Minor Child Accompanied Fiance from Thailand

[TucsonBill 0]

When I first joined VJ, I could not find much about children planning to accompany their fiancé to the US, much less about the subject from a specific country like Thailand. I am posting this thread hoping it will be easy to search for and find should anyone go searching in the future.

Some of our own particulars:

Our case was not "typical" as my fiancée’s (now my wife's), daughter was not born in Thailand but was born in South Africa while she was visiting there, (my wife was never became a legal resident of South Africa, she was just there on a visitors visa). My stepdaughter’s father was a South African citizen, (an immigrant from China). The birth was registered at the Thai Embassy in Johannesburg. Lastly, my wife’s prior marriage was very short lived as the man turned out to be a playboy, (or a "butterfly" as they say in Thailand). He never developed any relationship with his daughter and never provided any support once my wife returned to Thailand.

How our particular circumstances may have effected the eventual outcome is not clear, I just thought I should include the particulars.

I initially scheduled an InfoPass appointment before ever filing the I-129f and one of the questions I had related to our intention for the little girl to accompany her mother. The Immigration Officer checked with her supervisor and was away checking some references for about 5 minutes and came back to tell me that the mother would not need any special "proof" of custody to bring her daughter to the USA.

I might add that the two of them had made previous trips out of the country to Singapore and Japan and never needed any sort of consent from the father or proof of custody.

When the date finally came for the interview, (we already had our wedding planned at this point), the officer refused to approve the visa for my stepdaughter until my wife got a statement from Amphur stating that she had legal custody of the child. This could have really turned into a can of worms since the marriage in South Africa was eventually annulled and did not address any child custody issues. Amphur wanted statements form family members, the school she attended etc to the effect that the father was not in the picture.

In the mean time, (while my fiancé/wife was trying her best to see what she could do about getting a statement from Amphur), I was burning up the telephone lines to the US Embassy demanding to speak to the Consul General - and finally did get to speak to an immigration officer. The one that actually had handled the interview had been reassigned to Cambodia the day after my wife’s interview and I spoke to someone else.

I argued that I had been told at my InfoPass appointment that no proof of custody was needed for Thailand, and that nothing in the instructions we received said anything about needing any such proof. I also argued that the petition had already been approved by USCIS and that according to the guidelines, the Embassy should not be refusing to issue a visa in the absence new negative evidence not already considered by USCIS. Since the interview had not uncovered any new negative evidence not already submitted and considered by USCIS, that the officer did not have any grounds to deny the visa. I also wrote a letter to the Consul General via express mail to this effect.

We had been very 'up front' with USCIS and the Bangkok Embassy with all the information regarding the child from day one, and I felt it was very improper of them to suddenly deny the visa in the 11th hour based on the lack of evidence they had never requested before. My arguments eventually won out and the visas for my fiancé and her daughter were approved without having to get a statement form Amphur.

As a side note, the issue of custody was never an issue at our AOS interview.

I hope this helps someone in the future.

Bill