Leasel7

Unless your S.O. needs to work or already has a job ready to go I might hold off on the EAD. Our processing took a little over 4 months from start to finish. You might be only looking at a couple of months before the AOS is approved and the approval of the EAD. Depending on your situation just save the money and wait for the Greencard. Again, depends on your situation but save the money if you can. This process is already expensive enough. AP is a tough call and we waited because my wife was pregnant and probably would not travel alone to her home country anyway.

Rich

EAD is a tough call. We applied for it, even though there was no great need for my husband to start working right away, because it would make it easier for him to get a drivers license. But our AOS was approved so quicky (two months) that we never got the EAD, so that was $180 down the drain. On the other hand, there are folks here who have been waiting over a year for AOS, so you never know which way the process will go.

My husband's AOS was approved without an interview after being transferred to CSC. His green card just arrived last Thursday. We were notified that his case was being transferred to CSC and were confused at first, but after doing some research right here on Visa Journey, we discovered that being transferred to CSC means that most likely you will get the green card without an interview. About the "additional biometrics", never heard of that. Did your original biometrics expire, or did they end up with a bad set of fingerprints? From timelines I've read here, most people just do biometrics once, then the interview gets scheduled. Anyway, it sounds like congratulations are in order! Hopefully your green card will show up in the mail soon!

i would apply for the SSN right away. they are sometimes hesitant to issue it to k-1's if too close to the expiration of their visa.

file for AOS, EAD and AP within 90 days of your marriage. and yes, you will need a new affadavit of support.

once the SSN comes, you can try to get a driver's license, depending upon your state's laws. we've found it absolutely necessary as picture ID...and in missouri, it was easy to get once he had a SSN.

also, once the SSN comes, add your husband to your bank accounts. this will be good proof of your life together for your AOS interview.

What Dani said. Also, you may want to add your husband's name to your utility bills and make him your beneficiary on your life insurance -- more evidence of your new life together and comingled assets. And in my state -- Virginia -- you have to prove that you are a state resident to get a driver's license, and having your name on a utility bill is one form of evidence DMV accepts. Actually you may just want to read up on requirements for getting a driver's license in your state. In Virginia the requirements have drastically changed since 9/11/2001, and my husband needs two forms of ID, proof of legal presence, and proof of residency in order to get a driver's permit or license. (BTW, in Virginia SSN is not required to get a drivers license, but if you do have a SSN, they you need proof like your SSN card or a W-2.)

Well, I had my baby the day after I posted this.......emergency C-section, but all is fine now and she is healthy and beautiful!

She was born at 37 weeks and weighed 7 lbs 15 oz and was 21 inches long, I can't imagine how big she was GOING to be at 40 weeks!!!!!!

Here is Olivia Joan

Trying to add a few more pics...

Congratulations KiKi, and enjoy your little girl -- she is gorgeous! (And your boys are awfully cute too!) I love the name Olivia, too

She's not using my surname yet but she wants to. So does she just start using it from on or is there something we need to do to make it happen? She does'nt have any driver license/SSS or anything here so it should'nt be a hassle?

I changed to my husband's last name, but I am the USC. First step was to have it changed at the local social security office -- that also takes care of the IRS -- and then second step was DMV. I also had to jump through hoops to change my name at work, and I have yet to have my name changed with all the utility commpanies, etc. Also I haven't bothered with my passport yet. Sounds like it should be relatively simple for your wife except her passport. I guess that would be handled through the Philippines embassy or perhaps a nearby consulate? (My mother is a citizen of Australia and is able to get her passport renewed at the Australian embassy in Washington DC.)

Thats good I dont have to print out another round of bank statements that was a hassle (what is'nt!) but I have all my tax forms from before.

Well I filed I-134 for my husband's K-1 visa, then I-864 for his Adjustment of Status. Since there was a six month gap between the I-134 and the I-864, I obtained a new employee letter with updated information and also tax transcripts from the IRS for the past three tax years. I also threw in a few recent pay stubs. I didn't bother with bank statements since my income exceeds what is required for our household.

She was going to visit some friends in Cali, and someone told us she needs a State I.D. in order to fly or leave the state, do you know anything about that my any chance?

My husband and I traveled from Virginia to Texas and back by airplane a few months ago, and all he needed for identification was his passport. He still does not have any form of state issued ID.

Congratulations Bebe, that is wonderful news!!!

Thanks all, and speedy AOS mojo to those of you who are still waiting!

so that means your GC arrived before EAD

Yep, that was $180 down the drain. From what I understand they don't bother with processing EAD once a green card has been issued.

My husband just called to inform me that his green card arrived in the mail today! Since his AOS was just approved on Friday, I thought it would be another week at least before we saw the green card. I just want to thank everyone on this site for all the advice and assistance, I couldn't have done it without you! I put off assembling the AOS package for five months because I was dreading it, but with all the information available here, it wasn't all that difficult after all. Thanks again, y'all are the best!

Just wanted to thank you both for your input. Since this was posted we found a civil surgeon who charged us $53 to fill out the I-693A supplemental form. That's it. It's this kind of feedback from members that makes this website so helpful. Thanks again.

You're welcome! I'm glad you were able to find a civil surgeon who would do the I-693A at a reasonable price. I was just as confused as you were about the whole vaccination supplement thing, and was helped by others here in this forum, so I am thankful as well.

Actually I should have just quoted what I thought was relevant, which was only the first paragraph.

Christianism or Christian Nationalism is analogous to Islamism. Just as Islamists seek to reform society along Islamic lines and force society to conform to conservative Islamic values, Christianists seek to reform society along Christian lines and force society to conform to their conservative Christian values. They are Christian Nationalists because they have combined conservative, evangelical Christian theology with extreme American nationalism.

I was trying to point out that maybe the lines distinguishing Evangelical Christianity and Christianism have been blurred.

Thanks for clarifying. I don't believe most evangelicals subscribe to the extreme views described in the various articles, but I certainly can understand that the lines may appear to be blurred when you have prominent Christian figures like Pat Robertson subscribing to dominion theology. Not every evangelical hangs on every word coming out of Robertson's mouth, nonetheless he is a very prominent Christian, and might be seen as speaking for them.

http://atheism.about.com/od/christianismnationalism/

I took a quick look but I don't see what this adds to the discussion. Just a bunch of articles about "Christianists", "Christian Nationalists", "Christian Extremists", etc. One article apparently tries to make the case that Christians did -- and still do -- support slavery. I guess that would be news to the millions of African-Americans who practice Christianity. Is that what you wanted to point out?

A study by the Institute for First Amendment Studies found a prevalence of anti-Semitism within the Christian Right.

"Christian Right" is not synonymous with evangelical church. It casts a wide umbrella.

anti-Semitism in the form of aggressive missionary activity threatens the very existence of Judaism.

So according to your esteemed source, Christians who seek to convert those of other religions -- including Judaism -- are guilty of anti-Semitism? Very, very broad definition.

Sorry, I don't think well-meaning Christians attempting to convert Jews to Christianity rise to the level of anti-Semitism, no matter how many radical left websites attempt to make the case.

Thousands of private Christian schools and Christian home schools utilize anti-Semitic textbooks. These textbooks include the "original" McGuffey's Readers, which have enjoyed a tremendous resurgence in recent years, and books published by Bob Jones University Press for use in Christian schools.

Where are the examples of how these text books are anti-Semitic? (And keep in mind that Bob Jones University is by no means mainstream evangelical Christianity.)

Additionally, the Christian Right's anti-abortion movement has anti-Semitic overtones. Anti-abortion groups such as Operation Rescue and Life Dynamics list "Jewish doctors" as the leading performers of abortion.

These groups are extremist and hardly embraced by most evangelicals.

So-called "humanism" is under attack by the Religious Right in schools and other institutions across the country. Condemnation of humanism has anti-Semitic roots. Though seldom mentioned, Christian Right leaders link humanism with Judaism, saying "Judaism grew out of the rejection of Jesus Christ and steadily became humanism."1

OMG, now evangelicals are anti-Semites because they reject the humanistic worldview, which runs counter to Christianity? The reason why this latter quote is "seldom mentioned" is because most evangelicals don't link humanism with Judaism.

I don't have time to wade through the rest of this, but if this is your evidence of systemic anti-Semitism and racism in evangelical Christianity, it's very weak. Mostly a series of unsupported allegations along with highlighting some of the Christian right's lunatic fringe, which hardly represent mainstream thought.

Congratulations & enjoy your two years of freedom from the immigration process!

Today, we received the approval email/notification that the card was being mailed (3 emails, to be exact...they probably have a virus in the system).

Too funny -- I get three copies of every email they send to update my case too! I guess three is better than one, but it doesn't matter because they all get snagged by my spam filter, and I have to go retrieve them after seeing the case updated on the USCIS website.

Congratulations!

Congratulations!

AOS = $325 + $70 biometrics

EAD = $180

AP = $170

no charge for the EAD biometrics

Man!! So $745 in one shot! Do they accept personal checks? And can I write one single check for the total amount?

Big chunk of change, huh? I didn't bother with AP but shelled out $180 for EAD, only to have AOS move so quickly that the EAD was never issued. So that was a waste of money, but you never know if your AOS process will take two months or two years. Sigh.

To answer your questions:

1) Yes, personal checks are accepted and recommended.

2) Write separate checks for AOS/biometrics, EAD, and AP. That way if one application get sent back for some reason or other, the others can proceed.

Congratulations!

The Ku Klux Klan? Oral Roberts and Bob Jones University?

The Ku Klux Klan? Wow, you are really digging deep. Ummm, no...that does not equate to the evangelical church. If Oral Roberts (or the university, not sure what you mean by that) has some history of racism, that's news to me. And as for Bob Jones University, they are way off in left field and do not represent mainstream thought within the evangelical church by a long shot.

...evangelical Christianity, which has long had a tinge of racism and anti-Semitism

Thanks for finding the full article. Historically speaking, you're saying that's not true?

A lot of horrible things have been said and done in the name of Christianity, but I am not aware of any systemic racism or anti-Semitism within the evangelical church, either now or in the past. If you have any examples, I would love to hear them.

Congratulations!! Now you can concentrate on getting ready for the new arrival

I wish I could read the rest of the article, but I'm wondering if he's making a point of how ridiculous it is to blame anything beyond the celebrity for their transgressions. If that's the case, nice of the article posted here to misrepresent Neal Gabler's position and even more absurd to make him an example of 'liberals'.

Nope, that's not at all where he was going with this. Here's the complete text of the Neal Gabler article; seems the article posted at the beginning of this thread was right on the money in its description of this liberal diatribe. And yes, Gabler is clearly liberal -- note how he equates "right wing" with "hate-filled" just in the subtitle, making the ridiculous assertion that the right wing won't shun Gibson even if Hollywood does. (It seems in Gabler's imaginary world, Hollywood is full of moral integrity that right wingers are sorely lacking.) If you want to see hate, just read Gabler's explanation of how evangelical Christians really despise and resent Jews, along with his suggestion that Mel Gibson will be elevated to sainthood "among some acolytes in a country where hate doesn't carry the stigma it once did" -- i.e. the right wing and those nastly little surreptitiously anti-Semite evangelicals.

Mel on the cross

Hollywood may shun Mel Gibson for his anti-Semitic ravings, but the right wing in George Bush's increasingly hate-filled America won't.

By Neal Gabler

Aug. 1, 2006 | Ordinarily when a celebrity transgresses -- when Lee Tracy urinated off a Mexican hotel balcony in the 1930s, or Ingrid Bergman bore twins out of wedlock in the late 1940s, or Tara Reid does her impersonation of "Girls Gone Wild" -- the moralists descend and mea culpas are issued. So it has been for Mel Gibson. Gibson's anti-Semitic tirade during his DUI arrest last weekend may not be your garden-variety misbehavior, but Gibson was quick to act as if it were – recanting, apologizing and blaming alcoholism for his remarks, on the assumption that he was, as he snarled at the arresting officer, "f##ked" and that he needed immediate rehabilitation. (Gibson did check himself into a rehab center Monday.)

Gibson may very well have been right had this occurred, say, 10 years ago. He probably would have been f##ked. Sexual peccadilloes and frat boy stunts are forgivable. Hate is not. No matter how many people may harbor the same sentiments as Gibson, hate speech has typically been condemned, and no matter how often hate raises its ugly head, it has usually been beaten back by the forces of relative enlightenment in journalism and the federal government if only because it fails to comport with how most Americans want to see themselves.

Thus when the Ku Klux Klan was revived after World War I, it met general opprobrium even as it professed to be carrying the cudgels for morality and even as it was taking over several jurisdictions, including the state of Oregon. Thus when the popular and populist radio priest of the 1930s, the Rev. Charles Coughlin, began spewing anti-Semitic bile, he was quickly quarantined by the Roosevelt administration, which pressured the church into removing Coughlin from the airwaves after having successfully pressured radio networks into dropping his national broadcasts.

Thus even as racism was the prevailing order of the South, blatant racists like Sen. Theodore Bilbo of Mississippi were excoriated in the national press and ostracized by polite society. And thus in Hollywood itself, where many of the scores of anti-Semites were collected under the shingle of the Motion Picture Alliance for the Preservation of American Ideals, they felt the need to seek cover by enlisting Jewish screenwriter Morrie Ryskind as an officer. Call it hypocrisy, but it was hypocrisy that underscored just how uncomfortable Americans were with overt, publicly declaimed hate.

Or so it was. Mel Gibson, however, does not operate within that elevated environment, because America itself has changed -- one might even say has been radicalized -- since the election of George Bush. The merger of evangelical Christianity, which has long had a tinge of racism and anti-Semitism, with right-wing Republicanism has had many effects on American culture and politics, but perhaps the foremost among them is that it has legitimized attitudes that were previously considered illegitimate by the custodians of the social order. Mel Gibson has not only been the beneficiary of that change; he has courted those who effected it -- those for whom extremism in the defense of their version of liberty is no vice.

This isn't to say that President Bush has actively sanctioned hate speech. Of course he hasn't, and he would be upbraided had he done so. But Bush, in fomenting the culture wars and polarizing the country rather than uniting it as a way of solidifying his base, has given license to hate-mongers under the cover this time of an impending cultural Armageddon. Every time the president insists that he is standing on conviction while his opponents are not, every time he implies that abortion or stem cell research on embryos is a form of murder (despite press secretary Tony Snow's rapid retraction on the latter point), every time he permits Karl Rove to attack Democrats as treasonous and weak on terror, he feeds the hate machine. He doesn't have to be explicitly hateful. He can be hateful by implication. In the past, anti-Semites used words like "internationalist" to blacken Jews without having to come right out and attack them. Now the right has "secularist" and "liberal" that do the same job.

While it's true that some evangelical leaders have become vocal supporters of Israel, it's because the return of Jews to a Jewish homeland fulfills the prophecies of the Book of Revelation, not because they harbor any particular affection for Jews. As E.L. Doctorow once put it, these Christians welcome the apocalypse in which Jews will be condemned to eternal damnation. Some love! Still, it is important to note that the default settings for showing intolerance remain, and the subtle anti-Semitism that evangelical leaders may espouse is not the teeth-baring Nazi kind. Rather it fingers Judaism culturally in contradistinction to Christianity. The trouble with Jews is that they do not accept Christ and yet they seem to insist on their prerogatives in this Christian nation.

This gives vent to the position that in seeking to secularize public education, for example, as a means of defending their own religious beliefs against the majority, Jews are really denying Christians their right to their religion. Seen this way, the subterranean anger toward Jews, which is never openly expressed as anger at Jews but rather an anger toward secular liberals, speaks not to any inherent inferiority of Jews but rather to the danger they pose to Christian values -- the latest manifestation of the old anti-Semitic canard that Jews do not subscribe to American traditions and thus threaten to undermine them.

For whatever personal reasons, and God knows what demons lurk in him, Mel Gibson has been spoiling for a fight with the Jews and got it by baiting them. "The Passion of the Christ," which was widely accused of anti-Semitism for its exaggerated portrayals of Jews and for assigning them primary responsibility for Jesus' death, was really not the story of Jesus' passion; it was the story of Mel Gibson's. He was the one being nailed to the critical cross. Gibson certainly could not have been caught unawares by the criticism; in fact, in many of his so-called secular movies, like "Mad Max" or "Conspiracy Theory," Gibson had also played Christ. One might even say that he made "The Passion" precisely so that he would be persecuted by liberals and Jews -- essentially crucified -- and consequently celebrated by evangelical Christians for his sacrifice.

As it turned out, martyrdom was good business. The film earned nearly $400 million, not, one assumes, because it was a great piece of entertainment or even because it was a great religious experience. What it was, was a great cultural statement -- a thumb in the eye of liberal, secular American popular culture from which Gibson himself had once benefited and which was now vilifying him as the Jews had once vilified Christ. It also proved that Gibson didn't need the old mainstream American audience anymore. He had his evangelicals who would go to his movies to demonstrate how much they hated Hollywood.

But just as Gibson has sought martyrdom, so his evangelical audience was always in search of Christian martyrs: a public school teacher who wants to discuss religious issues in class but is proscribed from doing so, a science teacher who denies evolution but is disciplined for not teaching it, a football coach who wants to pray with his team but is not allowed to do so, a mayor who wants to put up a crèche in a public place but is accused of violating the separation between church and state. Gibson had simply taken his persecution to a larger arena -- from the local news and Fox News to the national screen. Now, with his ill-tempered remarks, he has upped the ante once again. If Disney backs out of distributing his new film, "Apocalypto," or doesn't air his proposed television series on the Holocaust, of all things, Gibson could be screaming that he is yet again suffering for his faith at the hands of infidels.

But as he yells he is unlikely to be marginalized as a bigot, despite the charge by one Hollywood publicist that Gibson had committed a "nuclear disaster," because bigotry in Bush America is just another salient in the battle against the left wing. In the end, Mel Gibson, who avoided the code words and spoke more plainly than his supporters, may not have died for our sins, but he did get drunk for them. For that he is likely to receive a measure of sainthood among some acolytes in a country where hate doesn't carry the stigma it once did.

Just speaking from my experience, no birth certificate even existed for my fiance at the time we were assembling the I-129F petition. He was born on an island with no hospital, and apparently his parents never saw a need to obtain a birth certificate for him. So we did not send any birth certificates with the I-129F; as the USC, I supplied a copy of my passport instead of my birth certificate. Once we found out that a birth certificate would be needed for his K1 interview, my fiance had to get his mother and eldest brother to verify the details of his birth so he could obtain his birth certificate at the ripe old age of 29. So he had the original birth certificate for his K1 interview, and then of course we sent a copy of it with his AOS submission.

Gabler writes that “the merger of evangelical Christianity, which has long had a tinge of racism and anti-Semitism, with right-wing Republicanism has had many effects on American culture and politics, but perhaps the foremost among them is that it has legitimized attitudes that were previously considered illegitimate by the custodians of the social order.”

What an idiot. I wonder with what authority he speaks of evangelical Christianity, other than his own bias and suspicions. I grew up attending evangelical churches of various denominations and never saw the "tinge of racism and anti-Semitism" of which he speaks. It really is a stretch to connect Mel Gibson's loathsome drunken ravings with the evangelical church when evangelicals feel a kinship with the Jewish people -- God's chosen ones -- and are generally staunch supporters of Israel. Besides, which, Gibson is Catholic. Of course, we can't blame Catholics for his behavior either, since Gibson's religious ideas are clearly outside the mainstream. Hey....I've got a wild and crazy idea -- could it be that Mel Gibson is responsible for what Mel Gibson did and said, not George Bush, the evangelical church, right wing Republicans, or anyone else?

Well, in that vein, one of the things my husband loves about America is the Daily Show and the Colbert Report. He's tickled pink that people here can openly critisize, nay mock the government and politicians on tv and not be thrown in jail for it.

That is definitely something to be grateful for and that perhaps Americans tend to take for granted. On the flip side, I had an uncle in Australia tell me that he was amazed at how much respect and even reverence Americans have for their president; at the time, television comedy shows in Australia were brutally mocking their politicians. I think how Americans view the president has changed over recent years, but perhaps we still aren't quite as rough on our leaders as the Aussies, who call their current prime minister, John Howard, "The Lip"! (Or so my Aussie relatives tell me!)

Great, more whiney liberals brought to the US in the name of love. If you want to like with UK style liberal/socialist politicians, then why the heck did you come over? To screw things up here too?

I'm guessing that Spartacus has in mind posts like these from earlier in the thread:

i asked geoff and he said: turning a blind eye to bush destroying america!

Oh my how true this is !!!!!!!!!!!!! I am forever ranting that to hubby that I cannot beieve how everyone here sits and watches from the sidelines quietly

Truth be told, I found both posts offensive but chose to ignore them because I didn't want to hijack a fun, light-hearted thread. But since the subject has been brought up, I have a news flash for those who think Americans are watching "from the sidelines quietly" while President Bush is "destroying america":

I should add that my immigrant husband, who has a degree in political science and has been following American politics for several years, does not agree with everything President Bush does, but would hardly characterize his actions as "destroying america".

Okay, end of rant! I don't usually jump into political discussions on this board, but something about a recent immigrant to this country arrogantly opining that Americans are just sitting by while the president destroys the country really frosts my cookies!

************

Back to the topic at hand -- when I came home from work one day last week and found that my husband (who still can't work -- no EAD, green card is in the mail) had been laying on the couch watching TV while devouring an entire bag of Cheetos, I knew that his assimilation into American culture was well in hand! (Only one little problem to work on -- he was watching cables news instead of Jerry Springer!)