Frustrated with the wait and mad as He11!!!!

[carla1 4]

Word of advice for those just getting started:

1. Don't even bother with hiring a lawyer as long as you have internet access, are computer literate, can read and follow directions.

2. Refer to this site for all timeline information.

3. Confer with others that have been through the process.

4. Expect the worse-case scenario so you don't set yourself up for later disappointment. (Of course you should hope for the best, but expect the worst.)

I paid a lawyer to assist with filing the K1 visa in Jan of 2010. He told me that after getting all the paperwork together we would be approved in 6 weeks to 8 weeks and the embassy would take about 4 weeks more.....in total the processing time would be 3-4 months tops!

The "love of my life" and highschool sweetheart began gathering all the paperwork together in Chile to file for a K1, however Chile had a 8.7 earthquake and many of the government courthouses where they store historical documents were damaged and unsafe to enter.

Because it is time consuming to get a tourist visa to the US and we were told that the separation wouldn't be too much longer, I made a 5 day journey to Chile and returned April 1 2010.

Daniel finally got all his paperwork together and sent it to me in early June. The first of July I completed all the paperwork and forwarded it to the attorney to double check. The attorney gave his OK and I sent in our K1 in mid July. Our K1 was returned because of a simple error that the attorney should have easily caught. (I checked single on my status yet provided a divorce decree from my former marriage which ended in 1983).

I made this little change, and did my research which found that there were other little errors and resent in the K1. Our NOA1 date was August 12, 2010.

We were discussing Daniel visiting the first week of September 2010 as September was 4 months since we had last seen each other, however family members in Chile had been turned down for a tourist visa and afterwards were unable to apply for a visa for a year. We were very afraid of that happening, so I asked my PAID attorney who had no idea yea or nay about this. I contacted the Chilean embassy but got a garbled response that was ambiguous. We decided not to chance it as the visa would be coming through shortly.

Unfortunately I had not yet located visajourney.com and since my PAID attorney told me we would receive our NOA2 in 6-8 weeks we checked the USCIS status page every single day beginning at week 3. Those of you in this process are very aware of the sense of frustration, anger and hopelessness that resulted from seeing no updates, no touches, no nothing, day after day after day.

I left a couple of voicemails for the Attorney in October to ask why it was taking longer than he advised and never got a response back from him...and still haven't to this day.

When I was at my wits end and feeling very desperate in late October I finally found this website and discovered that my attorney was very uninformed about his job and not fit to be paid to do it. I also discovered that I submitted more than was requested and required for the K1 visa and if not for this I would have been able to get an earlier NOA1 date. (remember the earthquake in Chile and difficulty of obtaining paperwork).

And here we all are waiting and waiting and waiting. We are currently at 145 days (21 weeks) and no NOA2 in sight.

We finally got to where we should have been initially, to put it another way,we gave up and are expecting the worst case scenario. Daniel is attempting a 10 day visit on a tourist visa-his interview is Jan 31. He can show he has sufficient ties to return, and the visajourney community assures us that the year denial of a tourist visa will not affect the K1.

I am trying not to think any further than the tourist visa. We are both middle aged farts with clean police records, assets and no conceivable reasons exist to deny us a K1 visa, but having hope only disappoints and hurts every single day.

I am filled with anger at the way this is all working out. If we had done this the illegal way we would be together now and creating invaluable memories for our old age. I fully expected Christmas 2009 to be my last alone.

I live in Texas and run across illegals every single day. I swear this process has made me hate every single one of them because they are here and Daniel is not!

I am becoming hateful, vicious and despondent. I have am become a burden on my coworkers because of my attitude. Normally I am sunny, likeable and cheerful but that disappeared completely the end of November in the midst of the "holiday" season. (the " indicates sarcasm)

I am calling tomorrow to make an appt with my doctor and ask for anti-depressants, the truth is that without Daniel I see no reason for continuing. This is not living - it is existing and existing at a low level. Life has no joys, no happinesses nothing to look forward to.

I know this community understands exactly what I am saying, and I ask that the members please don't try to give me words of encouragement, I am way beyond that.

Just call me "48 and losing precious time together every day"

[Amy and Nick 37]

Just wanted to say im with ya! No-one should have to go through this - no-one.

[SuperDuper! 230]

We wish you the very best, Carla. Hang in there and do what you have to in order to maintain sanity, hope and reason. You can do it!

At your request, my words are not meant to be "encouraging", but simply supportive and admiring of your tenacity and determination.

Channel your anger into energy that will push you through to the finish line. You will persevere.

ps, your story is AMAZING that you first met D. in HS, and are trying to be together again despite thousands of miles and decades later.

Not many people I know have the fortitude that you are showing. Peace and best wishes to you.

Edited January 2, 2011 by Boing!

[vett 6]

Word of advice for those just getting started:

1. Don't even bother with hiring a lawyer as long as you have internet access, are computer literate, can read and follow directions.

2. Refer to this site for all timeline information.

3. Confer with others that have been through the process.

4. Expect the worse-case scenario so you don't set yourself up for later disappointment. (Of course you should hope for the best, but expect the worst.)

I paid a lawyer to assist with filing the K1 visa in Jan of 2010. He told me that after getting all the paperwork together we would be approved in 6 weeks to 8 weeks and the embassy would take about 4 weeks more.....in total the processing time would be 3-4 months tops!

The "love of my life" and highschool sweetheart began gathering all the paperwork together in Chile to file for a K1, however Chile had a 8.7 earthquake and many of the government courthouses where they store historical documents were damaged and unsafe to enter.

Because it is time consuming to get a tourist visa to the US and we were told that the separation wouldn't be too much longer, I made a 5 day journey to Chile and returned April 1 2010.

Daniel finally got all his paperwork together and sent it to me in early June. The first of July I completed all the paperwork and forwarded it to the attorney to double check. The attorney gave his OK and I sent in our K1 in mid July. Our K1 was returned because of a simple error that the attorney should have easily caught. (I checked single on my status yet provided a divorce decree from my former marriage which ended in 1983).

I made this little change, and did my research which found that there were other little errors and resent in the K1. Our NOA1 date was August 12, 2010.

We were discussing Daniel visiting the first week of September 2010 as September was 4 months since we had last seen each other, however family members in Chile had been turned down for a tourist visa and afterwards were unable to apply for a visa for a year. We were very afraid of that happening, so I asked my PAID attorney who had no idea yea or nay about this. I contacted the Chilean embassy but got a garbled response that was ambiguous. We decided not to chance it as the visa would be coming through shortly.

Unfortunately I had not yet located visajourney.com and since my PAID attorney told me we would receive our NOA2 in 6-8 weeks we checked the USCIS status page every single day beginning at week 3. Those of you in this process are very aware of the sense of frustration, anger and hopelessness that resulted from seeing no updates, no touches, no nothing, day after day after day.

I left a couple of voicemails for the Attorney in October to ask why it was taking longer than he advised and never got a response back from him...and still haven't to this day.

When I was at my wits end and feeling very desperate in late October I finally found this website and discovered that my attorney was very uninformed about his job and not fit to be paid to do it. I also discovered that I submitted more than was requested and required for the K1 visa and if not for this I would have been able to get an earlier NOA1 date. (remember the earthquake in Chile and difficulty of obtaining paperwork).

And here we all are waiting and waiting and waiting. We are currently at 145 days (21 weeks) and no NOA2 in sight.

We finally got to where we should have been initially, to put it another way,we gave up and are expecting the worst case scenario. Daniel is attempting a 10 day visit on a tourist visa-his interview is Jan 31. He can show he has sufficient ties to return, and the visajourney community assures us that the year denial of a tourist visa will not affect the K1.

I am trying not to think any further than the tourist visa. We are both middle aged farts with clean police records, assets and no conceivable reasons exist to deny us a K1 visa, but having hope only disappoints and hurts every single day.

I am filled with anger at the way this is all working out. If we had done this the illegal way we would be together now and creating invaluable memories for our old age. I fully expected Christmas 2009 to be my last alone.

I live in Texas and run across illegals every single day. I swear this process has made me hate every single one of them because they are here and Daniel is not!

I am becoming hateful, vicious and despondent. I have am become a burden on my coworkers because of my attitude. Normally I am sunny, likeable and cheerful but that disappeared completely the end of November in the midst of the "holiday" season. (the " indicates sarcasm)

I am calling tomorrow to make an appt with my doctor and ask for anti-depressants, the truth is that without Daniel I see no reason for continuing. This is not living - it is existing and existing at a low level. Life has no joys, no happinesses nothing to look forward to.

I know this community understands exactly what I am saying, and I ask that the members please don't try to give me words of encouragement, I am way beyond that.

Just call me "48 and losing precious time together every day"

wow! i understand exactly what you are going through and how you feel. and since you asked us not to give you words of encouragement. i will just share my story with you. i too agree that it is a total WASTE of time and money to hire an attorney,(unless absolutely necessary) i wish i had known about visa journey a long time ago as well. i too hired and attorney to file my case and i paid that son of a gun $4500 to do a job that i am not satisfied with. he has not prepared me and my husband for our interview, and now my interview date is here and i am so scared that we may be denied because that hog of an attorney had not told us. that we needed to have pictures, phone bills, joint accounts. affidavits and all else that we should take to our appointment. all we were told by him is that we CAN'T be

denied because we are married ( what a load of crack) he didnt even tell us that we had to front load pics and evidence so that we may put out any doubts before it even come into the mind of whoever will interview us. he didn't even tell my husband to file joint taxes..and add my names to bills or anything. i am so angry at him. knowing what i know now. i know i would have done a better job than he has. and to make matters worst, his assistants or whoever did the paper works made so many mistakes so many times on my documents. i had to be paying courier fees 3 times to send them back documents which they made mistakes on, with my signature.and then again when everything finally arrived at the NVC after over one year plus of dealing with the stress and the separation from my husband. the documents still had mistakes and again i had to pay courier fee to send back the corrected documents. and never once did they apologized to me or my husband for the amature job and sh*ty service that we got.in fact they treated us like we were nobody's. so i know how you are feeling and i do agree that if you can read and have understanding DO NOT hire an attorney. (not saying all attorneys are bad)save them for when you really need them. and yes the stress from the whole process can leave you bitter and aggressive.i too am very stressed from the whole thing, when i wake in the mornings i can see the stress on my face, and when i speak on the phone with my friends they told me i sound horrible.and i snap at the people in my house because i am so stressed out.and still am, because my interview is in february and i am just not fully prepared. but thanks to VJ, and other forums. i manged to accumulate some evidence that will bona fide us, just not sure if they are sufficient. but at least i will not go into that room with zero evidence. and i probably would have, if it was for my attorney alone.

[Fandango 1,440]

I'm sorry you're having such a bad time of things, and going to see a doc as stated would be a good thing. However, please be very careful when 'advising' people to never hire an atty. Sounds like you got a bad one, but no member here should really make such a blanket statement.

Good luck.

[sara..... 371]

attorneys ours messed us up very badly then turned it over to someone else in the office and is in fact a member of this site so i cant even tell you his name anymore and if any of them tell you that you get your money back if no visa is attained

get it in writing exactly what was said because we got nothing back after two years of #######

you have to be proactive of your own case because unless you have an honest attorney they will never be.......after all who will fight the hardest and try to get it resolved when things go wrong? It will be you because it effects you......your attorney already got his/her money.

good luck to you and i will add you to my prayers i wish no person would ever suffer the way we did that alone should be a crime

just my opinion

sara

[joevegas 67]

Hang in there. This is not an easy process and most of us know what you are going through. We hired a lawyer, too. They said going through them would make the process go by at least 3 months faster, but it ended up taking us about 11 months. It is a long slow process, but in the end it was all worth it. We probably could have done it without the laywer, but we were not sure of ourselves. This site has been very helpful. Knowing others are going through the same thing really helps. It will happen...just hang in there and look forward to one day being together again.

Best of luck!

[Al422 221]

Hello Carla,

I hear you and agree with you. At 53, I am no spring chicken either and, just like you, I have no time to play the government's idiotic waiting game..

There are some things you can do about it, but unfortunately not much. I already contracted my Senators and Congress Member even though I have not reached the 5 month mark. But it helped, maybe not now but it probably will once 5 months comes. At that point, they will already have files open on me, so I can spring them into action in a day or two instead of in a week or two. They already contacted me and told me about the 5 month deal, which I already knew, and I thanked them for the information even though I knew it already. I just wanted them to open files so they would be ready when I needed them.

The other thing you can do is to be firm, yet polite, when 5 months comes and you need to call them. Most of us reported zero help with this step, but some made progress in doing this, and since the only cost is some of your time, it is worth a shot to see what happens.

The third thing you can do is to fire your lawyer, The one you have seems to do this very badly, but even if you had F. Lee Bailey, the fact remains that you simply do not need a lawyer to do this. If you can read, write, and use a computer, a lawyer is useless.

And now for the most important thing, some advice from one angry petitioner to another: Find a constructive use for your anger. First, make the aforementioned Congressional contact like I did. Then research on the internet as much as possible. I learn new things every day, including knowledge I can use when the embassy interview phase comes rolling around. And then use what you learned to help other petitioners. I am following my own advice right now. You will be surprised how much satisfaction you will get channeling your anger into a productive exercise like this.

[carla1 4]

Thank you everyone for the kind words.

After I read the first 3 posts I sat down and cried and cried and cried.

As a result I do feel better. I guess there is some comfort from knowing that others are in the same boat. True we are all in the same shitty boat but at least we are all together.

Thank you again to the VJ community.

****************************************************************8

to Lisa C:

And, just as a side note, I did not say never hire an attorney, I gave 4 qualifiers, and obviously if you are not filing the typical K1 and have police records, are a child molester...... an attorney might be the way to go.

However, most of us here are average people in love and have no unusual circumstances. I am careful with my words and seldom use "never".

(notice I did not say "never use never". LOLOLO)

[tobey 0]

I too wanted to hire an attorney. Lost three months in the process of looking for a "good" one- one who will guide as through the process as I finish my graduate degree. What a joke it was. I had been given the best recommendations for immigration from other lawyers. So I waited another month for this woman to come back from vacation to meet with her- a friend of a close family friend. Guess what, it was the woman's husbands birthday that day whoopeedoo and her "right hand gal" saw me instead for a quick consult since she had someone waiting. She gave an "ahhh" when I told her my consulate was Israel and said they are difficult to deal with and to expect a long wait. She did however had the guts to tell me to do it all myself and that I dont need their services (which may been helpful but I lost time!). She then went through what I need to submit- and guess what she used as a reference - GOOGLE.COM & a file of a current client from Ukraine- sharing all his personal information with me, even enclosing the $3000 fee he paid just for the help with the i-129f. She forgot to mention half of the documents that I needed. All the while, while I was in the office, this other "lawyer" was telling a woman how she should marry the guy she arrived with not to get imported. Because of these type of lawyers advising that people fake relationships, our real love stories must wait.

I then went to see another lawyer who gave me completely different information but at that point I had already saw this site and just wanted to laugh at what he was advising.

Like you Carla, I met my fiancee in school (primary school for us) and we have reconnected through a "classmate" website many years later. Although I fight myself not to lose hope everyday, it gets extremely difficult being apart for so long. But the only thought that keeps me in tact is that we are one day closer to being with our loved ones.

[staceluvyou 6]

wow! i understand exactly what you are going through and how you feel. and since you asked us not to give you words of encouragement. i will just share my story with you. i too agree that it is a total WASTE of time and money to hire an attorney,(unless absolutely necessary) i wish i had known about visa journey a long time ago as well. i too hired and attorney to file my case and i paid that son of a gun $4500 to do a job that i am not satisfied with. he has not prepared me and my husband for our interview, and now my interview date is here and i am so scared that we may be denied because that hog of an attorney had not told us. that we needed to have pictures, phone bills, joint accounts. affidavits and all else that we should take to our appointment. all we were told by him is that we CAN'T be

denied because we are married ( what a load of crack) he didnt even tell us that we had to front load pics and evidence so that we may put out any doubts before it even come into the mind of whoever will interview us. he didn't even tell my husband to file joint taxes..and add my names to bills or anything. i am so angry at him. knowing what i know now. i know i would have done a better job than he has. and to make matters worst, his assistants or whoever did the paper works made so many mistakes so many times on my documents. i had to be paying courier fees 3 times to send them back documents which they made mistakes on, with my signature.and then again when everything finally arrived at the NVC after over one year plus of dealing with the stress and the separation from my husband. the documents still had mistakes and again i had to pay courier fee to send back the corrected documents. and never once did they apologized to me or my husband for the amature job and sh*ty service that we got.in fact they treated us like we were nobody's. so i know how you are feeling and i do agree that if you can read and have understanding DO NOT hire an attorney. (not saying all attorneys are bad)save them for when you really need them. and yes the stress from the whole process can leave you bitter and aggressive.i too am very stressed from the whole thing, when i wake in the mornings i can see the stress on my face, and when i speak on the phone with my friends they told me i sound horrible.and i snap at the people in my house because i am so stressed out.and still am, because my interview is in february and i am just not fully prepared. but thanks to VJ, and other forums. i manged to accumulate some evidence that will bona fide us, just not sure if they are sufficient. but at least i will not go into that room with zero evidence. and i probably would have, if it was for my attorney alone.

i'm so sorry what you guys are going through, and to think my fiance and i were thinking about hiring a lawyer when we first started our process. after reading the horror stories of these lawyers, i have to thank God we found vj in time. and i want to thank all you vj members who have already gone through the process for sharing your experiences with us.i just want to say to you guys hold the faith, it take long but it will happen.we are all in this together.

[Deina 8]

I understand your frustion and I feel for you but you should look forward for this year!!! Be strong and stay healty!! The time goes much faster when you don't think about, I know is hard this to say when everything you want is to be with the one you love.... And this Year will be Yours with your love together *smile* he will be here sooner that u might think!!

"Nothing ever happens before it is meant to......... this is great if you are forcing something to happen even happiness&love. Everything has its time and place and happens when it is meant to".

My husband have also hired a attorney and was just money waste!! I was surprise we didn't get any RFE and got aprove fast enough. I am now in U.S with my husband - got the GC. Everything went smooth! I'm happy to start the new year and many more to come with my husband by my side.

[cutie bear 2]

I am sorry to hear all these bad encounters when it comes to hiring an atty. But my fiance's atty who has help him get a green card and US citizenship was not at all bad. She was the one who actually said that filing K1 would not need any atty's help not unless there are criminal/police records that would need her assistance. I told my fiance that I read it here in VJ that hiring an atty is not really needed since the req't listed in the USCIS website and here are very straightforward. My fiance in return check with the atty and she said her assistance is not anymore needed! We are happy that she's not after getting so much money from us and she was honest enough to say that our case would not rely on her but on the adjudicator who will be reviewing our documents.

[JudyKCski 12]

Carla hon I am right with you. I am 52 myself and as you say not a spring chicken. I would have to say that waiting is damn awful hard. Talking as one who likes to be early for appointments and truly hate having someone else hold my life in their proverbial hands. But, here I am having to wait for someone else to decide my fate and I hate it. Now that all the Fed workers have gotten their holidays, vacation time and personal time in before the 1st of Jan. All I can do is hope they get off their duffs and get some paperwork done now!

[Sra Gomez 9]

Sorry to hear this hun, but your NOA2 should be arriving any day now =) The wait is very hard, and I have lost all motivation to do anything. Your profile says you applied for a F-1 visa, so you might want to change that, it helps with keep track of all the timelines. Good luck on the rest of your journey