newacct

She should have gotten an updated I-751 receipt which should serve as a 48-month extension letter.

Within a larger prefecture-level city, usually the urban area of the main city is divided in several small county-level units (called "districts"), and then there are rural areas, called counties, and then also minor outlying cities, called county-level cities. They are all at the same level and under the jurisdiction of the prefecture-level city. Sometimes counties can be changed into county-level cities by adding "city" to the name. Sometimes county-level cities can be renamed to districts to expand the urban area of the main city. For example, for Guangzhou, the Yuexiu, Tianhe, Haizhu, and Liwan districts are small and are parts of the Guangzhou main urban area, Huangpu, Baiyun, and Panyu are mid-sized and like suburbs of Guangzhou, and the other ones are much bigger and more rural. Conghua and Huadu used to be county-level cities, but now all 11 county-level units are called "districts". In your case, maybe the main urban area is small so that's why it has only one or two urban "districts".

There was a new announcement a week ago about visa application procedures for M, F, Z, S, Q, R, C visas (here is the one from the embassy; the same notice is on the consulate websites too). I am not sure if this means that unexpired visas of these types from before COVID can be used, or whether one would still need to apply for a new visa regardless.

I have heard recent rumors of Chinese citizens with valid Chinese passports and valid reasons to go abroad (e.g. work or study) having their passports cut at the airport and denied exit when they try to leave China. I have heard rumors of this sometimes even happening with people with US green cards. Has anyone here had this happen to someone they know?

Hopefully, given her explanation and the pandemic situation, the immigration officer will just let her in (perhaps with a warning), and she wouldn't need to deal with I-407 or immigration court. If the officer doesn't just let her in, the thing to watch out for is that they might try to pressure her into signing I-407 to voluntarily give up her permanent residency. The alternative is to be put into removal proceedings in immigration court, and that sounds scary to most people, so they might give in and sign I-407 instead. But she should really think of removal proceedings as a kind of "appeal" for the immigration officer's decision -- if the officer doesn't let her in, then she wants to be placed in removal proceedings because that provides her the opportunity to present her case a second time to an immigration judge, who may (and often do) rule in her favor. Plus she will be allowed to stay in the US in the meantime and can get a lawyer to represent her.

So your son was automatically a Chinese citizen and a US citizen from birth? Have you tried to get a US passport plus a PRC entry/exit permit instead? However, to get a US passport, you would need both parent's consent, unless you have sole custody. Even if you got a passport and any visas/permits for your son, you would still need to have both parent's consent to bring the child to another country (again, unless you have sole custody).

You can get a CRBA without the other parent's consent. But in general you cannot get a US passport for a child under 16 without the other parent's consent, unless you have sole custody or a court order allowing you to bring the child out of the country. Even if you got a passport for a child, you should not bring the child out of the country without the other parent's consent (again, unless you have full custody).

Children who have dual nationality (i.e. Chinese nationality under PRC law and foreign nationality under foreign law) are issued PRC travel documents by PRC consulates worldwide, and the documents say that the bearer is a citizen of the PRC. For example, all children who are born in the US, who are Chinese citizens at birth according to PRC law (because at least one parent was a Chinese citizen and neither parent was a Chinese citizen with a green card) are issued PRC travel documents. But it also applies to children who are born in China and who have dual nationality due to having one Chinese citizen parent and foreign nationality from the other parent. However, PRC travel documents are only issued by PRC consulates outside China; if the child was born in China, they first must have gotten an Entry/Exit Permit, and only after going to a PRC consulate outside China would they have gotten a PRC travel document for the next time they wanted to visit China. I am not sure which document the OP was referring to. But regardless, the document they would apply for now is a PRC travel document, as long as they have never renounced Chinese nationality for the child.

If they issued him a PRC Travel Document, that implies that he must have been a Chinese citizen from birth (according to Article 4 of the PRC nationality law, a child born in China to at least one Chinese citizen parent is automatically a Chinese citizen). So he would not be able to get a PRC visa (unless you first renounce Chinese nationality for him), and should get a PRC Travel Document instead. The procedure for applying for PRC passports and travel documents is to use the Chinese Consular app, which you can find on US iOS/Android app stores under the name "中国领事". Here are some FAQ from the Chicago consulate on using the app, and a QR code to go to the app store page. Unfortunately, all this is in Chinese only.

If the doctor really can't give her the Sinopharm or SinoVac vaccine because she's already vaccinated, then perhaps it can fall under "Persons with documented medical contraindications to receiving a COVID-19 vaccine"?

The proclamation applies to people entering as nonimmigrants. The CDC has details. You are right that the accepted vaccines for the proclamation doesn't include Kangtai vaccine (the only Chinese vaccines accepted are the Sinopharm and SinoVac ones). The proclamation doesn't apply to people with immigrant visas (though they have to comply with the separate vaccination requirement for immigration, which started on October 1). Is your fiance traveling to the US on a nonimmigrant or immigrant visa? If it's a K1 fiance visa, that is technically a nonimmigrant visa (even though it is often processed by the immigrant visa department), and neither the proclamation nor any State Department page specifically mentions exempting it, so I don't know how it would be handled. The State Department had previously granted national interest exceptions to all immigrant and fiance visa holders for the geographic COVID bans, but it is unclear if this would carry over into national interest exceptions for the new vaccination restrictions.

The list of testing places accepted by each consulate are listed on that consulate's page regarding testing for travel to China. Here is the list for New York.

Look on the I-90 page, under "Filing Fee",

It works in the WeChat that you get from the US (iOS or Android) app stores. The mini program inside WeChat is called "防疫健康码国际版" (Chinese for "Epidemic Prevention Health Code International Version"). Perhaps she could be confusing it with a different health code program?

I'm assuming she's a Chinese citizen? In WeChat she should do "Scan", and scan this: Alternately, in WeChat she can search for "防疫健康码国际版" and it should show up as one of the results. I am not really sure what is the difference between the WeChat mini-app for Chinese citizens and the website for foreigners.

(The English version doesn't contain the scannable code for the mini-app for Chinese citizens. That's why I linked to the Chinese version above.)

If she is a Chinese citizen, she needs to use a mini-app inside WeChat to get the code, after she gets the results of her tests. This page from the Chinese consulate New York has the scannable code to open the mini-app, and one of the documents linked at the end lists the two labs that can be used to do the tests in New York.

A copy of the green card by itself satisfies the proof of permanent residency. You don't need any of the other things.

Note that they need to have SSNs "valid for employment" issued before the due date of the tax return (including extensions) in order to qualify for the Recovery Rebate Credit. For the first two stimulus payments, that would be the due date of the 2020 tax returns (April 15, 2021, or October 15, 2021 if you get an extension).

That was actually consistent with the law at the time though. The CARES Act in March 2020 only allowed stimulus money to people filing jointly if both people had SSNs. So those filing jointly with a spouse who didn't have an SSN didn't qualify for any stimulus money. This was retroactively amended by the stimulus bill in December 2020 so that people filing jointly where only one person had an SSN qualified for the stimulus money of one person, so they can now claim that in the credit.

Note that dependents who do not qualify for the Child Tax Credit (including dependents who are 17 or over, as well as children who don't have SSNs) still qualify you for a $500 tax credit each. That's assuming your AGI is under $200k (or $400k if filing jointly); both the Child Tax Credit and dependent tax credit start phasing out after that.

Your daughter is a US citizen, and so is eligible for an SSN, no matter where she lives. Since she is eligible for an SSN, she is not eligible for an ITIN. You should get an SSN for her through the consulate. I am assuming she was born in 2020. In order for you to be able to claim the Child Tax Credit for her, she needs to have an SSN issued before the tax filing deadline (including extensions). So if she hasn't gotten an SSN and it's close to April 15, you should file for an extension so you can still get Child Tax Credit for her if she gets her SSN by October 15. If you are married as of December 31, you need to file as Married Filing Jointly or Married Filing Separately. You guys can do Married Filing Jointly even if your wife has never been in the US, but you will need to use Nonresident Spouse Treated as Resident, which will treat her as a resident alien tax purposes for all of 2020. That means all of her worldwide income will be subject to US taxation, but she can use the Foreign Earned Income Exclusion and/or the Foreign Tax Credit to exclude her foreign income from US tax (she would still have to report the income to use the exclusion and/or credit). To do Married Filing Jointly, she would need to use an ITIN, which she would apply for with you guys's tax return. She would either need to mail in her actual original passport or go to some IRS center that can certify passports for ITIN; I am not sure if they have those abroad. If you do Married Filing Separately, you do not need her to have an ITIN; you would write "NRA" in the space for her SSN/ITIN. In this case, she would be a nonresident alien for tax purposes, and she would not need to file a tax return if she didn't have US income. If applying for an ITIN is too inconvenient, another option is to file as Married Filing Separately first, and then amend it to Married Filing Jointly later when she gets an SSN later (you can amend within 3 years of the tax filing deadline).

A group of WeChat users in the US is suing over the ban (lawsuit here). Also, it is reported that administration officials are unofficially saying that the ban doesn't affect app stores in China, only the ones in the US.

So if she had been a permanent resident for 2 years by April 2019, then she had been a permanent resident for 3 years by April 2020 (and she can file 90 days before reaching the 3 year mark, so she could have applied for naturalization as early as January 2020). I am not sure what your comment about 5 years and December was about. Yes, she can and should apply for naturalization (N-400) while her I-751 is pending. Also, if she wants to apply for naturalization, she should hurry and file before October 2, as the filing fee goes up from $725 to $1160 (online)/$1170 (paper) at that time.

Did you mean 3 years instead of 5 years? By "waiting on the 10 yr" did you mean she is applying for Removal of Conditions? She would normally apply for that less than 2 years after getting her green card, so if she will soon have had her green card for 5 years, are you saying that her Removal of Conditions has been pending for 3 years?