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At the moment my wife is over in China visiting family. Over the winter we worked on getting Mum-In-Law a visit visa to visit the states this summer, one thing we are thinking is perhaps a day trip to Toronto, so from looking applying for a Canada Visit visa for her seems to be a simple online process, with a possible bio-metric appointment to the ASC (USCIS Field office). http://www.cic.gc.ca/english/visit/apply-how.asp

Wife will be coming back after her time in China in July. She's been invited to some very prestigious art exhibitions in France and Italy that's right about the same time (and about 6 months being gone from the USA). We thought possibly she could come back to America and then go to these exhibitions. What concerns or problems would we run into if any of her coming back and then taking off for a few weeks to these other countries? THANKS! Also, does her 10 year GC allow her to travel to these countries without visas to these countries?

Does my wife w/10 year green card need to file any paper work if she's going to be outside the USA for say 6 to 9 months?

Hi all. My wife, who is a perm. resident in the U.S., will travel to China in a few months from the U.S. to visit her family. I wanted to see if anyone has experience wtih this and can tell me which name we should put her airline tickets in. Her Chinese passport has - Her First name and maiden last name Green Card has - Her first name and her married last name U.S. drivers license has - her first name and her married last name Should we just put her first name and maiden name on the air tickets or put her first name and married last name and carry a certified copy of the marriage license? I've seen other posts about this in the past but was unable to find. Any help would be appreciated Thanks all!

Hi All, I am wondering if anyone can answer this question for me. My Wife and I are planning a trip to Mexico by Flight. She is still holding China Passport and Green Card. So when I am booking flight for her do I use same method as I do when booking a flight to China? Because on Chinese Passport she still use her Maiden Name but on Green card it's the Married Name. Thanks, Vinny and Qing

Have anyone taken a cruise around Asia with their Chinese girlfriend? I wanted to find out if my Chinese fiancee can hop on a cruise that will go to Thailand, Vietnam, Singapore, Korea, Japan , Hong Kong. Have anyone taken their girlfriend from China onto one of these cruises and if so, did they need a passport or visa to stop at each country's port? Thanks for your information and advice. Thanks Wilfred

Hi guys, I am thinking about going back to china for the chinese new year. Just to be sure...I have a Chinese passport, a valid green card and a marriage certificate to explain my last name change. Do I need anything else to come back to US? Thanks! Shuyan

Wife is going to China for a week and returning with the inlaws as well,all on same plane(s).Airline is Air Canada,for her going as well as them (wife and her parents) coming back.I've heard that in Canadian airports that as far as cash goes (vending machines,luggage carts,etc.) that only Canadian currency is accepted.Any truth to that? Also would like to know what customs forms are requirted and if the required customs forms they will need to fill out prior to arrival here (and in Canada if applicable) are available for download so I can show wife what she needs to write (in) as well as the parents. BTW.,all will be coming to US./PHL.

VERY EXPENSIVE! Stayed at the Piccadilly Backpacker's Youth Hostel in London. Perfectly located, but we are a bit too old for youth hostels like this one. London's Chinatown is a short walk. The food was exceptional...of course, we live in Montana which has no real Chinatowns...so the bar was set low. Unfortunately, "Singing in the Rain" had not yet opened and we were not interested in the Michael Jackson show. The museum was nice, but it provoked a discussion about theft of Chinese antiquities. Ireland really does close down between Christmas and New Year's. Clontarf Castle was a good choice, but a little pricey. The holiday week upset our plans for the Ring of Kerry, so we stayed in Dublin. The Arlington Hotel might have been a better in town choice than the place we stayed after leaving the castle, although a tiny bit divey. It has a large pub with Irish music and Irish dancing; the music was great, the dancing was good. We bought a hop-on, hop-off bus tour. The green bus has Chinese language tours, the red bus does not. It is well worth the money. We did the Guinness and the Jameson tours, the jail (gaol) tour, the museum, and Dublin Castle. I had a bit of fun with the Dublin Castle tour guide when he mentioned Obama's Irish heritage. In an Irish brougue, peppered with a couple of choice Gaelic sayings, I learned growing up in an Irish family, I tossed a few humorous political barbs into the tour. I purchased a few bottles of better Irish whiskey at the Celtic Whiskey Shop, but failed to locate a place to smoke a cigar and sip a whiskey. All in all a good trip and worth busting the budget to mark a few things that I want to do with Lao Po off of the bucket list. A health scare almost stopped our trip, so it was especially sweet.

My girlfriend has previously traveled to Hong Kong twice and Jeju, Korea once. She is from Anhui province. We are planning on going from China to Vietnam stopping over in Hong Kong for 7 days in each direction. On the way back from Vietnam, I would like her to try and get a visa at a consulate in Hong Kong to either Schengen region, Australia, US, or New Zealand. Which of these would she be more likely to get. Also, is it a smart idea to be applying for these in Hong Kong instead of Mainland China?

what documents should she needs if she wants to travel domestically in the US or internationally? i applied for cr1 for my wife and guangzhou granted her a visa to come to the us and that visit expired in 6 months. we have been married less than 2 years. from what i read here, does that visa automatically becomes her 2 years green card? yes or no? 1. if no, would she get her 2 years green card in the mail after she arrives in the us? and how long do we need to wait? 2. once she get her 2 years green card, if we want to visit sf from nyc, is that all she need for id for domestic flight? 3. how about when we travel internationally to other countries, like england, france, or back to china etc.?

There was something on the Republic of Ireland's website about a UK visa being honored for short term visitors from XXX countries. China was one of those countries. Does anyone know if I need to get the wife both visas or will one do? BTW - try getting a phone number for either Ireland or the UK visa offices #@$&!# !!!

Has anyone gone to Jeju Island with someone who holds a PRC Chinese passport? Before I book round trip tickets from Beijing to Jeju, I just wanted to make sure that my girlfriend needs only her passport and no visa.

Hi all...my wife, a PRC citizen and a U.S. green card holder, seems to think that as of next July all GC holders will need a special visa to go back to China, even if for a short visit. Has anyone else heard of this, or perhaps it's just a rumor? Thanks in advance.

Our daughter just got her US passport (she's been considered a Chinese citizen since birth, since she was born in China), and now we have to decide how to proceed. I know that legally she can't keep both because the Chinese don't allow this. However, she lives in China and she goes to school in China, so giving it up would be a headache. I know that many people keep both passports secretly, but I've been searching on how to do this. I know that it involves a trip to a third country when traveling between the US and China, but I don't understand the logistics. For example, if I cross the border by land from Shenzhen to Hong Kong, how does this work? Does she need permission to travel to Hong Kong in her Chinese passport? Will it look strange because her US passport has absolutely nothing in it? Another question... If we book flights to the US from the mainland, do we actually have to go through customs in the middle country to make this work? For example, can we fly from Beijing to Tokyo and then to the US without going through Japanese customs or do we have to go through customs to make this work. If anyone has any experience with this, I would appreciate the help. I've tried searching the forum, but I can't find specifics. Thanks, Socks

I'm having trouble finding information on a specific aspect of the marriage/visa process, namely restrictions on one's freedom of movement. That is, ability to live in the US or China or a third country at different stages of the process. Let me explain my circumstances and goals. My fiancee and I are ready to get married. I already got my Certificate of Marriagability last month in Shanghai. (She is Chinese and I am American.) I have been living in China for the last two and a half years, and my visa (as well as my contract at work, and our apartment lease) expires in about nine months, in October 2012. Our goal is to go back to the USA together, ideally sometime around then -- not before my contract expires, and hopefully in time for Christmas. We don't necessarily want to live in the USA permanently starting with this visit, but I definitely want to take her there for at least some amount of time, to see my hometown, meet my friends and family, etc., and hopefully spend Christmas together with my family. After that, we don't have a firm plan yet. We could stay and live in the US, but we're considering living in another country, neither the US nor China, for a year or two before we settle down. (I figure I could teach English just about anywhere.) I've been trying to do research online about marriage and US visas and all of that, and it just seems like there are so many different approaches (K-1, K-3, DCF, ...?) which take different amounts of time, cost different amounts of money, have different requirements, etc., so my question is basically which approach is best. But of course "best" means different things to different people in different situations and with different priorities. Most of the advice that I can find online seems to be written with the expectation that the two partners are not in the same country, and they are oriented towards how to bring (her) to the US to be with (me). But in our case, we are already in the same country, so our goal is not exactly to be together as soon as possible, because we are already together (though at the same time we don't want to have to be separated for a long time either). I could always stay in China longer, renew my visa and keep working, but I think we'll be ready to move on by then, and I'd like to take her back to meet my family at Christmas. One of my concerns is that applying for a resident visa might require her to stay in the US for a certain period of time and prevent our plans to live abroad; is that true? But of course trying to get her a tourist visa seems silly since she's not going as a tourist; she's going as my wife (or fiancee, if that is better in some way; we could wait to get married later in the US instead of getting married in China). And if we just did a tourist visa, of course, then we'd have to do the whole visa application process over again when it came time to go back to the US again. Ideally, we could just do this visa for her one time, and allow her to come and go as she pleases -- but I don't know if it works like that. But that's what I'm looking for. I think I count as a resident in China (I'm here on a work visa and a residence permit) so DCF should be an option, is that right? Is that best? It looks like that may be the quickest. Basically I want to find the option that will give us the most flexibility in terms of where we need to be and for how long. I can't really find any information about this issue. So my question is, basically, what would be the restrictions (if any) on where we could live or travel to, and for how long, with each of the different approaches? Which would give us more flexibility to plan our schedule? i.e. the ability to go to the US when we want to (that is, between October and December of this year) instead of having to wait longer for paperwork to process or something, or on the contrary having to leave China sooner because her visa is ready and is only valid for a short time, or whatever -- and on the other end, once the visa is processed and accepted and we are in the US, then being able to leave the US (if we decide we want to) instead of having to stay there for two years or something like that to meet some permanent-resident requirement or whatever. These are the kinds of requirements and regulations that I'm not finding much info about. So if anybody knows the answers, or can direct me to a good resource (either a post here on CFL or a government website or anything), that would be most helpful. I'm not really in a financial position to be hiring lawyers or anything, and it seems like all this info should be available somewhere.

My chinese wife and daughter want to visit her sister and cousin in Canada. My wife is a US Greencard holder, and her daughter is a US Citizen. Is my wife required to get a Canadian Vistitor Visa to enter/exit with her US Greencard and Chinese Passport? My daughter is a US Citizen, so I guess her US passport is all that is required ....don't need Canadian Visa? I have been reading the Canadian Embassy website and various forums on people giving advice, it's confusion. Also,her sister is on a "6 months visitor visa" from China staying with her daughter in Canada.She received her visa by requesting that she visit her daughter for college graduation, can she stay in Canada and ask for another 6 months extension on her visa, or does she have to go back to China and re-apply there to go back to Canada on another trip. What are the odds that she will be refused to enter Canada again to be with her daughter? Thankyou, Chris

Greetings: Last night my wife and I were discussing her upcoming trip to China. She told me a friend of her's in Canada was required to have a specific document from the father indicating it was OK for her friend to travel with their child to China. I've never heard of anything, but thought I'd ask any how. So, any one ever heard of anything like this? Thanks Dan

air ticket with my marriage last name ,passport name still keep my maiden last name ,is it ok to check in in SFO airport and HK airport ? my destination is China .

I need to see the boss in Calgary next month. Because there's a nice little China town there, I want to take the girls. I called the Canadian government and they said a USA green card would get the girls into Canada. ...but the person on the phone said the green card was good so quickly and off the cuff that I didn't feel confident in their answer. (I know...I know...but these are my girls I'm frettin' about so cut me some slack ) Does the answer that the green card gets them in ring true with you guys? Anyone travel recently to Canada with their wife? I don't want to get them all excited and then have to tell them they cannot come with me.

Hello, I was looking at taking my wife to europe for vation this year and wondered if it is any easier to get her travel visas since she is a US resident with a green card. From my initial check they only seem to care what country you hold citizenship in. Anyone have any experience here? Thanks! Sy

A question for those members who have adjusted status, their Lao Po has her US Green Card, and you have traveled together internationally, to nations other than Canada and/or Mexico. A friend opined, that once my wife gets her Green Card later next year, she will still not have the same status/privileges that I enjoy, when visiting other countries such as Japan. He offered that my wife’s PRC passport and US Green Card, will still require more approval steps for her, above and beyond mine with my US passport, before she can enter some other countries and he specifically mentioned Japan. Any of you who travel internationally with your Chinese wife who has a PRC passport and US Green Card, have any issues when traveling to countries with her, other than contiguous Mexico and Canada ?? I understand that some countries require a visa along with the US passport, and would assume that that would also be true for a US Green Card holder, traveling under a non-US passport.

Wife has received 2-year Green card in June. We plan to go on a road trip to Ontario Canada during this long weekend. What are needed in order to pass through Canadian Custom? and Will wife be able to return to US with just Green card? Just want to make sure before we actually go on this trip. Please advise. Thank you!

What is the policy of travel within the EU for lao po who has her 2 year green card (we have to wait until Dec 08 to submit the I-751), but is of course still traveling under her Chinese passport? Will she need visas for every country we wish to visit? If so it will limit where we decide to go. I'd be very interested to hear what others who have traveled outside the US and China with their Chinese spouse have encountered! Thanks! Mercator

I'm sure this has been asked before, but we decided on the spur of the moment to visit friends in Toronto over the long weekend, and I need a quick answer. Will Lily and our son have any trouble entering Canada or re-entering the U.S. with their Green Cards and chinese passports? Thanks