Our Crazy Journey So Far...

[Dani89 0]

Hello everyone! I would like to take a moment to share my story with you all. My fiance and I are just approaching our wedding day and soon will need to file for AOS. Any of you with experience in this, like how we should begin etc would be very much appreciated! and I don't know if this belongs in this forum or not so I apologise if it is a bit out of place. Right! Here we go! I'll try to explain as quickly as possible

I am 24 yr old American and my partner is 32 yr old British. We were best friends for a few years in the UK when my student visa expired and I had to move back to the USA. Well I was a bit restless and unhappy. I had lived in the UK for 5 years and really built a life for myself there. Long story short we decided to go traveling and we met up together in Europe. We traveled round EU and fell in love. He asked me to go to New Zealand with him for a year and I said yes. We had an AMAZING time out there! Just before our year was up he proposed to me. I said yes.

So now we were toying with the idea of where to live. We thought we would try America out. My parents had just moved to Colorado and it looked like a gorgeous place for us to live. So we flew back to London for 3 weeks just to say hello to everyone then flew to CO. My fiance, Rob, could only be out there for a total of 3 months. Our plan was to do the petition for the K1 visa, then I would fly back with him to London for 6 months while he completed his half of the visa. While in CO I felt really homesick for the UK. We sat down and talked about it and decided that we would rather live in the UK. However I had just completed the petition for the K1 visa. We decided that we should carry on with the K1 anyway because even though we wanted to live in the UK, we still wanted to get married in the states for my family. Seeing as immigration almost didn't let Rob through the first time (because they suspected he would overstay with me) we thought if we don't do the K1 then it would totally suck if he got denied at immigration just before the wedding took place! Can you imagine?

We began looking into the UK spouse visa. If any of you know about UK immigration then you will know what a mess it is at the moment. The spouse visa was going to be hard but possible. Basically they want the British partner to be earning atleast £18,600 salary a year and you need at least 6 months worth of payslips in order to apply for the visa. It didn't matter that I had a job promised to me at all. They strictly look at the British partner's income.

We flew to the UK at the end of the 3 months in US. In the airport I was held in immigration for 6 hours! They kept saying they were going to deport me. I was interviewed about 3-4 times, fingerprints and photos taken. It was so awful. I remember at the very end of being held I just broke down and pointed at all my evidence I had brought with me to prove we were applying for the K1 visa. (I never told them we wanted to try for the UK spouse visa. I said I was there to be with my fiance and help with the K1 process). I said "I don't understand! Tell me, what more could I have brought with me to prove to you we are trying to do everything the honest way?" and she shook her head and said that that was the problem. That we WERE GENUINE. She said because we love each other so much if the K1 visa didn't work out then I would overstay. I was being committed for a crime I hadn't (and wouldn't) commit. In the end they let me through on "red alert" and told me "don't do anything stupid."

Whew! I was just relieved that Rob and I wouldn't have to be apart! Now he begins the job hunting while we wait for the NOA2. He had to turn down about 5 really awesome jobs that he would have loved because they fell short of the £18,600. Now Rob has over 14 years of retail management experience. It was horrible for him to turn down a job that paid £17K! Even if it was a company he knew he could progress in. :/ We were both getting pretty disheartened. the NOA2 came at some point, I really can't remember the date right now, but we managed to schedule in Rob's K1 Medical for the 9th of September. When September came it was month 3 of unemployment!

Well just a couple days before his medical, Rob was doing some DIY outside. He fell and landed on some sharp metal that split his hand from the wrist nearly to between his middle finger and index finger to the bone! He got rushed to the hospital and they had to keep him there for the weekend to do constructive surgery on everything. I had to ring up and cancel his medical because he was only just waking up from his operation. Luckily because of the circumstances we got it rescheduled for the 17th of Sept without having to pay again. Rob was lucky as well he managed to miss all the tendons in his hand so he has only just recently gotten full movement back in all his fingers. Thank god!

I think about a week after the medical Rob finally got a job. This is where it gets tricky. He actually got a job offer elsewhere for £19K but he really wanted to work for this other job he was being interviewed for. The £19K job was managing a sports footwear store, this other job was managing a charity store. He used to work for Oxfam and really loved it and has also raised lots of money in the past for charities. During all of his interviews he fully explained our visa situation so that everyone knew why he needed his expected salary and job security etc. So he called up this charity and said that he had a job offer, but he would prefer to work for them. He needed an answer though asap. They said yes! we will hire you!
We both were so happy. The job was presented to him with ribbons and bows.

And then he started work. Under all those pretty words was a company so unorganised, awfully managed, and not taking on much profit. He was working so hard to turn things around, but all his employees were lazy and unmotivated. He didn't have a boss because they hadn't hired one yet, and everyone else just didn't seem to care what was happening with the store. Immediately we worried about the job security and he started applying for other jobs.

Meanwhile the K1 was going smoothly. We had our interview October 22nd in London. I requested to attend the interview with him by the way! The waiting took forever. I think we spent about 5-6 hours waiting. The interview itself was so quick and painless. They actually didn't even ask me anything, but I thought my presence alone could help them see us together as a couple. I swear it was like 5 minutes long! We were told on the day that we were approved and could book a flight in November if we wanted. Sweet!

So going back to the charity store... the employees all quit and by December Rob was alone. Every time he has a day off he has to shut the shop. He doesn't get lunch breaks, and doesn't get paid overtime. But he was trying so hard for us to apply for the UK visa. He finally got another job offer in December but he wouldn't start til January. I had to leave by January 2nd or I would breach my tourist visa! So you all can see how we would be apart for 6 months just to build up the payslips, and then the amount of time it takes for the visa to process. So we were at a crossroads. Could he keep his charity job and we could apply for the UK visa in march? or should he get this new job and us be apart for most of our first year married? Well he turned down the new job offer because now he had a new boss and things started looking up.

Now here we are in January. I flew back on Dec 31st. You all don't need to be told how crappy it is saying goodbye in the airport. The plan was rob would fly in Jan 20th and then we would marry on the 26th and then honeymoon for a week. Then he would fly back home and work until we could apply for the Spouse visa. We keep saying to each other "sometimes we are far, but never apart" and we actually have "never apart" engraved inside our wedding rings. Weeeellll, Rob just got told that they would all be out of jobs soon, lol. I do feel angry that they hired him knowing how awful their store was knowing that our visa depended on his employment. but there's no point thinking what if, or we should have done this. It's done now.

We talked and we really don't want to be apart during our first year of marriage. Who knows how long it would take for him to find another job with the same salary, and then there's the long countdown. It's nothing against the USA at all. we both just had roots in the UK. I have moved my entire childhood and I yearn for a place to really call home. Those 5 years in the UK were the longest I ever spent in any one place!
However, we are now just going to go ahead and make a home in the US. So now we're rushing around trying to be prepared!

I don't really know the AOS process fully. I need to really read up more about it. When we had our interview in London we were given Rob's medical results on a CD and they told us we must apply for AOS before March 17th when the results expire apparently. We get back from our honeymoon Feb 4th. After that it will be GO GO GO! I hope everything turns out okay. Any advice or any stories you guys would like to share?

Thanks for taking the time to read all this. I know it's been such a roller coaster haha.

[Dani89 0]

I forgot to add. We were approved for K1 visa at our interview Oct 22nd, but we didn't get the visa until Dec 6th cuz they really messed up on shipping it out to us!

[Virtuous45 31]

Dani89,

Thanks for sharing. I appreciate the fact that you took the time to give such an elaborate and concise synopsis of your journey. I don't have much advice to give in your area, but I do pray that you and Rob will eventually get off the "roller coaster" and start enjoying your lives together. All the very best.

[Dani89 0]

Dani89,

Thanks for sharing. I appreciate the fact that you took the time to give such an elaborate and concise synopsis of your journey. I don't have much advice to give in your area, but I do pray that you and Rob will eventually get off the "roller coaster" and start enjoying your lives together. All the very best.

That is very sweet of you! Thank you I really do appreciate it. and I'm looking forward to finally building a home together. I thought it would be nice for others to see what we have been going through. Sometimes things are crazy but there's always a solution.

[Darnell 8,478]

ya, AOS is straight forward, we've a guide for that in the GUIDES section - best studied from a PC, as handphones and tablets SUCK for VJ usage when you want to study.

[Dani89 0]

ya, AOS is straight forward, we've a guide for that in the GUIDES section - best studied from a PC, as handphones and tablets SUCK for VJ usage when you want to study.

Thank you! Sometimes it's overwhelming reading all the forms codes and thinking omg, what does that stand for?

lol I think having the wedding overriding the brain doesn't help. I just gotta take a breath and break it all down.

[KayDeeCee 4,893]

Read this > http://www.visajourney.com/content/k1k3aos

And this > http://www.visajourney.com/forums/topic/428381-i-693-report-of-medical-examination-and-vaccination-report/?p=6206232

File the I-765 and I-131 too(even if you have no plans to work or travel), the fees for those forms are waived when filed with a pending I-485.

Edited January 11, 2014 by Jay-Kay

[Girl from Celebes 588]

Thank you for sharing. Really such a touching story for both of you and a lesson for others.

[Dani89 0]

Read this > http://www.visajourney.com/content/k1k3aos

And this > http://www.visajourney.com/forums/topic/428381-i-693-report-of-medical-examination-and-vaccination-report/?p=6206232

File the I-765 and I-131 too(even if you have no plans to work or travel), the fees for those forms are waived when filed with a pending I-485.

That's really useful to know! Thank you so much!

[Darnell 8,478]

oh - you not find the guide section after I posted ? what gear are you using, to browse the internetz?

[Dani89 0]

I found it all thank you Just a lot of stuff to go through! The upcoming wedding has been pretty distracting!