Consular Interview - Is Petitioner required to provide a police clearance?

[RO_AH 1,684]

10 hours ago, Elitevaz said:

 

Very few Americans marry Filipinos. Most are marrying other Americans in America, so the vast majority of Americans will have no marriage record CENOMAR whether they are married or not. The US Government can't even properly track marriages of Americans, so the PSA has no chance.

Maybe you should check the immigration logs on this site to better understand just how many Americans marry Filipino's. It's very clear that you have little to no understanding of the Philippines and/or their culture. You seem to base all of your conclusions on just you and your case.

 

3 hours ago, J.M. said:

What's the big deal?  If they ask for it, provide it, or abandon your plans.  Most Americans are not criminals, but they still do background checks.  Most Filipinos that are planning to marry a foreigner are not currently married, but they still ask for a CENOMAR from them.  Most people driving cars have licenses, but police still ask to see it when you get stopped.  For most cases, there will be no record.  For a few, there will be a record.  It's easy to get and cheap.  If you learn about the Philippines, you will soon figure out that a lot of things they do don't make sense.  There are a lot of things in the US that don't make sense too.  By the way, marriage is a state institution.  The US Government is not in the marriage tracking business.  The states maintain marriage records.

Exactly!

[Elitevaz 2]

On 7/17/2025 at 2:14 PM, RO_AH said:

Maybe you should check the immigration logs on this site to better understand just how many Americans marry Filipino's. It's very clear that you have little to no understanding of the Philippines and/or their culture. You seem to base all of your conclusions on just you and your case.

 

Exactly!

 

Alright sure. Lets have a look at the stats gathered by this site.

 

Recorded on this site:

K1 Visa's total records for Philippines as of today recorded for this site = 2119

 

IR1 Spousal Visas for Philippines = 408

 

Total visas = 2517

 

It doesn't take much sense to realize this is a tiny number.

 

There's over 8 billion people on this planet. Over at census.gov it shows that about 342,000,000 of the people on Earth are American. The 2.5k is starting to look super small now. So how many of the 342m Americans are married Americans?

 

According to USAfacts.org about 47% of USA households are married. So lets attach that to the 342m. 160740000.

 

Those are couples, so we need to split that in half. Making 80370000 men and women each.

 

So, since we are talking about an international marriage (an American to a foreign national) at least one of these people would not be included in the stat(the 160 million).

 

Therefore if every single visa recorded by this site was approved and resulted in a marriage to a foreign national, we end up with this figure:

 

0.001573125%

2517 is 0.00157312% of 160 million

 

 

So please tell me how it's not even 1% of marriages are to filipinos and you want to debate with me when I say that most Americans marry other Americans? It really isn't that hard to understand. In my state alone I barely see Filipinos here and most of the couples walking around are white.

 

These are very easy to calculate and visualize. I don't see how you drew a connection between these numbers and my specific case. There isn't much of a connection.

 

Insulting my knowledge of Philippine culture is based on what? We aren't having a discussion of culture here, how could you have any benchmark of what I know? I learned to speak Tagalog and even a tiny bit of Cebuano Bisaya. I'm sure most of the Foreigners here on this site dedicating themselves to a Filipino have not done that.

 

I understand I made you mad, so you are shooting in the dark to make me look bad, despite clearly making an error in understanding. If you want to de-escalate this you can. Take a look at what I've presented, read my past comments again, and if you see your error then come back and admit it. If you want to keep debating me, you are welcome to, it excites me but this is one of the less challenging debates I've engaged in.

 

Just so we are clear, the object fact and foundation of my position is:

 

Most Americans marry Americans

[Elitevaz 2]

On 7/17/2025 at 10:34 AM, J.M. said:

What's the big deal?  If they ask for it, provide it, or abandon your plans.  Most Americans are not criminals, but they still do background checks.  Most Filipinos that are planning to marry a foreigner are not currently married, but they still ask for a CENOMAR from them.  Most people driving cars have licenses, but police still ask to see it when you get stopped.  For most cases, there will be no record.  For a few, there will be a record.  It's easy to get and cheap.  If you learn about the Philippines, you will soon figure out that a lot of things they do don't make sense.  There are a lot of things in the US that don't make sense too.  By the way, marriage is a state institution.  The US Government is not in the marriage tracking business.  The states maintain marriage records.

 

While you definitely make a very good point, all of it except for the first sentence is misguided by 1 small detail:

 

The marriage is not occurring in the Philippines!

 

The point of asking for a cenomar is to make sure that the foreigner is not married. Ok. Well the Cenomar no record result only tells the councilor that the foreigner hasn't married a filipino citizen. This would make the foreigner eligible to be married in the Philippines. Now let's look at more facts.

 

IF the couple is applying for a K1 visa, like I am, then we know some facts:

1. Both claim to not be married
2. The couple wants to be married in the USA, not the Philippines
3. The Visa is approved

While the counselor should not be doing random bs to harass the couple, the CFO states their mission is to stop what is essentially trafficking. So the actions taken by the counselor should align with this mission(yes you are right it's the Philippines and sometimes they do backwards stuff). If the actions are mission aligned, then what needs to be discovered is if the American has been married in America, because that is where the couple has been approved by the US government to be married.

 

With that all said, I'm sure there are some people that have tried to pull a fast one and bring a Filipino to America to be married even though they are already married in the Philippines. You are definitely right on your logic in that.

 

You are right in your first statement that we all have to play the CFO game, because they hold the power.

 

But what's the big deal? The big deal is that even though I have to play the game, I think it's a stupid game. Mostly because they are not listing this as a primary requirement and placing this power in an individuals hands. We all know that there is rampant corruption and crab mentality in the Philippines. In fact, if I was rich enough, I would not even have to do CFO because the NAIA guards can easily be paid off. I've heard some say that if the Filipino shows a bank certificate with 4k USD, they will let the citizen pass. If that's not true, they can just be paid off directly. The guards have put their jobs on the line for much less (remember the female that swallowed a passengers $20 USD bill?). The CFO process is mostly BS. I do agree with their mission and definitely with imparting the knowledge of what to do if abused in a foreign land, that is extremely scary. However, I do believe that a lot of the recent scrutiny of applicants is a knee jerk reaction to the guy that recently murdered his filipino wife and the Philippine government wants to look like they are doing something, even though they are mostly powerless. They do have power to help the ones that stay in the Philippines married to abusive local partners, but I doubt there is much traction there. 

 

Anyone not familiar with the event, you can do.a search or look at this tragic news post:

https://people.com/husband-allegedly-murdered-wife-days-after-came-overseas-meet-8774622#:~:text=Newlywed Wife Is Allegedly Stabbed,psychiatric hospital following his arrest.

 

CFO could have maybe prevented her from dying by refusing to let her leave the country after seeing that he had arrests in his home country. However, seeing what he's capable of, why couldn't he just beat and stab her in the Philippines? He can! So the CFO is powerless whether they let her go or whether she stays. It's way easier to get away with Murder in the Philippines than it is to get away with it in Europe. 

 

Again, you are 100% correct, they have the authority, we have to play their game.

[RO_AH 1,684]

2 hours ago, Elitevaz said:

So please tell me how it's not even 1% of marriages are to filipinos and you want to debate with me

I have no desire to debate with you because all you spout is nonsense. I already said this is not about you. It is also absurd to bring up how many Americans marry Filipinos as a percentage like it matters. What in the world does that even have to do with the immigration process?  The Philippines asks for CENOMAR , you provide it because (like I said above )even if the chance is small there is a possibility that you were married. Should we abolish security checks at the airport because 100s of millions of people fly with not intent to blow up a plane?

[Lemonslice 5,238]

5 hours ago, Elitevaz said:

 

While you definitely make a very good point, all of it except for the first sentence is misguided by 1 small detail:

 

The marriage is not occurring in the Philippines!

 

The point of asking for a cenomar is to make sure that the foreigner is not married. Ok. Well the Cenomar no record result only tells the councilor that the foreigner hasn't married a filipino citizen. This would make the foreigner eligible to be married in the Philippines. Now let's look at more facts.

 

IF the couple is applying for a K1 visa, like I am, then we know some facts:

1. Both claim to not be married
2. The couple wants to be married in the USA, not the Philippines
3. The Visa is approved

While the counselor should not be doing random bs to harass the couple, the CFO states their mission is to stop what is essentially trafficking. So the actions taken by the counselor should align with this mission(yes you are right it's the Philippines and sometimes they do backwards stuff). If the actions are mission aligned, then what needs to be discovered is if the American has been married in America, because that is where the couple has been approved by the US government to be married.

 

With that all said, I'm sure there are some people that have tried to pull a fast one and bring a Filipino to America to be married even though they are already married in the Philippines. You are definitely right on your logic in that.

 

You are right in your first statement that we all have to play the CFO game, because they hold the power.

 

But what's the big deal? The big deal is that even though I have to play the game, I think it's a stupid game. Mostly because they are not listing this as a primary requirement and placing this power in an individuals hands. We all know that there is rampant corruption and crab mentality in the Philippines. In fact, if I was rich enough, I would not even have to do CFO because the NAIA guards can easily be paid off. I've heard some say that if the Filipino shows a bank certificate with 4k USD, they will let the citizen pass. If that's not true, they can just be paid off directly. The guards have put their jobs on the line for much less (remember the female that swallowed a passengers $20 USD bill?). The CFO process is mostly BS. I do agree with their mission and definitely with imparting the knowledge of what to do if abused in a foreign land, that is extremely scary. However, I do believe that a lot of the recent scrutiny of applicants is a knee jerk reaction to the guy that recently murdered his filipino wife and the Philippine government wants to look like they are doing something, even though they are mostly powerless. They do have power to help the ones that stay in the Philippines married to abusive local partners, but I doubt there is much traction there. 

 

Anyone not familiar with the event, you can do.a search or look at this tragic news post:

https://people.com/husband-allegedly-murdered-wife-days-after-came-overseas-meet-8774622#:~:text=Newlywed Wife Is Allegedly Stabbed,psychiatric hospital following his arrest.

 

CFO could have maybe prevented her from dying by refusing to let her leave the country after seeing that he had arrests in his home country. However, seeing what he's capable of, why couldn't he just beat and stab her in the Philippines? He can! So the CFO is powerless whether they let her go or whether she stays. It's way easier to get away with Murder in the Philippines than it is to get away with it in Europe. 

 

Again, you are 100% correct, they have the authority, we have to play their game.

Suggesting polygamy (because "no one will know"), or bribery as an alternative to following the law is probably not compliant with what's allowed on VJ. 

[Elitevaz 2]

12 hours ago, Lemonslice said:

Suggesting polygamy (because "no one will know"), or bribery as an alternative to following the law is probably not compliant with what's allowed on VJ. 

 

These are normal things in the Philippines. Especially in Mindanao. It's not my suggestion, it's just what I've heard that others do, from Filipinos.