simple advice to save time with k-1 visa packet

[jess100 53]

HI everyone,

First let me say this site has been so helpful over the course of our visa preparation. Because of information on this site I knew which receipts to save and what kinds of proof of relationship would be helpful. I also had the "letter of intent to marry" and the G325a signed by him before I left Mexico to avoid the time delay sending things by mail. I will be sending in the fiance visa application in a few days and here are some things I learned.

First, I saved most of my boarding passes but found that Delta doesn't put a year on the ticket. I had a box of tickets and had to go through my passport to match travel dates with the correct year. It was more time consuming than you might think, because the passport stamp is not always readable. So put a sticky note on your boarding pass that says the year-or file them by year.

Second, some of the boarding passes that were printed on the thin paper (maybe from the kiosk) faded badly and can't be used at all. I lost evidence from flights this way. So maybe a photo copy as soon as you return home would be best. Keep the original.

Several other receipts printed on that thin paper, maybe from a portable credit card machine, faded also. So did some bank receipts. If the receipt is important make a copy right away and maybe back it up with a scanned copy before it fades. Keep the original.

Make sure all or most of your photos get a date stamp when the photos are taken. I had lots of photos but many weren't date stamped and it was time consuming to go back and find the approximate dates (through emails, etc) I don't think smart phones can date the photos like a digital camera but maybe there's a way to do it. Or if you can email them to yourself you'll at least know the correct date, although I think a date stamp would be best.

Skype problems: although I have Skype set to keep a history log "forever", only about 4 conversations since 2010 were saved so it appears we only talk once a year by Skype. All other conversations we had are not in the history. I have no idea why this is, maybe because I use a Mac, but be sure your conversations are showing in the history. I now have no proof we talk by skype as I had hoped.

If you use Adium to chat it prints a concise chat history log and you can even open one of the listed chat and show part of that conversation at the bottom of the history page. For our application I have about 15 pages of Adium chat log history-each with a few lines from a selected chat. This worked out well. Going through gmail chats was brutal, and if I remember right there was no way to print a chat log from gmail.

Getting his divorce decree and birth certificate translated took much longer than I thought. Start early tracking down a person to do this-people don't always come through on their promises to help out.

Putting the packet together took much longer than I thought. I thought I had a jump start bc the letter of intent and G-325 a were ready to go, but it's been 6 weeks of putting things together, making copies of photos, etc. I wanted to mail the packet by Jan 15, 2015, so I will be more than a month late. Now I know I should have started earlier going through what I saved and putting things in order and making copies. I had saved everything but in no particular order and that just added to the burden of getting this done.

For bus tickets and my boarding passes I tried using a highlighter and it smeared the copy. So I used a red pen to underline names and dates. I thought about putting sticky notes but decided they would likely get lost before the packet makes it to the Embassy.

Ok I hope this helps someone. Good luck getting your packet together.

[Ilovemyman 147]

You can date the photos on the back with pen, i did and it was ok.