Palladin

Latest email inquiry to Guangzhou IV (using their web interface) got very prompt response in a few hours. They did not say much but that my wife's case is still under AP and they will notify her using EMS once the AP is done. That sounds very encouraging. They wouldn't be using EMS to notify the applicant if at the end of AP they are to send the case back to USCIS. I think they probably would use plain postal letter to notify you of any case return, if they bother at all. Most likely there will be no communication till US petitioner receive a letter from USCIS. I don't think I can get a more explicit response confirming that "no we don't send your wife's case back to USCIS", and "yes your wife will get a new interview and we will grant her a visa". They can't do it. They can't explicitly promise an AP outcome, before it is even finished. In principle they need to leave all possible AP outcome open. Telling me they will use an EMS mail, is about as explicit as they could get, in providing a specific response.

This right here is probably the single greatest frustration for everyone going through this process. One minor to medium mistake in the interview, or a document or something, and you're looking at months to years of delays all for something that probably could be straightened out in 10 minutes or less if they would just talk to the petitioner. Exactly! One random visa officer rushed to one mistaken decision after 5 minutes of lousy interview questioning, and then they hang you up for one or two years to correct one simple and clear mistake made in 5 minutes, without giving you much opportunity to clarify thing, and they take many officers at many different department reviewing your files for many months at a time, all just because one damn wrong judgment by one visa officer at an odd minute? Mean while the real sham marriages get to walk free because they have one lucky minute where the officer never asked more than 3 trivial questions. The system is just so terribly broken. Unfortunately that's what is happening every day at US overseas Consulates.

Any update on the white slip CR1 visa denial case discussed here?

I looked at the AP decisions at the above link. You only cited K-1 petition cases. But there are none for CR1. Why? Under what list are the CR1 cases?

This is very useful links. How come I did not notice them from day one and do more homework to prepare our case better. I think I was deceived by the many stories on 001 of easy visa passes, that I assumed that as long as you have more than abundant financial support and you are in real relationship, passing would be huzzle free. I should have known better. I thought my wife had a small chance of getting a blue note asking her to supplement something to clarify a few of their doubts. Never in my wildest dream would I thought that she got a straight white note of denial, and in less than 10 minutes of questioning.

And here is the problem, IMO: You submitted evidence to support their point of view; that she is hesitant and doesn't want to move to the US is damaging to the relationship and the intent of immigration. Her last Q&A answer was "I am willing to marry him"... That is enough in most VO's eyes to see the relationship as YOUR attempt to get a lady to the US. She appears to have little interest by her answer and then you submitted chat logs proving it for the VO... You said translation is not 100% but this is YOUR own words explaining your wife's answer. You took it a wrong way. A girl married a guy for a variety of reasons. Uncle Sam is not in a position to judge constitute true love and what is not true love in a romantic relationship, with one exception that is is the green card the main drive behind the relationship. If the green card is not the main motivation, then for the purpose of immigration law the relationship is bona fide, visa versa. For example if a young foreign man marries an old and ugly rich American woman for her money, people may find the relationship disturbing but Uncle Sam would not jump in to try to make a morale judgment, as long as the green card was not the main motive. Once again they are not try to make a morale judgment, but just try to make sure people don't try to circumvent the immigration process. Whether the two parties in a relationship knows every detail of each other may help to determine whether the relationship is bona fide. But it is not completely reliable. A girl in pursuit of a green card would be so highly motivated that she make sure that she memorizes everything like a computer and pass the most scrutinizing interview questioning, but yet it should still be a sham marriage. On the other side, two people who truely fall in love at first sight, and they barely stayed together for a few weeks, why would she know the name of a formal classmate of mine that I have not meet for 30 years, like say. It would be ridiculous. The whole interview is a joke. If you hope to expose some doubt through 10 minutes of questioning, maybe that will work. But if you hope to make a final determination whether a relationship is bona fide or not, in a mere 10 minutes of questioning, that is simply not possible and ridiculous. Not even God can do that. The issue is not that they make mistakes. The issue is they give virtualy no opportunity for the petitioner/applicant to clear away the doubts and make their cases, before sending the documents back to the USCIS, at least typically. I hope that is not the case for us. The Consulate did respond much more positively once they acknowledged having received my appeal documents. That is a positive thing. They normally would not even take so much as a small piece of paper into the files, once a white slip denial is issued. Let's see what happens next.

I don't just sit back and wait and do nothing. I have made all the effort to contact the Consulate and actually contacted Marc Ellis' associate, too. There is good hope that they will keep the case in the Consulate and give us a second interview. This is what I am hoping for, not just hoping for but fighting for. Failing that and if the case is indeed returned to USCIS I will give it a serious thought hiring a lawyer to help with the appeal.

I did try to contact a few lawyers and no one seemed to have a particular connection, or guanxi, with Consular officials. It would seem to me that they would be helpful at the USCIS appealing process, but not yet now. Seeking such guanxi may be backfiring if I am not careful. Our relationship is every bit normal and strong as in any love story. They may consider big age difference a red flag. I never meant to find girl so much younger than me but it just so happened that we found we were very good match for each other. I have plenty of explanations where each of us came from and how we get to fall in love with each other, in the documentation submitted with the original petition, which had they read would have cleared away any perceived red flag. As for presentation during interview, there was virtually none. My wife wasn't well prepared at all. The interview went just like a simple Q&A, with each answer given in short and brief form with no elaboration, which didn't help at all. I was assuming that they would have read my documentations and have a basic idea of our case to begin the interview and then it would go smoothly and quickly. That assumption was totally wrong. It seems they based their decision almost entirely on my wife's presentation during questioning, as they had hadly read my documents yet. There is a good lesson to be learned from my wife's experience. Don't take anything for granted when it comes to immigration visa process.

tsap seui: Thanks for telling your story. I must say that reading your story was depressive! Very depressive for me. I am glad you have finally put that behind you. Probably at the time you were deceived by their seemingly reassurance. You did not manage to put even a single piece of paper into your case file after the blue slip denial. So whatever reason that trigger them to deny in the first place, remains the same and there was no new material to debunk it or address it. For me things may be a bit different. I acted immediately and swiftly, writting up a few documents, attaching a few key pages of our internet chat log to prove the point, and all that. Initially I could not get the papers to them at all. But eventually I figured out a channel to get the papers to them. I must be fortunately that some one read them, and be compelled to pass the document to the IV official, and they acknowledged having received my appeal documents. Which is good. I hope the appeal documents I managed to get into their hands made the powerful arguments to persuade the AP reviewing official to make a favorable decision and reverse the course of things. I thought I had a strong case, but comparing with yours, tsap seui, your high income level and you guy's preparedness for the interview and all that, I guess no one could claim to have a strong case and no one could claim to be well prepared. If they consider that everything could be fabricated, then what's good of a whole suitcase of evidences? It's just incredible how their mind work. Fortunately there may still be a few rational minds in the Consulate. As for people's advice of seekig legal help. Yes definitely. But legal help would only be useful when it reach the point of USCIS return and the NOIR letter. I am not at that stage yet. The case is still in the Consulate. But I have been doing the research continuously and when the time comes I defnitely will hire a lawyer.

In hindsight yes more trips would have made a difference. They might have reasonable doubts but they should question more to clear those doubts. Money is not the only issue whether one can make frequent trip or not. Job duties, availability of vacation time, child custody duties are more important consideration than mere air ticket money, when considering whether to take vacation. Most people don't have the luxury of have all the money to spend, and all the time available to spend the money, and also don't have to work or take responsibility for something. I submitted abundant documentations explaining how we got to know and all that. They probably never had time to read any of them. The lesson learned is the interviewee really needs to be prepared to present everything alone.

Trust me, I tried my hardest to get to the root of the problem the very day after the interview. I came at that VO from 5 different angles and he stone walled me at every turn and lied his way out of the whole situation. Once while he was looking at the computer about our case I saw his face change slightly and he said in a low voice everything is okay with your case....but he wasn't going to help me at all. That is their procedure in Guangzhou...after the interview they aren't supposed to talk to you about your case in anything but very general terms. tsap seui Sorry for what you had to endure, Tsap Seui. Do you still remember on what 5 different angles did you try to attack the problem when meeting up with the VO? Maybe you attacked at the wrong angle. My understanding is by procedure regulation they are not at liberty to reverse a VO's decision as long as the VO seem to acted reasonable given what was available during interview. They can not take additional information even though additional documentations would have helped to debunk the decision. So I figured the angle you needed to attack is something may not went correctly during the interview, that had things gone more normal the outcome could have been different, even given the same information which was available during interview. If you attack that and they agree with you then there is a chance the decision can be reversed, as regulations allow that. But you also have to be careful not to accuse the VO of any wrong doing. The benefit of doubt is the VO acted reasonably and is not at fault. If you accuse the VO of wrong doing they would not even listen to you, as they presume you just acted emotionally without any ground to stand. Fortunately I find plenty of things that truly went wrong during interview. Things that I do not need to blame the VO for, nor do I need to blame my wife. Little things that few even realize but really made a huge difference in the outcome of the interview. I think my arguments convinced they to have a second look at the case. I hope so.

I'm with you Dan, glad to hear that apparantly they have taken this case out of a white slip denial and turned it into a blue slip, even letting Palladin rebut something. I've had trouble following everything on this one, but if the consulate has done the rarely heard of deed of changing the lady from a white slip denial to a blue slip....good for her, and Palladin. I hope it works out for you guys. tsap seui I am hoping for the best. The fact of the matter is my wife was handed a white note indicating 221(g) and that they are sending the files back to USCIS, after a less than 10 minutes interview. The white slip according to all that's been told here, must be an "out and out denial". I was able to get some explanation documents in and even get the IV acknowleded that my documents were passed over to the interviewing officer (or maybe they mean the officer doing Administrative Review). From that point on the response I got from IV are more and more positive. They assured me repeatedly they are not sending the files back to USCIS while its undergoing AP; They assured that my wife will be notified once the AP is finished and the case is continued (I guess "case continued" means continued action at the Consulate, not sending back to USCIS, because sending back to USCIS would mean "case suspended" not case continued). I hope it really means that they have a change of heart and moved the case from white slip to blue slip. I know it is rare for that to happen but given what I got I don't see why not, as long as they even bothered to look at what I tried to convoy to them: 1. The interview simply went completely wrong, with communication break down that even the VO was not aware. Even perfect correct answer by my wife could be construed to be wrong by the VO, due to a few weird reasons and due to use of an interpreter who may not translate things 100% precisely. (100% precise translation is impossible anyway) 2. Document hand in the prior day also went wrong. My wife was the last one and she was rushed. Critical files were not taken, and by all odd the VO did not have much chance to review the case files before start of interview. 3. Strong evidences to directly debunk the non-bona fide relationship finding. Specifically excertion from our long internet chat logs where my wife showed a hesitation to move to the USA, and I was the one persuading her everything will be OK and she will like the life in the USA. At a point I emailed the entire log of 1000+ pages and I am not sure if they get it. But it demonstrate the point that the logs are original, not faked. I have no reason to fake it myself. 4. Of course explanations from my point of view. I have pretty income and looked for nothing but true love, and would not be marrying something who is interested in green card only. And all the artifacts and gifts I bought to show my love, and stuff like that. I tried to think from their aspect what could be construed as red flags, and explain them away one by one. From all indications maybe indeed I am achiving the almost impossible that they have switched the case from white denial to now the equivalence of a blue slip. I am not letting my guard down this time. Until my wife gets her visa and actually comes over, the fight is not over yet. But I want to reassure the Consulate they are not my enemy and I want them to be working on my side. The real enemy are the sham marriages that made legitimate visa application that much harder. I give the Consulate the benefit of doubts that they must have granted more wrong visas than the ones they wrongly denied, when it comes to marriage based immigration visas.

Been following this thread since my wife's CR1 visa denial in early November. Any update guys?

I looked up the INA and could not find what is the Section 5A that the Consular Officer referred to in INA. Actually recent visa denial white slips no longer referred to Section 5A any more. They refer to 221(g) instead. Link to the full INA is here: http://www.uscis.gov/portal/site/uscis/menuitem.f6da51a2342135be7e9d7a10e0dc91a0/?vgnextoid=fa7e539dc4bed010VgnVCM1000000ecd190aRCRD&vgnextchannel=fa7e539dc4bed010VgnVCM1000000ecd190aRCRD&CH=act

GUZ IV response to my most recent email inquiry (using the web email) repeatly says that our case is undergoing Administrative Processing and that I can be "rest assured" my wife will be contacted by mail what to do next once this processing is done. There won't be any contact from the Consulate at the end of AP, if they are to send the case back to USCIS, right? In such a case you would be hearing from the USCIS directly. So the fact that they tell me "rest assured" my wife will be informed of the next action and "the case is continued" at the end of AP, is a positive thing. I think the keywords "case continued" means the case is proceeded to next interview, or visa issuance at the Consulate. If the files are sent back to USCIS, the case is not continued until it made a round trip back from the USCIS with a reaffirmation. In any case, since I have submitted rebuttal documents, and the GUZ IV acknowledged having received my rebuttal documents and are reviewing them. It would mean that should they send the case back to USCIS for review they would have to send my rebuttal document together with it, and they also have to put in writting they they could over-ride my rebuttal and persuade USCIS for a possible case revocation. If they can't do it there is no point for them to send the files back to USCIS only to be re-affirmed outright. I hope to win this fight soon. I don't see why not. GUZ IV is NOT trying to fight me off as an enemy at this point. Email responses have turned from being negative (as: we don't want to hear from you and won't provide any info) to now being positive and reassuring (as: rest assured your wife will hear from us once we finish the AP) so far.