thelocaldialect

Anyone applied recently? I've been living in China for 15 years. For the next 15 (???) I sort of plan to be back and forth between China and the US of A, since now my husband has (well, almost has ... we'll do his POE stuff in Newark on Thursday!!!!) his American greencard, with husband and the kids situated in the States. I think it would be mighty convenient if we had both green cards for each country, assuming we make sure not to screw up the residency requirements for both. Is it 9 months in country per year for the Chinese one? That's what I've heard, which is pretty strict if so. I've been on marriage related residence permits for the past 10+ years, since we got married back in 2006. Main stumbling block is lack of property here in China -- I don't want to buy into this crazy housing market but if I have to, I may buy a small little place just to tick off that box. I know one foreign wife of a Chinese guy who got approved recently. Their case didn't seem extraordinary. In fact, pretty sure they're both of the missionary persuasion, which I woulda thought China might have frowned upon, but nope. So any updates? Curious if anyone here has any new experience.

EMS is reliable here -- they have tracking and packages won't get lost. Personally I think dealing with them should be easier than dealing with whatever random folk you get at the CITIC bank on any given day. Hope the interview went well!

Wages have, for the most part, not kept up with inflation. But it is a lot more common to see Chinese folk pulling in 10k+ rmb a month than it was 15 years ago. Expat salaries, on the other hand, have hardly risen at all. If anyone worked in China in the early 2000s, remember when, if you told a Chinese person you were making 5000rmb a month they'd gush about how high that salary was? No longer! Heck, about 5 years ago I was getting the old salary grilling from a taxi driver in Beijing and told him I was making "over 10k" (it was actually over 15k, but I didn't want to appear a showoff ...) and he just sort of nodded his head and said "eh, that's decent" ... sure showed me! Where I work (in China) we have issues because brand new Chinese graduates expect 10k+ rmb a month and easy peasy jobs where they can surf the net and play on WeChat all day. They won't even get out of bed for what I was making when I graduated.

I purchased tickets just a little less than a month in advance and got Hong Kong to Houston round trip for 3200 rmb. Those were the cheapest tickets I'd seen from China in a long time.That said, the prices dramatically spiked as soon as July hit. Prices with China tickets always depend really highly on the season. High season tickets are going to be expensive, and in the lower season you can almost always find cheap flights if you're reasonably flexible with dates.

The only fee involved in WeChat pay is when you want to withdraw money from your WeChat wallet to your bank account. The transaction fee is .1%, so it is really quite small, unless you're transferring massive sums (which, if you were a vendor, could happen, but most vendors still happily accept WeChat pay). I use WeChat wallet to pay almost exclusively at all sorts of places -- it frees me of having to carry cash around, and I don't have to worry about whether or not places take card. It is quite common that the smaller shops and restaurants don't take card (credit debit or otherwise) but they will take WeChat or Alipay. Almost all online vendors take both. I bought 13,000RMB worth of plane tickets a week or so ago and paid online through ctrip using WeChat. So convenient, and almost no drawback to the user, as long as they're not scanning codes without paying attention to the amount paid.

I assume you've got the medical. Don't forget to bring that! Our interviewing officer wasn't really interested in how our relationship evolved or anything like that, he was more interested in how we'd live in America. If you're filing DCF you must have been living in China for some time and they tend to assume you know each other. The officer didn't even look at the pictures, but we had them. Our letter was titled "Plan for Return" and clearly outlined what our skills are, what we expected to do in America (where our income would come from), where we expected to live, etc. So make sure you've explained that part clearly and not put too much emphasis on how you met and the bonafide relationship part, because in our experience, and also asking around with others doing DCF, that's what they're concerned with -- how will you transition back to your life in America -- rather than your love story.

After getting rejected for the tourist visa twice, he was convinced America hated him and didn't want him. I told him actually, it was the opposite, America liked him so much that they wanted to keep him, not just have him as a tourist!

Thanks all! My husband was super nervous, having been turned down for a tourist visa a few years back, but seeing that illegal immigrant in front of him get not rejected outright gave him more confidence. He said that all the Chinese applicants in line listening to this exchange were all looking at each other like :yikes: pretty surprised, both that America was entertaining her petition, and that this woman was actually trying to do the right thing and correct her status. I think at that point he realized that they actually will eventually approve most married people since the idea is to keep families together and you can't keep citizens out of their own country.

My husband passed his interview today -- very quick interview, guy didn't even look at the pictures my husband brought, just asked a question about how we met, asked where we would live in America, thumbed through the documents, paying particular attention to our "return plan" letter, and gave him a pass. Very straightforward, but our case was not complex. Married 10+ years, 2 kids, no party affiliation or other red flags. In front of him was this poor woman had actually been living in America as an illegal immigrant when she met her husband and was now trying to go back legally. She had gone to Thailand, and then from Thailand took a boat to Mexico, and crossed over from Mexico to America illegally and lived there for many years. Wild. My husband said they kept asking for her passport and she said she gave it to the "snake head," and the interviewer couldn't figure out what she was saying until they got someone over to explain that "snake head" is like the Chinese version of a coyote. They didn't reject her outright, but wanted more documentation. Anyhow, next step entering America!

I know this thread is months and months old, but for anyone else reading along, I wanted to chime in that I don't think 3500RMB a month for her high school aged daughter's support is unreasonable at all. I was reading along with everyone chiming in about how much that is and felt like I was in an alternate reality. I have lived in China for nearly 15 years and have two kids, who easily cost me more than that a month and they're only 10 and 8 years old. Kids cost loads of money here, particularly when they get to high school age. A good gaokao (college entrance exam) prep school (essential to scoring well) will cost upwards of 30,000RMB just for that alone. I just lent a friend 20,000 RMB to help with their daughter's high school entrance test prep school fees. And that's just high school, not gaokao. And you can't argue they don't need it, the system is set up so that if they don't have these prep classes, they don't stand a chance of doing well. We have a good friend here who wants to divorce his wife but his wife is demanding 20,000RMB a month in child support and alimony. Friend is not loaded, they are a struggling middle class family. I was blown away when he told me this. Now his wife is definitely giving him a highball figure because she doesn't actually want him to leave, but that's still a far far cry from, in my mind, the very reasonable sum of 3500rmb a month. China is not the China it was 10 or 20 years ago. Things are expensive here, and the cost of living is increasing. 2000rmb a month for a mortgage is also a pretty modest sum -- she must have bought her house awhile ago, before the housing market boomed. I have friends who are paying over 10k a month on mortgages. I don't think this woman is a blood sucker, I think she's actually given you some rather modest figures. I know the whole thing is over now, but for anyone else still pursuing a Chinese woman long-distance, especially one who is leaving kids behind, keep in mind that China is not cheap anymore.

I'm just used to sending most documents in PDF form, and I figured for such an official type thing, the more secure the better? But anyhow, nope, .doc only! At least as per whoever was manning the intake window that day.

My husband did his medical in Guangzhou on Thursday. You must do as they say and send in two forms found here: http://www.gdwbzx.com/ywpd/usb/to the e-mail address listed. Send them back as .doc forms, not as PDFs. If, when you get there they don't have a record of these forms in their e-mail box, they won't let you do the medical until they do.

Thanks!! Husband did the medical check and here is something to be aware of: If you haven't sent the e-mail to the medical center with the two forms attached, they are making sure you do this now, and won't let you take the medical if you haven't sent it. And, you have to send the forms back in .doc form, not PDF. I sent PDF, because there is a signature line, and you can't sign a .doc, right? Well, I got a call from my husband that morning when he was at the medical center, and they needed me to resend the forms because their (ancient?) computers could not open PDF. So I sent them, and they opened them, problem solved. However, if they hadn't been able to reach me my husband would have been out of luck. His interview isn't until next Thursday so we have plenty of time anyhow, but an easy enough issue to avoid if I'd known not to send a PDF.

Note that this thread is dated 2017, except for the Most Recent Posts Hello all I filed IR1 DCF for my husband on March 23rd. Turned in the DS260 the following week, and got an email last week that we could schedule the interview. The whole thing happened extremely fast, much faster than either of us were expecting! We scheduled his interview for May 25th, which makes the process for the whole thing just a bit over 3 months. My main question is regarding the trip to Guangzhou and the interview process. I keep seeing references on this site to "document intake date" etc., but am I correct in surmising that this was the old process, and now we do not need to schedule a separate appointment for document intake, that it will happen before his interview? How about paying the fees that need to be paid before the interview? Are those also paid just before the interview itself? He will go to Guangzhou and do his medical exam this week, which should give him enough time to get the results in time for the interview. Presuming the interview goes well and they ask for his passport, any idea currently how long it will take before he has a visa in his passport? I'm sure this has been asked loads of times already, so apologies in advance if I'm being redundant, and thanks for any clarity you all can provide!

Yeah, that's what I thought I said Randy. Where did you get the impression that I meant you could get a spouse visa/residence before you were married? In fact, in the very first sentence I said "If you plan to marry your girlfriend before you file ..." (file for DCF, of course). The OP wants to file DCF and he's talking about filing for a potential wife. I assumed he meant to marry her in China, and as soon as he's married he can apply for a residence permit based on his marriage. Obviously if he's talking about a fiance visa it wouldn't be an option.