dealradh

Just a quick question while we agonise over our I-129F package over and over.

We have put together documentary evidence of our meeting within the last two years, including scans of passport pages and boarding cards (we've made one visit each way), five colour photographs showing us both, as well as incidental bits and pieces such as hotel bills.

However, I've noticed that the hotel bills from here in the UK don't show both of our names. It's not generally how it's done here - the person who pays (this time, me with my card) has their name on the bill and not the person they're staying with. They clearly show that it was a double room, two occupants, and the dates tie in with the air travel evidence and photos, but without her name are we wasting our time including them? We don't have any hotel bills from the US because we stayed at her parents' house.

Apart from that, we've put in photocopies of letters and packages sent via snail-mail to one another, clearly showing postage date on the postmark, and my international phone bill showing, er, numerous calls to her. One thing we haven't bothered to include are any internet-related items - emails, Skype logs, Google Talk IM logs, and so on. These would run to literally reams of paper, and the general opinion of people who've been through London is that they generally aren't seen as necessary.

But my main question is about the hotel bills - I only just realised that they don't actually say who I was staying with! Is that going to be a problem?

Ditto to everything you're feeling. We were sooooooo excited to get our NOA2, then a month later we find out that a traffic fine from 17 years ago will most likely be a crime of moral turpitude

Really? I'm not disputing what you're saying - but that's totally unexpected. I'm lucky enough to have no record, not even speeding, but I always thought that unless you'd beaten someone up, or robbed a bank, or something then you were OK. I've never seen any reference to old traffic fines causing problems for VWP.

My mum had a speed camera fine from the local authority (37 in a 30, or something) a couple of months ago. Is it likely to cause her some issues when she comes over to the US for our wedding celebrations? I'd hate if she had to go all the way down to London to get a visa instead of just doing ESTA and entering on VWP like me.

I moved to the UK to be with him (was there for 3 years) and financially - we can do SO much better in the US (OC, California).

We both have decent, salaried jobs but London is far too expensive. We'd never be able to save to buy a house / flat in Central London, and wouldn't want to move out in to the suburbs.

And the weather.

Sunshine in California is grand ;-)

Housing was one of the major factors in our decision, too.

We're both pretty much at the start of our adult lives - this is our first marriage, we're both in our mid 20s, in work but neither of us in any fantastic career, no kids or dependents - and we weighed up the pros and cons of me moving to the US, or her moving to the UK.

I have no real gripe with the UK, I live in a very nice place in North West England with plenty to do, but the cold, stark fact is that the US offers a far more amenable environment to get started as a little family. Where I live, we'd be looking at the thick end of £100,000 to get ourselves into a postage stamp of a terraced house in a ropey neighbourhood. Just saving for the deposit would take us a very long time.

Meanwhile in Indiana, it's no housing utopia, but places are a lot more realistically priced for a new family starting out - you can get a modest two-bedroom detached place with a little garden for about £30-50,000. Other essentials like petrol and energy are slightly lower, too, which always helps. (But some things are a lot more - try and get internet access for £15 a month in America!)

Aside from financial concerns, I really don't have that much keeping me in the UK. My work in radio is unstable, poorly-paid, bad conditions (no holidays, no sick, no notice) and makes a Saturday job at Poundland look like a glittering career, so I have no real qualms ditching that even if it takes me a little while to find work in America.

I was cynical when I first went over there, but having been back and forth for a few months, I'm really starting to warm to it. I like how you can generally drive down the road in rural Indiana without some tool in a BMW six inches from the back of your car, for instance. And sitting out at night with a drink watching the stars is wonderful.

It's a very big life decision, but I'm hoping I've made the right one.

You know what? I don't think this site's for me at all.

It's a frustrating process for everyone involved, and it seems to me that a lot of posters simply use it to take out their frustrations on others who aren't as hard-done-to as they are.

There are an awful lot of patronising, snooty so-and-so's on here whose attitude towards those who are just starting out leaves a lot to be desired. Back when I was simply researching rather than posting, I noticed a lot of quite aggressive posts targeted at new people, but ignored them.

I am sure there are places online which are a little more helpful, and where the posters are a little less tightly-wound. We're all frustrated, but nothing gives you the right to patronise me like that, when you know so little about me.

"Good luck."

if you are living with your parents for financial reasons, can you really afford to lose your job because you lost motivation at work because you want to talk to your fiance all the time?

I know you are probably in this puppy dog love faze but you aren't moving to the US immediately, you are still a few months away from doing that...what sort of life do you want in that time?

That's how I stayed movitivated, also my husband wouldn't want me to be so distracted at work that I cannot do my job. SO I stayed motivated not only for myself, but for him.

Good luck

I think you misunderstood me. I really don't think there's any "puppy dog love" involved, and it's certainly not a case of wanting to quit work and sit with Skype running 24/7. We both have lives in our own countries and we're quite realistic about that. It's more of a case of not wanting to do any long-term planning for life in the UK - going back to college, finding a better paid job (if there were any!), that kind of thing. My life feels like it's on hold, I can't progress any further here, and I'm just waiting to begin a new life half way around the world.

I'm sure I'm not the only one who's felt like this. Especially after you've filed, your NOA2 could pop through the door at any moment. It could be three months, could be six months, could be longer. Meanwhile, you're in suspended animation, going through the motions of day-to-day life and work, but knowing you could be asked to drop everything and get down to the embassy and over to the USA at any point within the next few months.

I'm doing my job perfectly competently, although not with the same level of get-up-and-go I had when I started it 18 months ago, so I'm not about to get myself fired. I just have zero enthusiasm for doing anything else with my life here, knowing its days are numbered! Surely I'm not the only one?

First off, apologies if this is in the wrong section - feel free to shift it, I was just not sure where to post it. Also, sorry if it turns out to be a bit of an epic.

We all know on here that whatever your situation and whatever you're applying for with US immigration, it's more of a waiting game than anything else. My personal situation is fairly simple - I am 25, live in the UK, met my partner in the USA online earlier on last year, we met in real life for the first time at the start of this year in my country. After she got back, we decided to go through with this and got engaged. I'm going to Indiana in May for a full month, mainly to see her, and partly so that I can get a feel for what it's like there for a bit longer than a two week holiday with a view to when I eventually move. As soon as I get back to the UK, provided there are no last minute hiccups, we're filing the I-129F.

The point is - now that pretty much all the question-marks hanging over our relationship are gone, and we're both sure this is what we want to do, my productivity at work, and enthusiasm to get involved in stuff back here in England has plummeted. It's pretty weird - I have the job I wanted to do back when I was a child, and I really used to enjoy it, but now I find myself not wanting to even go to work, just to sit and talk to my fiancée and plan stuff for the rest of my life in the USA. Finally, I have a future different to the one I thought I was going to have, and it's hard to stay focused on life here while I'm waiting for Godot - I mean, the USCIS. I feel like my life and work here are kind of pointless.

It also doesn't help that for financial reasons, I am still living with my parents. Rather than waking up next to my love each morning and getting ready for work like a grown man, I'm waking up alone in the small single bed I slept in aged ten, with my mother bursting in at 7am screeching "BATHROOM'S FREE!" It's infuriating. Moving out is not an option - regardless of the fact that every penny of my income is going on flights, filing fees and so on, you try finding somewhere to live of your own in the UK's hot-house housing market on a local radio presenter's pay!

So my question is - if you're in a similar position to me, how do you keep yourself pepped up and motivated to continue your life in your home country, when you're just waiting to start a new life in a new country? It feels like I'm in limbo - I don't want to plan anything for the long-term here because I'm hopefully offski in a year or so, but I do still live here for the time being. I'm really struggling and starting to get a tad depressed. Help!

Driving and auto insurance are strictly a state thing so it does depend on Indiana. But in general visitors to the US are allowed to drive. Some carry an international driving permit, which is basically a translation of foreign licence details into English. Yours is already in English. On insurance, I can't speak for Indiana, but from what your fiance says it sounds similar to Texas. In the UK, you are used to drivers being insured. In Texas the car is insured. I can lend my car to anybody and my insurance covers the car if damaged, whether I'm in the vehicle or not. A call to her Indiana auto insurance agent will verify what you are allowed to do. And as an anecdotal experience, my husband got a speeding ticket and they just issued it with the details of his UK license number and my US address.

Hi everyone,

Thanks for all your help, you're a bunch of stars on here - it looks like I'll be OK just taking my own licence. My fiancée's checked things with her insurance company and that's all in order, so all that's left to do is hope I can work out how on earth you drive an automatic!

I do wish May was closer, mind. It didn't seem far-away when I booked the flights, but now I've got one of those countdown thingies on my phone, and I'm thinking of taking it off because it's depressing me saying things like 44 days...

Just a quick question, because Google seems to produce about twelve different answers to this simple poser!

I'm going to visit my partner in Indiana for a month in May. We're looking at doing a little road-trip somewhere, but if we go ahead, I'd like to help out with the driving rather than leaving it all to her.

I'm 25 and I've had a full UK driving licence since 2005 with no points and no insurance claims. My fiancée assures me that so long as she's in the car with me, we're insured, and I'm not planning on driving alone! We aren't renting a car, it'll be her own car.

Do I need to just take my UK licence with me (photo card and counterpart) and present it if asked, or do I need to get something else, either from the DVLA or the Indiana BMV?

Thanks for your help in advance! x

My reason for asking is that I have heard some ugly rumors about the K1 process and so I am looking into things more before we jump right in. It seems that our wonderful Federal Government makes the process as bad as possible to stop all the "mass immigration" I hear about on Fox News (or not as the case is).

I thought I was the only one! Sometimes it feels like they make you jump through hoops like Flipper the Performing Immigrant, just because they can.

I mean, when you take a step back, it's a bit silly, isn't it? They make you fill out the same information over and over, wait months and months for no apparent reason, call a very expensive premium rate number at the embassy to pay their bills, charge you through the nose, make you wait outside for your interview and then interview you at a room that looks like a glorified post office counter!

I don't think it's wilful though, and I've never heard any actual stories of horror, it just makes you feel a bit like you're being taken advantage of for wanting to move to be with the person you love. It's just symptomatic of a big, complicated process.

I think they understand that these days with the internet, the extensive records of phone calls and so on just won't be there. Skype, for instance, doesn't seem to leave any sort of record of calls - so our nightly two-hour webcam sessions won't appear on any bills. My mobile also doesn't have itemised billing (I'm pay-as-you-go) and I use a call forwarding service anyway, so it looks like I'm just dialling a number in my local area code.

The same goes for letters - we do send one another the occasional letter, birthday card, Valentine's card, that kind of thing, but most of our correspondence is by IM and text message with the odd email. I keep every letter and card in its original envelope with a dated postmark in a file and print all emails.

What we're relying on is that we've kept every single scrap of evidence from every time we've met - everything from flight boarding passes and itineraries, to hotel bills and even movie tickets and restaurant receipts. I just hope it works!

My fiancée and I are in the same situation - she has been studying and doesn't quite make enough money to meet the poverty guidelines for the I-134, but her mum's indicated that she is happy to act as a co-sponsor and earns over $30,000. All the information we've seen indicates that this is not a problem for London and while they might ask us a few extra questions, it's unlikely to result in a refusal.

It is likely that by the time we get to the AOS stage, my partner will earn above the poverty guidelines and this won't be an issue anymore, but it's nice to have that parental safety net just in case. We're planning on living with her parents while we get settled, before finding our own place once funds allow (once I can work!).

And to be frank, I think that if it got to the point where things were so bad that I had to claim welfare before I became eligible, I'd probably come back over here!