redacting "What's App" conversations

[geowrian 22,335]

26 minutes ago, NYCruiser said:

I wonder if they get erotically aroused too when they are reviewing. I would love to be a fly on the wall in that room...LOL

You couldn't pay me enough to be that fly.

Edited March 8, 2019 by geowrian

[Stubmeister 31]

To the original post, I have some 'spicier' texts with my novia. I went and gave them a 'snap shot' of a chat for the last year, ie. one conversation per month. I got on to my Whatsapp account from my computer and did a screen print.

[stacyt 209]

I've blacked out some stuff and only provided 1-3 screenshots a week. It came down to a pretty big file. All they did is saw it was there, nobody ever actually read the chats. It would take them hours and hours. And this being secondary evidence, will not get you denied. Also, nobody wants to read people's spicy stuff  

[bdglen 31]

2 hours ago, NYCruiser said:

We are a same sex couple too. The Cultural requirement for children in many societies are one of the factors Consular Officers use to gauge validity of relationships. However, with us, that is out of the window. I know quote a few couples (from Egyptian, Iranian, Haiti, Dominical Republic etc). that have age differences more than yours. They got their K1 or CR1 no problem.

 

PS: is Columbia homophobic? If so, request the Embassy interview you two in a private room

 

Salty texts are also culture specific. My fiance at the time (no spouse) did not countenance such language nor did I, so we did not use those words or sent bad pictures to each other either. However, I did not sent all the chats..just sections (say two days of one week), so they get long. Also, use Word and use fine print and use both sides of the paper to print those out. 

 

Hope it helps and good luck.

 

PS: 

 

I don't know that Colombia is any more homophobic than any other predominantly Catholic south American country. I do know that same gender marriages are allowed in Colombia so there's that....

 

I think I'm going to follow the majority opinion here and include about 6 screenshots for each month beginning with the months following the I-129F, I am also printing out a dozen photos from our most recent visit together in Mexico and when I travel to Colombia for my fiance's interview I will meet his entire family and make sure we print out another dozen pictures of Luis and I with his parents and siblings.

 

I probably should not worry so much, but having never married before, let alone marry a foreign man 30 years my younger, I just don't want any prejudice, homophobia or ageism cropping up and not being prepared to counteract it.

 

Thanks to everyone for the great suggestions.

[tiggermuffin 41]

Whatsapp conversations are secondary evidences, so as long as you take a couple of screenshots should be fine. I only had about 5 screenshots of our Whatsapp conversations and had no problem. Other evidences like flight and hotel tickets are more concrete evidences, I feel

[fayrog 33]

I would also include copies of boarding passes, hotel receipts, cab receipts, copies of passport stamps. Whatsapp conversations and actually pictures alone (they can be altered pretty easily) do not prove that you met in person. Remember you are trying to prove that you met in person- not necessarily that you have a relationship at this point.

 

Best of luck! I'll be following your journey as I'm getting ready to file as well!

[E & J 2018 132]

I was concerned about this, so I took my time to get nice, clean messages from the past 6-8 months and put everything together with chats and pictures. They never even asked for them. I guess they did not have any questions about the validity of our relationship, because they did not even look at the photos or chat messages.

[Paul & Mallory 1,398]

With your amount of face time together, that sort of evidence could pass as secondary and not need to be quite so detailed. I'd worry more about providing evidence of the in-person encounters, such as boarding passes, flights, etc. For us - we only provided email, FaceTime, and call logs. We did not include transcripts or actual conversations. This sufficed just fine. If you DO need to provide evidence that has actual conversations, I don't see why you couldn't just black out the words or sentences you don't care to share.  

[Mike E 11,722]

The relevancy of your sexuality and age gap to this question is a puzzle to me. As if hetereo sexual couples born on the same date don’t have this issue (spicy texts).  

 

Print about ten pages of texts.  Cherry pick ones that are benign.  

 

We printed texts.  We were not asked to bring them to the visa interview.  My fiancée brought them anyway. She was not asked for them. We burned them instead.  Along with the mountains of other documents we didn’t need. We are responsible for climate change. Sorry.  

Edited March 8, 2019 by Mike E

[Paul & Marina 53]

[Newuser4453454 79]

I honestly think the hardest part of putting together the initial K-1 was trying to find chat logs that

 

A. Did not contain me or my fiance cussing our faces off in anger at our job, or someone or something else.

B. Did not contain just a straight row of reaction gifs and memes that we send eachother while using voice/video chat

C. Did not contain dark humor, or references to some inside jokes from videogames that only people in that community would get.

 

Do you have any chats that don't go full spice? Maybe something where you're talking about food or cooking or what you did that day at work or plans for the wedding or anything like that?

[Cathi 5,609]

22 hours ago, bdglen said:

Ok this may sound like a silly question, but I am concerned about having to choose between embarrassing myself and my fiance and possibly having our visa denied.  We are a same sex couple with a considerable age gap (30 years). I am the older USC  and my fiance is younger Colombiano. We communicate almost entirely on Whatsapp. We text every day and video chat several times a week.

 

Despite week long meetings together in Panama, Dominican Republic and Mexico, I am concerned that age gap and same sex relationship will be red flags for the CO, so I want to print out our WhatsApp chats (without pictures) as proof of our ongoing and consistent relationship. My concern is that our chats are frequently pretty spicy and I don't want to embarass my fiance at his interview (I will accompany him to the interview in  month or so). So I have the choice, I can totally delete all the spicy chats, which will  obviously make our chats seem way less frequent. Or, I can redact (black out) the offending words and phrases leaving everything else which will keep our daily contact intact.

 

Any suggestions will be greatly appreciated. Especially from those with a similar experience.

You don't need to send all of your chats, just a sampling.

 

I am 21 years older than my husband and we never had any issues. You cannot be denied based on age alone or the fact that you're a same sex couple. As long as you have a bonafide relationship and have proof, don't worry too much. My husband and I had several other big red flags and as I said, we had zero issues at any point. Good luck.

Edited March 8, 2019 by Cathi

[bdglen 31]

7 hours ago, fayrog said:

I would also include copies of boarding passes, hotel receipts, cab receipts, copies of passport stamps. Whatsapp conversations and actually pictures alone (they can be altered pretty easily) do not prove that you met in person. Remember you are trying to prove that you met in person- not necessarily that you have a relationship at this point.

 

Best of luck! I'll be following your journey as I'm getting ready to file as well!

Good luck! Keep following.

 

[bdglen 31]

4 hours ago, Mike E said:

The relevancy of your sexuality and age gap to this question is a puzzle to me. As if hetereo sexual couples born on the same date don’t have this issue (spicy texts).  

 

Print about ten pages of texts.  Cherry pick ones that are benign.  

 

We printed texts.  We were not asked to bring them to the visa interview.  My fiancée brought them anyway. She was not asked for them. We burned them instead.  Along with the mountains of other documents we didn’t need. We are responsible for climate change. Sorry.  

The issue is not really the "spicy chats". The relevance of same gender, age gap, foreign marriages is sadly something I, more so than others need to be prepared to counter.   it is a fact that same gender marriage and age gap marriages are still red flags in the eyes of many. My relationship is by it's nature more apt tp bring up questions in some bigoted people's minds. 

 

I do appreciate the advice and hearing the experiences of others as all information is helpful.

[bdglen 31]

53 minutes ago, Cathi said:

You don't need to send all of your chats, just a sampling.

 

I am 21 years older than my husband and we never had any issues. You cannot be denied based on age alone or the fact that you're a same sex couple. As long as you have a bonafide relationship and have proof, don't worry too much. My husband and I had several other big red flags and as I said, we had zero issues at any point. Good luck.

Thank you, your advice and experience are encouraging.