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Form I-130, Part C, 18.requests "Address in the United States where your relative intends to live" I am a permanent resident of the PRC. Although I own a home in the USA, it is currently being rented out for income, and I do not have a residence in the USA at the present time. I do intend to return to the USA shortly and rent an apartment. That being the case, how should I answer the question?

Finally almost done preparing the I-130 petition! Yet I always seem to be coming up with questions about these tiny bits and pieces... (sorry) Quick background: My husband and I met and lived in South Korea for the majority of our relationship. We did, however, move a lot in 5 years and while we always considered Seoul "home", we also spent a significant amount of time visiting my family in the US and his here in China. I already know I need to include an attachment to fit all the addresses in, but should I include our parents' addresses to fill in some gaps in time? For example, we spent 4 months visiting the US last year (mostly traveling and for the holidays) before we came to China. My husband was on a travel visa so I don't want to make it look like he lived there. The same goes for me visiting China for a month a while back. Except for the 4 month visit (we came to China afterwards), we maintained our Korean residency status but didn't have an address there while we traveled. I was thinking of including our parents' addresses followed by a " (Family visit) " note in the address column...would that work or is it unnecessary? Thanks again! This site is so helpful. ^^

Dearest Candle Lovers, After almost seven years in Beijing, and two and a half years of marriage to my Chinese wife, it's finally time to leave (China, not my wife!). I just got accepted to grad school, and have to be back in the US in August, so now I am frantically trying to figure out the most efficient way to get my wife home with me by August if at all possible. I have noticed a handful of people here in the forums who managed to do the whole process in under four months, and I'm hoping that our application process can go just as smoothly (but not getting my hopes up... I know so much of it is out of our hands, but we'd like to give it our best shot and at least get everything right the first time and get things submitted as quickly as possible). I've read up as much as time has allowed over the past week since getting accepted to grad school, but I'm working every day from the butt crack of dawn to the wee hours of the morning on a big project that will require me to work every single day like this until early May. So most of my research time has been on my phone while riding the subway (and its taken me several subway rides to write these questions!). After my initial research, here are the biggest questions that I'm most anxious about at the moment, in order of priority (the first one being most urgent): 1. I want to do a DCF filing, but I've read that you must have a residence permit and a valid visa. I've lived in China for seven years, first on a student visa, then four years on a business visa, and the past two years since getting married I've been on a travel visa (since we got married in the US and didn't get our marriage license translated and notarized at Chinese consulate in US, we couldn't apply for dependency visa for me in my wife's hometown, and since we go home to US every Christmas anyway, I just make a new visa at home every year). Will a travel visa be considered a "valid visa" for a DCF application? Also, after my first year as a student here in Beijing, I've been working as a freelance photographer, and as such have been unable to find any employers to sponsor me for a work visa. Yes folks, I'm sad to say, I am an illegal alien (more about this in Question 2 about my taxes). Is this going to hurt my chances with USCIS and GUZ, or can I potentially use this to support my case for residence here in China? The other problem is that my landlord for my Beijing residence lives abroad and has the hukou book with him, so the nephew who maintains the apartment has claimed from the beginning that they can't register me at the local police station (I've pushed them on this issue and they've refused to budge). This police station pass is the "residence permit" that I need to apply for DCF, right? If I can get a Chinese friend to register me as living with him at his local police station, would that be enough to only have a residence permit valid from right before I submit the application? Otherwise I don't see any way that I can get permits for the past several years! 2. I'm a bit worried about proving my financial stability. As I mentioned above, I work freelance here in Beijing. I'm almost always paid in cash or bank transfer with no questions asked and no taxes reported on the China side. It's my understanding that Americans living abroad don't have to pay taxes on foreign income up to about $92,000 if they are a resident in that country, so I've not turned in a tax return the past several years (which I've only now realized I was supposed to do even if I didn't owe anything... DOH!). However, I do have enough money saved up to get me and my wife through the next three years of school (and I will continue to work freelance on the side in the US - legally this time! - and my wife plans to work full-time as well). So what do I do about not having any tax returns for the past several years? Can I submit now for past years not submitted (and will this look bad to visa officer)? And does USCIS and GUZ care that I was working here on the wrong visa? Also, given my situation what is the best way to prove that my wife and I will not become a financial burden to the state? If I show bank account records in China and US with a fair bit of money, will they question my not having submitted tax returns? Can I avoid this, or at least supplement my application, by having one of my parents co-sponsor us? Also, how early do I need to submit financial information in the immigration visa process? Can I go ahead and submit the I-130 form without it to get the ball rolling on our application? 3. I've read up on the DCF filing process and am pretty familiar with the procedure, but I'm still unclear on how to GET STARTED. I've seen different info about this. Do I first put together my I-130 packet and then make an appointment to drop it off? Or do I make an appointment to pay a fee, and then after paying I mail in my I-130 packet? Is the I-130 packet the first thing I need to give them, or do I have to submit something else before that? Also I've heard lots of people say that they submitted a lot of materials early on before it was asked for (and even stuff that isn't requested). Is it recommended to do this when I send in the I-130 packet if my goal (like most people I'm sure) is to expedite the process as much as possible? I apologize for the long post (and my exceedingly obvious ignorance), and if any of you brave souls have made it this far I'm already extremely grateful. Any advice at all from this great community would be much appreciated!!!

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.