Entering the US for the first time...

[geyahui]

Hi all, so my wife finally got her CR1 visa a couple months ago, and we're about to head back to the US. Is there anything she will need at the border, aside from her passport and the big packet that was mailed to us when her visa was granted? For example, medical forms, her x-ray, anything like that?

 

Also, is there anything she'll need to know or say during that process? Obviously I'll be in the US citizen line so I can't be there to help her, but she doesn't really speak english.

[dnoblett]

Medical forms should be sealed in that immigrations packet. X-Ray should be in the carry on should the POE want to see it, I have seen one or two posts indicating that the POE asked to see it is very rare that they do.

 

Actually you can stick with her and go through same line as she does and can clear the POE together. When in line, if an officer see you together explain traveling together and they will let you go to same POE officer together. This is what I did with my wife when she entered the USA with a K-1 visa.

[Da Niao]

With my first K-1 in 2008 I got in the visitors line with my fiancée because obviously she was not a US Citizen or resident. After we had waited an hour in the long line (Chicago) an officer approached us, discovered that we were K-1 and put us in a special line in which there was just one K-1 couple ahead of us. This time around, in San Francisco, I approached an officer and asked if there was a similar special line for K-1 visas. He instructed us to wait together in the line for US Citizens and residents, which we gladly did, because it saved us an hour's time. Based on this, I would recommend just lining up with the US Citizens, although I could not guarantee that this is OK in every port.

 

There was no officer at the head of the line directing individuals to particular lines, so lines formed naturally in front of all the open "windows". We noticed that one line had formed behind an aisle in which two officers were checking passports, meaning that that line was moving twice as fast as the other ones. It also meant that we did not hold up anyone behind us because of the longer time needed to process a K-1. The officer opened the sealed envelope, leafed through all of the forms, asked us if we had set a date (we hadn't), stamped the visa, the I-94, and the packet of forms, and sent us on our way. Customs hardly even blinked at us, just waved us through, and we were in and out of the SFO airport in record time.

 

The POE officer writes "K-1" on the I-94 by hand. Check to make sure that that entry is legible. In 2008, our "K-1" was written so sloppily that it looked as if it could have been V-1. Later in AOS we ran into trouble because of the entry. No matter that K-1 was clearly printed on the visa, we were being held up because it looked like V-1 on the I-94. The local office in Cincinnati would not make a change in an official document, and the POE office in Chicago also declined to correct it. I forget how that turned out, but because that marriage failed before completion of AOS, it ceased to be a problem.