baobeizhu Posted December 4, 2008 Report Share Posted December 4, 2008 Hey! I am an American woman (born and raised in Hawaii) but I am Asian. lol. However, if there is ever anything you have questions about, I would be glad to help you! xiaofeizhu,I have a question for you, do you happen to know if the DCF is only an option if you are a resident w/in China for the 6 months prior to filing? I have just done the CR-1 route, but had formerly resided and been registered in China for just under 3 years when married but later ran into visa difficulties around the Olympics....I remember the lady at the US embassy had told me something about filing an immigration petition when I picked up my single status paperwork, but at the time I was like 'yeah, I don't think we'll need that' and didn't really pay attention. Funny how things work out Anyway, I'm another female on this board. I think the other 'big question' how many people (men or women) didn't meet through the internet. So far I see xiaofeizhu and myself (baobeizhu...hehe oink oink) Cheers! Link to comment
Dennis143 Posted December 4, 2008 Report Share Posted December 4, 2008 (edited) baobeizhu, funny! Post your question on your own and you will surely receive the answers that you need. Edited December 4, 2008 by Dennis143 (see edit history) Link to comment
xiaofeizhu Posted December 4, 2008 Report Share Posted December 4, 2008 Hey! I am an American woman (born and raised in Hawaii) but I am Asian. lol. However, if there is ever anything you have questions about, I would be glad to help you! xiaofeizhu,I have a question for you, do you happen to know if the DCF is only an option if you are a resident w/in China for the 6 months prior to filing? I have just done the CR-1 route, but had formerly resided and been registered in China for just under 3 years when married but later ran into visa difficulties around the Olympics....I remember the lady at the US embassy had told me something about filing an immigration petition when I picked up my single status paperwork, but at the time I was like 'yeah, I don't think we'll need that' and didn't really pay attention. Funny how things work out Anyway, I'm another female on this board. I think the other 'big question' how many people (men or women) didn't meet through the internet. So far I see xiaofeizhu and myself (baobeizhu...hehe oink oink) Cheers! HAHAHA I LOVE your screen name! Yay for the "zhu"s!! Anyway, I was told by DHS that you had to be living continuously for 6 months. This means that you can't have gone back home or anywhere outside of China for the previous 6 months, even if you have techinically been living there for longer. That's what the man told me anyway, but I was on an L visa. I hear a lot of people on work visas and maybe student visas don't have this waiting problem. Let me know if you have any other CR-1 related questions. I will try my best to help you!! Link to comment
pipi Posted December 5, 2008 Report Share Posted December 5, 2008 ...Anyway, I'm another female on this board. I think the other 'big question' how many people (men or women) didn't meet through the internet. So far I see xiaofeizhu and myself (baobeizhu...hehe oink oink) Cheers! I met my girl not on the internet, but on the job as she was working under me. Also, to file the I-130 at the GUZ office, you need to have chinese working visa which shows you were in china at least 1/2 yr. This is written somewhere on the GUZ website. Link to comment
george lee Posted December 5, 2008 Report Share Posted December 5, 2008 ...Anyway, I'm another female on this board. I think the other 'big question' how many people (men or women) didn't meet through the internet. So far I see xiaofeizhu and myself (baobeizhu...hehe oink oink) Cheers! I met my girl not on the internet, but on the job as she was working under me. Also, to file the I-130 at the GUZ office, you need to have chinese working visa which shows you were in china at least 1/2 yr. This is written somewhere on the GUZ website. i met my wife thru my mother's friend's family at work. Link to comment
AmericanWoman Posted December 5, 2008 Author Report Share Posted December 5, 2008 I met my man on the net BUT not through a dating site or personals site. WOO. That is one you don't hear everyday! He didn't even believe I was a female OR an American, he thought I was one of his friends playing a joke on him because our personalities were THAT similar. I wish I could go back in time and have saved every conversation...*sigh*AW Link to comment
Xu And Wang Posted December 6, 2008 Report Share Posted December 6, 2008 Hey! I am an American woman (born and raised in Hawaii) but I am Asian. lol. However, if there is ever anything you have questions about, I would be glad to help you! xiaofeizhu,I have a question for you, do you happen to know if the DCF is only an option if you are a resident w/in China for the 6 months prior to filing? I have just done the CR-1 route, but had formerly resided and been registered in China for just under 3 years when married but later ran into visa difficulties around the Olympics....I remember the lady at the US embassy had told me something about filing an immigration petition when I picked up my single status paperwork, but at the time I was like 'yeah, I don't think we'll need that' and didn't really pay attention. Funny how things work out Anyway, I'm another female on this board. I think the other 'big question' how many people (men or women) didn't meet through the internet. So far I see xiaofeizhu and myself (baobeizhu...hehe oink oink) Cheers! Hi there. I might be able to help you. It seems our stories are pretty similar...I had lived in Beijing since 2005, and I married my wife in May 2008 as well (though she was a Beijinger, so it was easy). We then filed our DCF paperwork at the Beijing Department of Homeland Security on June 10, since I knew my visa would run out. (see here for the whole rigamarole) As a side note, after 3 years of dealing with visas, I had learned that I would need to leave China in order to switch to an L visa (from my F), so we took our honeymoon in the U.S.! (Perhaps luckier than most people here, my wife had a tourist visa to the US from before we married, based on us taking a Christmas vacation together to meet my family). This allowed me to change my visa in Chicago and be back for the Olympics. I'm now in Ann Arbor, MI, starting a PhD. Now, I remember when I was talking to the DHS about filing my DCF application, they said that since I had lived in China for so long, no restriction on time length existed. I imagine the answer would be the same for you. I know their address and phone number have changed since the opening of the new embassy, but you should definitely call them and set it up- as you can see from my timeline, we breezed through relatively quickly, even with some of self-caused delays in the process. Let me know if I can help you with anything. (Oh, and we met in a restaurant because of a mutual friend ) -Ryan Link to comment
Sebastian Posted December 6, 2008 Report Share Posted December 6, 2008 Ryan, not to hijaak this thread, but - did you EVER look into getting a residency permit AFTER you were married in China? Link to comment
Xu And Wang Posted December 6, 2008 Report Share Posted December 6, 2008 Ryan, not to hijaak this thread, but - did you EVER look into getting a residency permit AFTER you were married in China? Well, if by residency permit you mean the fabled D visa...I knew I couldn't. The only thing that you are helped with by being married to a Chinese citizen is you have access to continual one-year multiple entry L visas. That's what I'm on now. This is how I managed to stay in China during the Olympics, when nearly everyone else I knew had trouble. There is that "Chinese green card" that requires like 5 years of marriage living in China or something, but that will always be a long shot. Now, I did get a temporary residency certificate, in a similar way to the way I would get them from when I had an F visa. After coming back from our honeymoon with my 1-month L visa, I registered with the neighborhood of her mom (since that was her hukou address), and then her mom went with me to the local police station, where I got the temporary certificate. (I'm sure this process is familiar to anyone whose lived in China for a substantial length of time, but it was eased tremendously by the fact that we were married). I then used this temporary certificate to get my one-year L visa from the Beijing PSB. (Note that everything is connected to the location of your spouse's hukou- I know its not as convoluted in other places, like Shenyang). I then went BACK to the police station, where I got my one-year temporary residency certificate, which I hold now. Now, I'm not technically allowed to work, but if I ever did go back for a few months, I'm sure I could teach English under the radar. Hope that answers your question. -Ryan Link to comment
Sebastian Posted December 6, 2008 Report Share Posted December 6, 2008 Ryan - yup - answered my question !!! I really thought the temp residency certificate would not involve much more than bringing yer wife and IDs, marriage books and hukuo - then a permit is granted. Anyway, you go one NOW, after all the rigamarol(e). Link to comment
pipi Posted December 10, 2008 Report Share Posted December 10, 2008 Hi Ryan, I've been in China continuously since 2002 and I filed my I-130 (Oct 25, 2008) and I-129F with a thick stack of photocopies of my china working visas. And I also married my wife 2yrs before we even filed these applications. And we were both never married before. So...logically I should breeze thru the process faster than you, may Buddha bless me and all the friends here! Also, I did get kicked out of China because of the Olympics. Even with my marriage certificate they gave me only 1/2 yr tourist visa. Yr 2008 was a disaster for china (hurricanes, winter freeze, earthquake) and most of the foreigners got kicked out. I wonder if the Beijing Olympics made it all up! Link to comment
whome? Posted December 10, 2008 Report Share Posted December 10, 2008 Since it has been bothering me.... am I the only white American female filing for an asian man or are there others out there??? American Woman Why does this bother you? It does not bother me that whenever I am back in USA most women like to whisper that I married a chinese girl because I was not goo enough for a USA woman. Who cares what others think? Link to comment
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