Multistrada

PPS: A detail I want to add to the phone conversation with the consulate official when she called us on Mar 6: She asked me to provide a letter from the AIRLINE that my wife can get on the flight. In desperation we called Air China. Air China flatly rejected our request: the letter ought to come from a doctor, not us. She called back half an hour later and told us that letter is no longer necessary because her boss has agreed to expedite the visa processing. It was a heart-wrenching half an hour - we honestly thought that was the end. We were trapped, stonewalled, and mightily screwed by the State Department. My wife's due date is Apr 7. If all goes well our baby Sabrina will be born in Valley Medical Center in San Jose, California. As you can see: we weren't lying about my wife's pregnancy. My wife still looks small and agile, so hopefully we won't encounter any problems at the airport tomorrow. We were forced to lie to the airline staff if inquired, but I see no other choice. This didn't have to happen had the consulate not "approved before un-approved" her application on Feb 6. Now the story is complete.

Oh BTW - excuse me for going off-topic a bit. My wife and I know many beautiful, well-educated (some educated in US or Canada), classy women. So you know what to do.

Last episode of my story: At crack of dawn I checked the passport status, and it's changed to Ready for Pickup. I hopped on a cab first thing in the morning and waited outside the Citic Bank for 26 minutes. The girl at the counter searched for thick stacks of passports and asked me: are you sure it's supposed to be sent to this bank? I said yes, this is an immigration visa application, you are not going to find a passport without a huge envelope. She dove into a big safe and fished it out. We are flying out tomorrow. The airfare is close to $1000 per, not cheap, but we are glad it's over. Last but not least - thanks for all the help and support the wonderful people on this site have given us. I will come back often to help other peeps who encounter similar problems. I'm a medical device scientist and entrepreneur, and I'm hopping between both sides of the ponds doing all sorts of business - bringing American products to this shore, and vice versa. Anyone needs a beer buddy/business partner, shoot me a note. supernova1987a@gmail.com

Thanks Tsap. I've learned a great deal from this site so I figure it's time to pay back. My experience is a case study because it was approved before it's un-approved. I want to share every piece of the puzzle I picked up along the way so folks after us can use it as a guidance to plan their way through the process.

Update No 4. We are still stuck here in Beijing. There's a story to tell - it could even be fun to look at a few months down the line. Here it goes. The GZ consulate called us twice on March 6th. First they suspected I was lying about my wife's 36-week pregnancy, then they did agree to expedite our administrative processing, on the condition that whether my wife can get on the flight is none of their business. Expediting they did - in the EVENING of March 7th, Friday, the visa status finally became "Issued". They did warn us though, they may not give us 6 months to enter the US because - get this - my wife is pregnant. I find the logic a bit strange - if my wife was expected to give birth here in China, shouldn't they give us MORE time, no LESS, to enter the US? The following Monday (Mar 10) the passport status on ustraveldocs.com became "the passport is received from the consular section, and is being processed for delivery". But when I emailed passportstatus@ustraveldocs.com, the status was "origination scan". That was two business days ago. Both status messages haven't seen any change. Calls to the Citic Bank "expedited pickup location" yielded the disappointing answer: "not here yet. If it doesn't arrive in 10 calendar days, call us back." There is no internal tracking mechanism at the Citic Bank. What can you expect, it's an SOE. Here's what I've learned during this agonizing wait: 1) The Citic Bank system is a black hole. Things do go in, but you don't know when they come out; as a matter of fact, you may not know even if they have come out (folks complained on forums that the status sometimes doesn't gets changed to "Ready for Pickup" after it arrived at the pickup location); 2) ustraveldocs's helpline does not help you when you needed it the most; 3) Citic Bank's telephone system will automatically hang up on you if the hold exceeds maybe 30 seconds - their system is, um, impolite; 4) Those so-called "Expedite Pickup Locations" will NOT, as they advertised, have your documents on the day the Consulate releases them. It may only be true if your visa is processed in the SAME CITY; 5) ALWAYS expect long, unpredictable delay when an SOE is involved anywhere in the process; 6) Murphy's Law: the more you want it, the later you get it.

Many posts are now circulating on Weixin circles about the potential harm PM2.5 might do - going straight to your lungs and then the blood circulation, killing off macrophages and clogging up capillaries. This is by far a deeper understanding of China's environmental problems than most ordinary Chinese people realized before Locke's arrival. Now so-called “PM2.5 masks" are in the supermarkets, 3M made a fortune with their N95 masks, and Vogmask has achieved significant market penetration in Tier 1 cities. Dealing with the smog problem is on the top agenda at the People's Congress this week. I'm working with another Silicon Valley entrepreneur to make a version of PM2.5 mask that's a bit easier to breath through. Having to live here for at least another year with my family, I'm doing myself a favor, if nothing else.

Thanks Randy. He single-handedly made AQI known to ordinary Chinese people. While upsetting a lot of Beijing officials, he did the world a great favor (now my home state California is known to be affected by the blown air foul air).

I grew up in China and returned as an entrepreneur in 2011. Let me just say the seeing the events unfolding here makes me a bigger fan of America. Gary Locke was well liked just for being an educated, classy American - low key, budge-conscious, and polite. After people realized that this wasn't to make some sort of political statement, they began to question: why don't our officials stop acting like they are above all of us? I think this is what ticked off the official media: he erected a standard few Chinese officials have the class to meet.

Thanks Dan. Looks like you went through the even more dreadful K-1 process. We are in Beijing now. The smog cleared up a few days ago and the masks are off for now.

Update No 3. On Feb 28 the document was received by the consulate. On March 5 the case is still in AP. I have sent three emails pleaing for their attention, to no avail. The last access to the case occurred on March 4, which is probably triggered by one of my emails. I'm still pretty calm about it all but my wife isn't quite - understandable given our baby is due in a month and Chinese hospitals aren't excactly Disneyland.

OK guys a little update. We are stuck in Beijing still. Here's what happened: despite the lack of a blue slip, after more than two weeks of "adminitrative processing" they decided they wanted our notarized marriage certificate. Not the original copy, a notartized copy. Well, I'll admit this is my first marriage and first CR1 application, so I didn't know this could become an issue. We rushed to get the marriage certificate notarized at the place of our marriage - KaiFeng, a process with more than its share of drama. On Feb 23th we received the certificate and dropped it off to a Citic Bank branch in Beijing 9am the next time. Citic Bank apparently only sends these things out once every other day, so it went out on February 25. As of Feb 27, the document is still not received. I sent Guangzhou Consulate 3 emails in the last two weeks and got nothing but the standard reply: we are waiting for the document. My wife is now 35+ weeks pregnant and technically she should not take a flight at all. Beijing was covered in thick smog for a week straight. Today it just cleared up. We went to a local hospital twice to perform her pregnancy tests. Let me tell ya, the crowd there is just insane. Doctor says the baby's kidneys have elevated echogenecity - at first they thought it was polycystic kidney disease - a really, really scary prognosis. Today they overturned their verdict, and think it just warrants weekly sonographic monitoring. Weekly agony, more like. An interesting note to share with everyone. Yesterday on UStraveldocs I tracked the passport, it says "your passport is delivered to post". Well, her passport IS IN THE POST to be printed on, so that message probably just means that the DOCUMENT is on its way to the consulate, NOT the passport. A pretty brain-dead system they have there, too. Unless somehow the passport is already printed somewhere else and being sent back to the consulate somehow? I really doubt it. Will post as more news come.

Still in AP. I guess after some soul searching on Presidents Day, they decided they don't want another future presidential candidate

A little update: the CEAC status check has been giving me Application Error three days in a row. NVC and Guangzhou Consulate are both unreachable today due to the National Holiday. Seems like the computer has taken its kids to Disneyland, as well.

Thanks Randy. No she's not a CP. I did send them the first email three days ago through the form, and got a response within two days. I know it's still early and this really isn't a cause of concern per se, but our anxiety comes mainly from her pregnancy. Fingers crossed. I'll update once we saw some movement - just so that everyone knows what to expect after the interview. They did keep her passport. Congratulated her too. I figure how long can they keep her passport like that anyway....

So here's our story - my wife's CR1 interview was scheduled on Feb 6, at 7:45am. The interview lasted about 5 minutes, and bang, the IV was approved - or so we think. No blue slip, no nothing. Then the legendary administrative processing began. It started on Feb 11. I wrote the Consulate IV unit and told them that my wife is about 7 months pregnant, a few weeks of AP would make her inadmissible to most commercial flights. On Feb 14, 2 business days after my letter, I received a short note: "Your case is under review. We will contact you with further notice". I thought to myself: please don't contact me, just give her the visa already. I don't want to sound like a whiner, but for anyone who've been to Beijing, you probably wouldn't want your child's first sight to be the smoggy sky and a quarter million nurses, doctors and other babies. Today, Feb 15, a perfectly smoggy Saturday, I went on CEAC to check the case status, and the site seems to be down - "Application Error". I know some of you have experienced something similar - that's how I googled my way into this forum in the first place. I just haven't seen anything exactly the same - anyone cares to share what eventually happened? How long did it take.