PantomimeGoose

Urgh. It hurts my soul a little that I'm tiptoeing around, trying to do everything right in order to not to jeopardize my scholarship or my husband's visa, and he's prancing around like a hero for breaking the law, apparently ignorant of the workings of the process he's 'documenting'.

We came from a very similar situation: dated at the end of my Master's. I couldn't remain there on a marriage visa. My post-study work visa was rejected on a technicality. He was still at Uni for two more years.....
We finally married 'to be together' after 2 years of long distance. We didn't get a real wedding. My family treated the whole process a little like a baffling joke, though they liked him very much. And though our relationship was very real, the constant scrutiny, confusion, and criticism often made it feel almost fake.
Maybe your so's issue is the lack of romance? Replacing a spontaneous proposal and blissful pre-wedding togetherness with the prospect of sensible discussions, separation, and notorized paperwork isn't exactly appealing. It's doubly hard when no one understands 'why he can't just show up and stay'. It can and will put unfair strain on the relationship that 'normal' couples don't experience. Five and a half years into our relationship, it still feels like we need to get through ROC before we can really breathe easy and just focus on us and how we want our lives to be.
No one wants to go into marriage feeling like it's the only way. But sometimes, for folks like us it is. If she's the one for you and you're the one for her, it'll be worth it in the end.

The congressional research service isn't clear on the incidence either, but even they acknowledge the potential for fraud.....
"USCIS prohibits approving VAWA petitions when the agency determines that a petitioner has committed marriage fraud. Yet, it is unclear the degree to which the USCIS’s Adjudicator’s Field Manual (AFM) and other regulations require an adjudicator to consult previous case files, although the AFM does recommend it. It also remains unclear how the VSC considers evidence of marriage fraud offered by an allegedly abusive spouse who may have been defrauded by the foreign national for purposes of violating immigration laws and who wishes to report such evidence. The Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996 (IIRIRA) prohibits denial of a VAWA petition based “solely” on evidence furnished by the abusive spouse or other household family member involved in the abuse"
http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/R42477.pdf So, basically, if you've been defrauded and then accused of abuse, you're not allowed to prove it. Interesting reading.....

This is what I'm getting at. Together we're a big voting block. If we could agree that we wanted to inspire lawmakers to change some of those things, and made enough noise about it, I suspect we could.
I would say it's a complex problem, with fraud, USCIS inefficiency, and conflicting immigration law all contributing to the current state of affairs. For reasons I will never understand, a lot of people who go through it just don't see it as a real problem, or a system with inefficiencies that could be fixed.
A society grows great when old men plant trees, whose shade they know they shall never sit in.

Unfortunately, not much. Folks periodically attempt to start petitions of that nature on here, but I've yet to see one gain much steam. Amongst ourselves, we know how difficult and violating the process can be, but getting people to agree on what should be changed is nigh impossible. I personally don't think a government bureaucracy has any right to pry into my personal life beyond legal proof that I am married and that my husband is not a known criminal, or force me to choose between completely changing my lifestyle or being apart from my spouse. However, a fair number of the people on here are in the "privilege" camp, and think the process is firm but fair, or at the very least necessary to prevent fraud.
General public awareness of the legal immigration process is pretty much nil. In fact, I was just talking with PantomimeGander about how many people we encountered in real life during our wait who successfully defrauded the system (came with the intention of getting married and just stayed), while being blissfully unaware that they were doing anything wrong. We also encountered a few in green card marriage situations who had no problems with faking the process, and acted like it wasn't even a big deal. People who want to change the immigration laws want to do it for poor kids they envision walking across the desert, not for us. The rest think of those spectral urchins (and maybe the jerks we met who are already getting away with it anyway), and don't want to hear a thing about making any kind of immigration easier.
You'd have to change a lot of minds before you'd change any procedures.

I'm curious: what's the OP's timeline? How long have you been married, how long have you been apart, and how did your marriage come about?
My relationship with my husband has been long distance on and off for four years, and it drives me nuts when I feel like he's putting his career or status ahead of the stability of our relationship. This is after living together, dating two years before we married and so on, so I never had any doubts about us being bona fide. He has always seemed to cope better with the distance, and is more likely to speak of practicalities like, for example, keeping a job an extra month for a reference. All he sees is the benefit, while I weigh the benefit with the collateral emotional damage that I know that seemingly trivial delay is going to cause, because at this point, there have been an awful lot of "trivial delays", both from his end, and from the bureaucracy.
No matter how you two began your relationship, if things have been difficult between you for a while because of distance or other issues (even if only your wife is really suffering), maybe she feels like your priorities have changed and is trying to protect herself?

Keep screen captures of things like that FB message, if not the message itself. Threats and vitriol on his/his family's part might help give you the upper hand when it comes time to discuss custody issues.

Keep screen captures of things like that FB message, if not the message itself. Threats and vitriol on his/his family's part might help give you the upper hand when it comes time to discuss custody issues.

Keep screen captures of things like that FB message, if not the message itself. Threats and vitriol on his/his family's part might help give you the upper hand when it comes time to discuss custody issues.

I'll never forget the first time I saw him across the fashionable theme rock club. Cotton Eye Joe had just started to play, so of course, I was looking around for the New York Yankees who are usually drawn inexorably to the sound. They never materialized. Instead, emerging through the ersatz fog and the groups of students dressed as a golf outing and super heroes, was 5 foot 6 inches of pure man (I could tell by the distribution of hair) in tweed and a flat cap. "Is that a ferret in your trousers, or are you just happy to see me?" I asked coyly (It turned out to be a ferret). After exchanging pleasantries and speaking flirtatiously of going out some evening for some kidney pie and mushy peas, he announced "Git thi coit. Tha's pulled." Naturally I thought I was being mugged, so I attempted to glass him, as I was taught was their custom. It seems I had not quite grasped the technique, so he just exclaimed "Eee bah gum, luv." and called me a "big girl's blouse". My head was spinning from a combination of the IRN BRU and pale-flesh-induced snow blindness. Confused and disoriented, I took *off* my blouse. It was love....

I'll never forget the first time I saw him across the fashionable theme rock club. Cotton Eye Joe had just started to play, so of course, I was looking around for the New York Yankees who are usually drawn inexorably to the sound. They never materialized. Instead, emerging through the ersatz fog and the groups of students dressed as a golf outing and super heroes, was 5 foot 6 inches of pure man (I could tell by the distribution of hair) in tweed and a flat cap. "Is that a ferret in your trousers, or are you just happy to see me?" I asked coyly (It turned out to be a ferret). After exchanging pleasantries and speaking flirtatiously of going out some evening for some kidney pie and mushy peas, he announced "Git thi coit. Tha's pulled." Naturally I thought I was being mugged, so I attempted to glass him, as I was taught was their custom. It seems I had not quite grasped the technique, so he just exclaimed "Eee bah gum, luv." and called me a "big girl's blouse". My head was spinning from a combination of the IRN BRU and pale-flesh-induced snow blindness. Confused and disoriented, I took *off* my blouse. It was love....

I'll never forget the first time I saw him across the fashionable theme rock club. Cotton Eye Joe had just started to play, so of course, I was looking around for the New York Yankees who are usually drawn inexorably to the sound. They never materialized. Instead, emerging through the ersatz fog and the groups of students dressed as a golf outing and super heroes, was 5 foot 6 inches of pure man (I could tell by the distribution of hair) in tweed and a flat cap. "Is that a ferret in your trousers, or are you just happy to see me?" I asked coyly (It turned out to be a ferret). After exchanging pleasantries and speaking flirtatiously of going out some evening for some kidney pie and mushy peas, he announced "Git thi coit. Tha's pulled." Naturally I thought I was being mugged, so I attempted to glass him, as I was taught was their custom. It seems I had not quite grasped the technique, so he just exclaimed "Eee bah gum, luv." and called me a "big girl's blouse". My head was spinning from a combination of the IRN BRU and pale-flesh-induced snow blindness. Confused and disoriented, I took *off* my blouse. It was love....

Yay! Interview date April 27th!

I was looking into activism for legal immigration reform earlier this year (things like whether the process could be made faster, more efficient, less AP on frankly racist grounds etc) and was really shocked by the number of people who loudly expressed their beliefs that there was nothing so hard or invasive or expensive or potentially discriminatory about the current visa process.
I have a lot of sympathy for the plight of people who cross the border in desperation, but strongly believe that we need a temporary immigrant worker program to change things. It's hard to be upset at the people who are doing what they can for a better life when the American people are the ones who enable it by ignorantly defending the holes in the system.

It's a combination of the separation and the lack of control.
A long distance relationship has it's own set of challenges, but let's face it; in most, if a spouse ended up in the hospital, or pregnant, or financial straits changed, or if your loved one was really suffering from the distance, you'd come back or bring them to you in a heartbeat. In our situation, we're deprived of that choice.
In place of that choice, we're forced to pay the government money, fill out a convoluted application to prove our love is good enough, and then wait until they see fit to have a life. It makes it difficult to do normal things, and by extention to feel normal. (This is a wild understatement: much of the past year has felt like a chapter from Kafka's 'The Trial', or Sartre's 'No Exit')
Some days it feels like if I don't have freedom to choose my life, to choose my family, without justifying it to the government, I must not have much freedom at all.
The hard part has been the separation from my husband for a few years. The tragic part is that I don't know if I will ever believe in the country or the inefficient bureacracy that took that time from us again.

VJ is a big help. It's nice to have a group of people who understand the process. After about 4 months of asking when my husband was going to be here, real life friends and family finally decided to believe me that, really, it was going to be eight months or more....and then they started trying to convince me that "Surely, just coming here on a tourist visa and just staying isn't such a big deal, right?" Facepalm. Facedesk.
Another June with an NOA2 yesterday!

It's a combination of the separation and the lack of control.
A long distance relationship has it's own set of challenges, but let's face it; in most, if a spouse ended up in the hospital, or pregnant, or financial straits changed, or if your loved one was really suffering from the distance, you'd come back or bring them to you in a heartbeat. In our situation, we're deprived of that choice.
In place of that choice, we're forced to pay the government money, fill out a convoluted application to prove our love is good enough, and then wait until they see fit to have a life. It makes it difficult to do normal things, and by extention to feel normal. (This is a wild understatement: much of the past year has felt like a chapter from Kafka's 'The Trial', or Sartre's 'No Exit')
Some days it feels like if I don't have freedom to choose my life, to choose my family, without justifying it to the government, I must not have much freedom at all.
The hard part has been the separation from my husband for a few years. The tragic part is that I don't know if I will ever believe in the country or the inefficient bureacracy that took that time from us again.

What I mean is, why are they allowed to not do our petitions roughly in chronological order? Dealing with a large group later rather than sooner does nothing to lessen the total number of petitions.
Pretty frustrating that they can decide to bump us back, just because we don't live on the east coast or just because we applied in July, and there's nothing we can do about it.

The full passport is helpful for showing dates when you've visited your spouse, visa if you met working or studying abroad etc.

Hey All,
The new "We the People" petitioning website is up at whitehouse.gov I created one, requesting that the government impose shorter processing times on IR/CR visas, or allow families to be reunited in the US while visas are pending. If we get 25,000 signatures this month, the administration will take it under review!
http://wh.gov/2aH
If for some reason the link doesn't work, the header is "Impose strict time limits on IR-1/CR-1 visa processing, so that Citizens are not unjustly torn apart from their families" at https://wwws.whitehouse.gov/petitions#!/
If you believe in it, sign it, FB it, tweet it! It's too late for most of us, but nobody should have to go through what we've all gone through.

It would be nice if the timelines took into account expedites and military priority, though it also seems like some of the late August/September petitions that are getting through quick are skewing the range.

Hey All,
The new "We the People" petitioning website is up at whitehouse.gov I created one, requesting that the government impose shorter processing times on IR/CR visas, or allow families to be reunited in the US while visas are pending. If we get 25,000 signatures this month, the administration will take it under review!
http://wh.gov/2aH
If for some reason the link doesn't work, the header is "Impose strict time limits on IR-1/CR-1 visa processing, so that Citizens are not unjustly torn apart from their families" at https://wwws.whitehouse.gov/petitions#!/
If you believe in it, sign it, FB it, tweet it! It's too late for most of us, but nobody should have to go through what we've all gone through.

Hey All,
The new "We the People" petitioning website is up at whitehouse.gov I created one, requesting that the government impose shorter processing times on IR/CR visas, or allow families to be reunited in the US while visas are pending. If we get 25,000 signatures this month, the administration will take it under review!
http://wh.gov/2aH
If for some reason the link doesn't work, the header is "Impose strict time limits on IR-1/CR-1 visa processing, so that Citizens are not unjustly torn apart from their families" at https://wwws.whitehouse.gov/petitions#!/
If you believe in it, sign it, FB it, tweet it! It's too late for most of us, but nobody should have to go through what we've all gone through.

Gosh, for men who claim not to care what other men are doing with their phalluses, certain members of this board seem able to drag a whole mess of sweaty man-sex into conversations ranging from taxation to education.
I daresay, that's more than a little bit gay.

Measures that promote 'diversity' on college campuses actually discriminate more against people of Asian descent than caucasian these days. Meritocratic schools have student bodies with huge percentages of Asian/Asian-American students whose grades and test scores on average exceed those of their white peers.