, W-2 forms and Federal income tax transcripts for 2008, 2007, 2006. 15) Sponsor¡¯s letter of employment verification 16) Sponsor¡¯s paystubs for past 6 months. 17) Form I-765 18) 2 Passport photos 19) Form I-131 20) 2 Passport photos Thanks! Dennis

Congratulations!!

Couple more questions: What is I-797C? I cannot seem to find this, is this needed for AOS? On I-131, is my wife applying for "an advance parole document to allow me to return to the United States after temporary foreign travel"? Form I-131 also asks for the exact mm/dd/yyyy of intended departure and expected length of trip, are these estimates or does she have HAVE to fly out of the US on that date? For Civil Surgeon, I called a bunch and cheapest I found in NY willing to fill out just the vaccination portion of I-693 was $140, if anyone knows any better deals in the area, let me know! I am knee deep in paperworks now... Thanks everyone for your responses, much appreciated!

I went thru the foreign nationals line together with my fiancee at JFK last week. They processed mine first in 2 secs and then took longer to look thru her K-1 visa stuff. I stayed with her the whole time.

When applying for the Social Security number on the K1 non-immigrant visa, what do you check for the line item for citizenship? Legal alien allowed to work, legal alien not allowed to work, or other?

Update: We just went to City Hall this morning to get our marriage license. Need to wait 24 hours to go back for the marriage ceremony, we're planning to go back next Monday for that. She signed her name in pinyin and keeping the same name as on her passport. We then went to Kay Jewelers and picked out wedding bands, won't be able to pick it up until April tho, so won't have them for the ceremony on Monday. Any suggestions for engravings? What do people normally engrave on these things, i have no idea... I've had contractors work on renovating my apt all this month and should be finishing up by end of this week. We'll be picking out furnitures this weekend and starting to get stuff delivered next week. I also need to pick out a big screen tv. Exciting times!

Thanks Dan for the quick and informative response as usual and thanks guys for the congrats. Couple more questions that I just thought of: When we go apply for the Marriage license, I assume she will have to sign some papers. She has previously only ever signed things in Chinese with her chinese name. Should she design a new english signature to sign the marriage license and everything else going forward? Name change? I'm talking about first name change, not last name. Has anyone done this before? We want to officially change her first name from chinese name to her english name, but keep her last name. How should this be handled? Will it cause any conflicts in various documents going forward? Thanks! Dennis

I went to China to spend Chinese New Years with my fiancee and her family and bring her back to New York with me. We just flew into JFK last night, went thru POE together no problems on K1 Visa. Planning to goto City Hall to get married later this week. Couple of questions: Do you go back to work immediately after your fiancee arrives in the US? If not, how long after she gets here do you go back to work? (I've already taken 2 weeks off work to goto China so I'd be hard pressed to take anymore time off, will take at least another day to goto City Hall to get married tho) Wedding bands? When do I need to get this? AOS paperwork, when do I need to start filling these out? Form I-864 Affidavit of Support, how is this different than the I-134 Affidavit of Support that I filled out for the K1 Visa? We are planning to go to China for a traditional chinese wedding in October, is this enough time to go thru the AOS process to get her 2 year Greencard? or is there a travel document that I should apply for to make sure that she can go to China in October? Thanks! Dennis

Sam, great to hear everything is going well. Love to hear your stories, keep us posted! I live in Flushing, so if Sam, dnoblett or anyone else is coming to flushing, give me a shout and we can meet up! I'm leaving for China tonite, going to take wedding photos in Shanghai, spending china new years/valentines day China, then bringing her back to New York with me, going thru POE together. Planning to get married as soon as we get back, apply for AOS, then hopefully going back to Shanghai for our wedding by October. Very excited and nervous Cheers, Dennis

Asiana actually go by Kilograms instead of Pounds. Yea theres a person that comes to you while your waiting on the line for check-in and roll your bags over to the side and weigh it, then comes back and give you a piece of paper with the weight for each bag. The limit is 23 kg, which is about 50.7 lb, so as long as you don't go over 50 lb, you should be good. There is also a limit on the carry on, altho most of the time they dont check it. But if you look like your struggling with your carry on, they will ask you to weigh it. The weight limit for the carry on is 10 kb or 22 lb. I've seen a guy in front of me exceed the weight for the carry on and they made him take out some of the stuff and put it in a plastic bag, and he was still allowed to take it onto the plane with him. The reasoning for this is that its unsafe to have excessively heavy carry-on's in the overhead bins during the flight.

I have an HSBC account here in the US, and the last time that I was in Shanghai and in Hong Kong, I've seen HSBC atm machines all over the place. In fact, there were HSBC atms inside the Shanghai Pu Dong airport immediately after you get off the plane, before even going thru customs. I've used it before, my atm card works fine and it spits out chinese currency and deducts from my account using some kind of conversion rate. I just called HSBC to check what this conversion rate is for my next trip. They told me it uses that day's exchange rate + a 3% fee. So if I take out $100, they charge me $3, and give me the remainder in chinese currency using the bank exchange rate. Seems reasonable to me, it is definitely super convenient.

I use both I use Baidu to find chinese sites, chinese songs, even sometimes as a translator. Like I just saw the movie Sherlock Holmes, but chinese people do not know who that is at all, they only know his chinese name, Fu Er Mo Si, which sounds nothing like Sherlock Holmes at all. Baidu is very helpful to quickly find the chinese equivalent of things such as this.

wow i can't believe CNN did an article on this today. This talent show Go! Oriental Angel finished about a month ago, but its extremely delayed on the chinese channels here in the US and I've been watching it every weekend for the past 3 months. Just saw the elimination round from 8 to 7 yesterday, the show is soooo awesome! Anyway, Lou Jing was already eliminated when I first started watching, which was the top 12. I think she might've been eliminated like top 15 or something. I did see the show invite her back once to give a statement to clarify some of the untrue internet rumors that were swirling out of hand about her. I also saw a separate talk show appearance interviewing her, where they kept asking about her father and she kept avoiding that question. She did talk about when she went to audition for the Go! Oriental Angel show, she prepared songs and dances just like every girl, but then the judges just ended up asking her to speak chinese as a talent. Nowadays, I see Lou Jing as a co-host on another tv show on that same station, so good for her. Her major in college as well as her ambition is to become a tv host/news anchor, so she's definitely done well for herself. I think the CNN article might've put too much of a negative spin on this whole ordeal because altho there was alot of racism and untrue rumors about her, there was also alot of support for her and ultimately she's landed the job of her dreams due to this exposure.

Thanks for the heads up, this is exciting news! I had visited Hong Kong with my fiancee and we went to Ocean Park first and had a good time there. I had bought Hong Kong Disneyland tickets online before I went over there, but she was too tired from Ocean Park and just wanted to shop shop shop the next few days and we didn't even goto Disneyland, completely wasted my tickets.

I've only heard of the 1st one too. If you have a very organized helper who signs every guest in, it's best to write down on each red envelope the name of the person who it came from. This way, you/your wife will have a good idea of how much "debt" you have to repay to each guest. Whoever invited this guest, whether it be you or your wife, should keep the red envelope as it is a debt that need to be repayed. Repayment of these debts isn't always monetary, it could be favors in the future or other intangibles. You get the idea...

I'm a Mets fan and this world series sux, blehhhhhh I hate the Yankee but I hate the Phillies more...i think...

My fiancee did not want me going back for her interview because she was very busy with work at that time and could not spend any time off with me. She just took 1 day off work to flying to Guanzhou for the interview and flew back to Shanghai that night and went back to work next day. She passed the interview with flying colors on the 1st try. I went back to china couple weeks after she passed her interview when she was able to table a week off work and spent some quality time with her.

I recently fly from china to jfk too. similar security experiences as what sam saw. in addition, there was also a guy with a dog walking in circles around the luggage pickup belt sniffing everyone's luggage. Several people had to open their luggage to get inspected when the dog started barking. It must've came around at least 4-5 times to sniff my luggage while i was waiting at the belt, was a little bit nerv wrecking lol.