Question about chat logs - I-129F

[Bryan and An 23]

Hello,

I'm working on the I-129F packet, and I have a question about using chat logs to show an ongoing relationship (we are frontloading for Vietnam). We have chatted every day for over a year, and if I printed out all of our messages, it would be over 4,000 pages, so that's obviously not feasible. My idea was to find one good chat per month, and just send those in. I've read that some people have done one chat per week - is one a month enough? I couldn't find a perfect way to print Facebook messages, so the best way I could find was to download my whole archive from Facebook, then copy and paste the conversations I want into Word. I did this, shrunk the font to 8, made 2 columns per page, and now have 12 or 13 conversations - 1 per month since we started chatting - and it's right around 40 pages when done this way. If I went for 1 conversation per week, it would obviously be a lot more. I also was thinking of printing a screen shot of the screen that shows our total number of messages (80,000 something).

Also, I think they're good conversations and the formatting looks okay now, but my fiance pointed out that since I pasted them into Word, someone could think that I might have just typed the whole thing up. She suggested I send screen shots of the conversations instead, but Facebook shows so few messages per screen that it would probably be at least 10 times the number of pages if I did that. My idea was to take a screen shot of the beginning of each conversation and put that at the beginning of each Word version, so they can at least see that the start of each conversation was legit. This would only add about a dozen pages. Any thoughts?

On an unrelated note, for the actual I-129F form, if I have two questions that require a continuation sheet (fiance's address and question 34a, the circumstances under which we met), is it okay to put both answers on the same paper (well-labeled, of course), or should I use separate papers for each item?

Thanks so much!

[Ben&Zian 4,397]

That is what my partner and I did with our appplication, because same as you, it would have been impossible to show the entire text script(plus wouldn't necessarily want to haha)

I had texts ranging from June 2016(when we submitted the application) back to May 2015. I took about 12-14 screen shots of the Imessages(making sure to show the dates to help show the timeline) and then we supplied the first 2-3 emails we sent back and fourth in august of 2014.

But we had a fairly large gap in the timeline. some of that being cause we didn't really think about having to hold onto that stuff you know. We got approved pretty quickly. It's just important, as you said above, to make sure to show the timeline is consistent, not necessarily the commentary in the messages; but that you two keep in touch on a regular basis.

[Gro 8]

We took screenshots of our Skype conversations, two from each month. Then we used Paint on the computer to put both screenshots from each month on the same piece of paper. So we ''only'' sent about 12 papers, but there were two chats on each paper.

Then we did the same thing again for the interview, two screenshots from each month from NOA1 up until the interview.

[soulstriker 274]

i made sure i had aleast 3 pages from each month

[Bryan and An 23]

Thanks for the suggestions! I thought about that, just having a series of screen shots that show that we are conversing on a regular basis. But I read that several people on VJ have said that quality matters, and that you want to demonstrate that you've had meaningful discussions, i.e. conversations about the future, wedding plans, major events in each other's lives, etc. Therefore I thought I should actually include some meaningful conversations, which takes up a few pages sometimes even when pasted in Word, 8 pt. font, 2 columns. Maybe I could keep those but just add additional screen shots (2 per month instead of 1, or every week even?) just to show more frequent conversations?

[sfcscott 34]

I saw another post earlier about something similar to this. He claimed that he had deleted most of his chat logs and didn't have much to go with on this I-129f. When I submitted my I-129f, I did not submit any chat logs whatsoever. I focused only on meeting the requirement of meeting within the last 2 years. I used Photos of us together, Passport stamps, Itineraries, and boarding passes. I also wrote a 2 page narrative about how we met and about our ongoing relationship. Now I know each person is different and one agent could require more than the other. I did and do keep all chat logs with my Fiancé and she will have them with her when she gets to the interview. I guess what you submit is up to you and what will make you sleep better at night. Good luck to you. I am sure you will be just fine

Edited September 23, 2016 by sfcscott

[Umka36 781]

My wife and I mostly Skype and emailed. I never included in the K1 packet any of our Skype conversation, but frontloaded with copies of our emails with various topics/discussion over the course of our relationship (2-3 per month in the course of over a year). Some embassies are easier than others, so I cannot comment directly what is needed for folks in Vietnam. For us, I think me visiting my wife multiple times and being at the embassy for her interview helped. I actually had a chance to talk to the CO, and they did refer to some of our email correspondence.

[TBoneTX 43,002]

Expectations in Vietnam are quite stringent, such as to have a relationship "timeline."

Front-loading of the petition package is highly advisable.

Accordingly, this thread is moved from the K-1 Process forum to the Vietnam regional forum, for country-specific input.

[Bryan and An 23]

Thanks again for the input. I think what I'm going to do is print 1 extra screen shot per month, so now there will be a screen shot for every 2 weeks of chat since we met. Then I'll keep the more detailed chats (1 per month) in there too so they can see more actual discussion on a few of them. It looks like with these, along with my other evidence, forms, etc., that the whole packet will be probably around 100 pages. Is that acceptable (from their standpoint)? Or more papers than they want to deal with? This is the I-129f packet I'm talking about; we'll bring more stuff to the interview.