Just a quick thank you to everyone who has every given me great advice here!

We sent our first application packet off on Saturday - and I understand that London is speeding up.

I am so excited!

Best of luck on your journey!

Have a speedy journey

Good luck and heres hoping that you have a speedy visa journey.

Good luck!!! and AWESOME picture!!!! You guys look fantastic!!!!
L&B.

Hi,
Good luck to you guys, I just posted my hubby and sons I-130s off yesterday so I guess we'll be along the same time frame. Hope we get through it smoothly!

Jenni

Congratulations and good luck

Jenni

You'll be just in front of us now in the queue. We got the I-130 back from the Embassy yesterday (Tuesday). Seems Geneva signed the wrong part of the the form. She signed the part that the person helping complete the form is susposed to sign!

Luckily it was spotted and sent back the same day. We just re-printed the I-130 and have sent it back again. Hopefully we've got everything else right.

At least we now know that they do at least a basic check of your documents the day that they receive them.

Rob

Hi,
Are you LadyUKs other half? I asked, my other half (the UKC) if he was planning on writing in this forum, and his reply was, "Not just yet cos you're handling things so well babe." The cheek of him! I don't blame him really as I think I've well and truly confused him with all this. Are you the UKC?

I was actually wondering the other day if it was mostly the wives that completed the forms and did the research, or if it was usually the USC?

Anyway, we just got our notice today that our I-130s were filed on July the 6th so I guess you'll hear in a couple days. Have you noticed anyone else that have recently sent their petitions in?

Jenni

Jenni,

Yes, I'm the LadyUK (Geneva's) other half.

Geneva is the USC and I'm the UKC.

Today we just got our notice that the I-130 has been filed on July 6th as well. So looks like we are on the track as you

I'm the one that get's to fill in the forms and prepare all the paper work. I even had to fill in Geneva's tax returns. She was wanting to just send in the 1040EZ's for the past 3 years. I had point out that the she had to file 1040's and 2555EZ's for the the past 3 years.

I've not seen anyone else who's recently sent in their petitions. Hope fully there's not many people filing now. I've noticed that London are getting through the petitions pretty quick now.

A few weeks ago when i checked they was taking about 10 weeks to process, then last week it was down to 6 weeks and now this week it's down to 5 weeks. I hope they keep this up. We'll get our petitions processed at the beginning of August at this rate.

Hope for the speedy process!

Wow that's great about your petition being filed so quickly after the wee mistake! I hope they keep moving fast with thier processing to.

I just found out about nedding tax returns last week. I left the US when I was 12 so I've never filled one out before and it was Elmcitymaven from the UK forum that gave me the heads up. I have to admit that I still need to call London to speak to their tax advisor and figure out what to do. From what Elmcitymaven said it's not difficult just time consuming. Blugh!

Speaking of being ill-prepared, my hubby still can't catch a police officer at our local station to hand in his application for the police check. Do you know if he needs that before the interview? I still feel so clueless about things.

Just wanted to say that I think your wife looks beautiful in your photo, it's so cute!

I was super impressed with the efficency at spotting the mistake.

The need to file tax's with the IRS even when you don't live in America seems obsurd to me. But hey that the IRS. Geneva hadn't filed her tax returns for the past 11 years she's been out of the country. When she came to file them she found out that she had to get a new Social Security card with her current name before she could file her tax returns! I just hope that I've filled in her tax returns correctly, it didn't seem too confusing filling in the 1040 and 2555EZ. (Well not as confusing as some of the visa forms )

I had a bitr of trouble actully finding a police station open to take my form as well. I finally managed to catch them open to got my police report request sent in.

The police report is one of the items on the "Readiness for Interview" form that you need to send in. So I guess you should really have it ready to take to the interview. If he can't find a police station open to hand it in I'm sure that you can post it to your local police HQ. That's all they did my mine. I handed mine in at my local police station, they took my 10 quid then put my form in the internal mail to the main police station for my area.

Beware that the police reports from Scotland Yard seem to taking around 30-40 days to come back.

Thank you. She does look so good in that picture.

Rob

Good grief! I guess I'll have to find out what I have to do to change my social security card from my maiden name to my married. Oh it seems never-ending! At least I ran into someone who did their homework properly! I honestly thought I was prepared.

Meant to say sorry for hijacking your thread!

I don't know if you can file your tax returns AND update your SSN at the same time. It might be worth checking out.

If not you'll need to get a form SS5 http://www.socialsecurity.gov/online/ss-5.html and send it to http://www.socialsecurity.gov/foreign/foreign.htm#UNITED%20KINGDOM

UNITED KINGDOM
Federal Benefits Unit
American Embassy
24/31 Grosvenor Square
W1A 2LQ London
England

I decided that it would be best for me not to change my name -- either on my passport or my SS card -- until after the whole darn DCF thing was over and we were on US soil, so I filed my taxes using my old name. I have used my married name only socially and for the DCF, but they were able to figure out that "Ms elmcitymaven Thompson" on the tax forms was also "Mrs elmcitymaven Mann" on all the immigration paperwork.

Just something to keep in mind if you want to cut down on the forms to file...

That's good to know.

When we first started looking into this process the names she had was:

Geneva Smith (from 1st marriage) - SSN
Geneva Jones (from 2nd marriage) - Passport and ILR, all other documents

Then when we decided to get married we thought it would be much easier to stick with Jones for everything until we get over to USA and then go through the name change thing. But we thought that changing the SSN name to match the passport would be a good idea to get sorted, don't want to confuse the poor CO with THREE different surnames for her.

Right. I think it's probably best if I can file my taxes using my maiden name because it's the same as my US passport. The UK passport is my married name so they shouldn't have any trouble figuring it out.
Thanks for all the advice you two! I promise not to make a nuisance of myself again....for awhile!