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lhp

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Everything posted by lhp

  1. lhp
    Of course. The Chinese government loves to have the opportunity to call into question the safety of imported foods since Chinese food safety is such a severe problem. (If you live in China and want to make yourself ill, read about the Chinese dairy industry.)
  2. lhp
    No good news yet. Called my senator's office today after not having heard anything from them since contacting them in September about our case. Hoping to wake up to a reply email from them tomorrow…glad I haven't had to pay taxes the past five years.
  3. lhp
    We have an Apple TV and it worked great for streaming movies from the iPad. It's much more useful after you jailbreak it, though.
  4. lhp
    Dave – check out some of the other threads in this forum. This year it seems to be taking 8+ months. http://candleforlove.com/forums/topic/46106-similar-ap-situations/ http://candleforlove.com/forums/topic/45892-from-dcf-to-gz-blue-our-story/ My wife joined a QQ group for spouses who are in additional processing – only in the last few weeks have people from February and March started getting their visas. If your wife would like the QQ group number, send me a PM and I'll ask my wife for it to pass along.
  5. lhp
    It'll be important to file back taxes as either join returns (if your wife has an ITIN) or married filing separately. Not indicating that you are/were married on the returns can raise red flags. If you don't want to leave China and will soon be certified to practice TCM, you might look into gaining employment at expat clinics in BJ/SH/GZ/etc. I know & knew several expats working in expat clinics who did quite well for themselves financially–you'd easily be able to afford international schools for your daughter.
  6. lhp
    Congratulations!
  7. lhp
    A few more of these stories in the news: Old woman falls down, asks little boy for help, blames him for making her fall and demands compensation. The old lady's family actually left her outside the door of the boy's home, where she refused to let anyone enter or leave until they paid her. She was there for two days. Passengers on bus do nothing to help bus driver being who is fighting a thief armed with a knife who was robbing people on the bus. Brazilian beaten by a group of thieves he tried to stop as a crowd watches and does nothing. Of course, when folks in China do step in to help, they do it with style.
  8. lhp
    Yesterday someone from the QQ group who interviewed in March got her visa. So yeah…we may all have to get settled for a long wait. But who knows…it seems like before nothing was happening. Maybe now everyone will get processed relatively soon (but in order).
  9. lhp
    My wife follows a couple of QQ groups for Chinese spouses who are in AP, and people who interviewed in February and March are reporting that they are starting to see updates on the CEAC website. No visas, yet, but looks like someone at the Consulate is finally working. Hopefully whatever caused this backlog is coming unstuck and things will start moving along.
  10. lhp
    I'm not sure, maybe a member who has DCF'd more recently could answer that. I would guess that they will, but hopefully someone else can confirm. When we did our DCF we brought the original notorial marriage certificate along with photocopies. They checked the original to the photocopies and gave the original back to us. My wife then took it along with her to the interview. Best wishes for your husband's interview!
  11. lhp
    Nothing here, either. We've not had any updates on the status website, so I hope that the activity you saw indicates that you'll get good news soon. My wife has indicated that some of the people active on the 001 forums have started to get their visas, so hopefully this backlog is close to being resolved. I know that it's likely not something under his auspices, but I have written (and today will send) a letter to Gary Locke describing and (gently) complaining about the lack of communication and general uncertainty that seems institutionalized in the process.
  12. lhp
    Thanks. I'll try emailing them to ask, but given all the other answer-free replies I've gotten from them through it, I expect another non-answer answer.
  13. lhp
    Still no reply, but now an issue is coming up about the physical and police certificate. My wife's physical exam results will be more than six months old soon, meaning we get to go to Shanghai and spend another 2,000 RMB for a new exam. From what I've read on the boards, it sounds like her Police Certificate may also be set to expire, since it will soon be six months old, too. I've read in other threads that once our AP is complete and the petition is approved, the sop from GZ is to ask that you get a new health check & police certificate and send them in along with the passport. Does anyone know how big a timeframe you have to do this? Since we both quit our jobs in July expecting AP to take ~3 months and be complete by September, we're looking at jobs here in China. Of course, employers want us to sign 12 month contracts, which is a problem since she'll have six months to get to the US once the visa is approved. I'm wondering if, once approval comes through, we could wait a few months before submitting the updated physical and police check, thus buying more time, or if they give you a deadline by which everything must be turned in.
  14. lhp
    My wife used her China Merchant's Bank credit card at Guangzhou in June to pay the fee. It's a dual currency card (easy to get set up, just call customer service); she was charged in USD and paid the bill in CNY. Sorry to hear they've again complicated things.
  15. lhp
    Since she already holds a BA, she might look at the online teacher certification programs in Texas. All the coursework can be done online, she'd only have to go to Texas for a summer to do her student teaching. I don't think that the BA/teaching area gap would matter as long as she can pass the Praxis in language (Chinese) teaching. Otherwise, there are many schools that do one year MA in education + teaching certificate programs. If she wants to be a classroom teacher, an MA will be important to have.
  16. lhp
    My wife and I are still lingering in AP, but we'd like to go back to the States for Christmas this year (we did a Christmas trip last year, too). Her current B2 expires in November, and we've been wondering if it is (1) possible and (2) worth the trouble to apply for a new visitor's visa. I'm not sure if since she has the AP pending that would mean that she is automatically ineligible for a visitor's visa, or if applying for a visitor's visa might inadvertently screw up (or, worse, cancel!) our immigrant visa petition. Anyone have experience/insight into this? This would be her third visitor's visa and fifth trip to the States.
  17. lhp
    The NYT ran some photos of people on the sidewalk on Changan Jie who were injured by the jeep that was blown up in front of the Forbidden City. The only person shown helping the injured? A foreigner. I had my students address the topic of bystanders choosing not to help the injured, and they had some interesting stuff to say. I wrote it up here: http://bit.ly/viuSqY
  18. lhp
    We got three notorized copies w/translation of the marriage certificate ("white book"?) when we got married, but haven't yet had to give away a copy. When we DCF'd and when my wife interviewed, they asked that we bring the original, which they then checked against photocopies that we gave them. I'm still glad we got three copies, I guess, just to spare us any future hassle, but as it turns out it might have been fine to just go with the one.
  19. lhp
    Not yet. We are starting on our fifth month of waiting (and I think asano, whose thread you also posted in, is in his sixth month). How long have you been waiting? It seems like the wait times have shifted this year. My wife has started reading Chinese-language forums about immigration, and starting in February or March of this year the members have reported that wait times have suddenly become much longer. Where the members of that site were previously reporting ~90 days processing time (the same as what's been reported here on CFL), there are a number of people on that site who interviewed early this year and are still waiting. If the process were transparent, it wouldn't be as big a deal. The way it is, with no meaningful communication from GZ/USCIS and no way to get a status update on your AP, it's awful.
  20. lhp
    How long have you been waiting, sweetpie?
  21. lhp
    Thanks for the update in the thread and via PM. Sorry to hear your wife hasn't yet gotten a response; I hope we all get good news soon. We have been religiously checking her application's status via the CEAC page you linked...the last update was September 26. Is yours the same? I have been wondering if that's when the name check was sent back to GZ or if the database is updated at the end of the month. I shouldn't try to read too far into the tea leaves, of course, but waiting is hard, especially after the CO said one month. Have you contacted a senator yet? I did several weeks ago, no response yet. After three weeks have passed I plan to give them a follow-up call. Good luck with the waiting and best wishes for good news to come soon! We are resigned to being in China through December; hoping to be back in the US for Christmas!
  22. lhp
    asano, My wife interviewed about a month after your wife, and we are still waiting, too. Similar to your wife, my wife was told that the Administrative Processing would take a month to complete. I have emailed the Consulate every month, receiving the stock no-answer answers each time, and just sent a request to one of our senators to investigate. Doing so required filling out a paper form, signing it, and sending it to the senator's office. I made a donation to her reelection campaign before submitting the request, so I hope they give it some extra care. Here's to hoping we don't have to wait much longer!
  23. lhp
    Milk powder is a big one, but inconvenient, and baby lotions from the US is popular (we usually buy Aveeno brand)…but my favorite is to go to TJ Maxx/Marshalls/Ross and buy a pile baby clothes. You can get a ton of clothes for relatively cheap, all from brands that give lots of face. Buy big, for some reason Chinese babies seem to be much bigger than western ones.
  24. lhp
    We're getting close to two months now –– thanks to CFL, I wasn't that surprised that processing wasn't completed in one month, but wasn't able to prevent my poor wife from being disappointed. Looking forward to the three months-ish resolution. I'll email the consulate on the two-month "anniversary", then I'll get in touch with my senator a week or so later. That'll take us to close to three months, anyway.
  25. lhp
    When my wife had her interview in late June, the CO said that her CCP-related additional processing would take one month. It will be one month in twelve days; we'll see if we've heard from them by then…My wife is quite a bit more optimistic about this than I am, and I'm afraid she's going to end up disappointed.
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