Larry_and_Xinji

We had a civil marriage first and a public wedding a year later.

I can confirm that contacting your congress person can help. My wife's green card issuance time went over the period specified and the day after my congress person's aide contacted them it was issued! But that was Mitch McConnel!

From what I've read here, though, I think the issue of this religious marriage is not clear - one of the respondents who had first hand knowledge indicated it may not be viewed as a legal marriage. If I were the OP I would continue to seek guidance.

Thanks, if anybody else has this question then the right answer is to go in split (based on our recent trip). She asked a person facilitating people going form the line to a immigration official and THEY said I could go with her because the foreigners line was busy. But when we got to the immigration official he made me go to the foreigner's line.

Hi All,

A long journey has paid off and my wife (Chinese) recently got her green card and life is good. We are going to visit China and I'm wondering if there's anything special to know about a US citizen entering China with their Chinese spouse. From what I remember there are different lines for Chinese nationals and foreigners. Can I go through the Chinese nationals line with her, or can she go in the foreigners line with me, or must we be split up when entering?

Thanks in advance.

Congrats everybody! We also never had an interview.

Hope everybody got the card now, if not, hang in there!

Kim and Ahmed - hang in there!

We were approved today! After 11 months. The system is just backlogged.

Hi everybody.

Well after 11 months of waiting... we received a Request for Evidence (RFE) reading, in part:

"A review of Form I-485 indicates that the applicant seeks to be classified as a Spouse of a United States Citizen (USC). However, you failed to submit evidence of your Spouse's status as a USC. Please submit evidence of your Spouse's status as a USC."

Of course, this is pretty easy for me, I will send in copies of my passport and birth certificate, but I'm still surprised as I thought we had been very thorough in our preparation. I see nothing in the I-485 instructions, or in Visa Journey's guide (which I know is only an aid, but I've found it to be very well done). Anybody have a clue about this? Or is this just an extra hoop, possibly because she won't have an interview (previous letter said that)?

Anyways, I am hopeful, as I've seen evidence in this forum, that as soon as they process this evidence they will issue the green card.

Good luck everybody.

edit: thought I might add: Online our application had not gone past 'acceptance' after 10.5 months. All of a sudden now it jumped from initial review to RFE. I really think they just opened this or something.

Congrats, glad to know it's still moving along!

Thanks A&B for the encouragement. It's pretty hot and stifling here in Pennsylvania too!

We got a letter today from our Senator's office - we had asked they look into this delay. They received an e-mail back from USCIS based on their inquiry stating we are in line for an interview waiver pending a field office review. Oddly, it also states our case is still held at the NBC pending that review. I was under the impression our case had moved from NBC to the field office... but maybe that means just for a review.

That is news to us, but I suppose good enough news. It still doesn't answer, for me, why it's taking so long. If we don't need an interview then just give the green card, right?! It's officially 10 months today since they received our application.

Anybody else have news or are we the last now? lol

We got a response from a recent service request from our local field office: they are reviewing our case, expect something in 60-90 days.

Looks like we have to start thinking about renewing the combo card if we don't hear anything within a couple months - she got that in November, 2012.

Congratulations to those who got the green card! For the rest of us, hang in there! I wish we all had it already, but it's comforting to my wife and myself to know we are not alone.

We filed on August 27, 2012 from K1 visa. Did biometrics in October, got the combo card in November. Since then, absolutely nothing. We both left to South Africa and came back in no problems. I called several times, in April they put in a service request and our case was eventually moved to the Philadelphia field office. That was April 18th. I only know this from calling the NBC. We have received no mail since the combo card. Very frustrating. I called today and they told me Philadelphia was processing cases from November 2012. Yet we have heard nothing. They put in another service request.

I guess all we can do is hang in there. I hope everyone gets their green cards soon.

Hi All,

We filed in August and she got the combo card fairly quickly. Since then we left the country for two months and came back in, but still have heard nothing about interviews.

Looks like we're not the only ones in that boat, so I guess we just have to hang in there. Congratulations to everyone who got the green cards, it will be nice to take a break from all this paperwork!

Just in case, anybody digs this up, i had sent this recent as a PM:

hey, i called the help number and they gave me a little more info. i know the local field office for our case now, philadelphia. they also told me philadelphia is only processing applications from july 26 2012 (couple of days ago). that might mean they won't get to our application for another month, and like you said if they sent the interview letter then we'd have about a month to it or so. so, i'm not expecting the interview to be for 2 months then. that's how long we are out of the country, till march 22. so it might work out. the lady on the phone said since i had put the travel dates with the advanced parole application they might be waiting for that. we put that we would be back march 1, which is wrong now, but may have something to do with the delay of our case. she also said, when asked, that i would be able to change the date. i asked her, "do i have anything to be afraid of?" and she said "no."

Online it still says only in Acceptance, not even in Initial Review. I will try calling again. She just got a visa to go to South Africa with me for 2 months. She already went on a cruise to the Bahamas with my sisters and re-entered with a new I-94 showing AOS with no problems.

Does this seem odd to anybody?

OP's wife filed after August 1st, and since August 1st, cases that are chosen to be waived from an interview are not transferred to CSC anymore. They stay at NBC and are adjudicated here.

Or the case will be scheduled for an interview, and be transferred to a local USCIS office.

Hi all, thanks for the replies, it really sounds like I just need to wait. I'm interested in the above quote - does somebody have a link about that? Our case is pretty straight forward and never had any problems so if any case would not have an interview it might be us. How often does that happen?

Mail will be forwarded while I'm away to my mother - that worked last time when I received several of the 129F notices while I was out of the country by them being forwarded to her home.

I figure if the US government offers advanced parole that means you can use it! We have a unique opportunity where she can travel with me for my work and also become an employee of my university and finally get paid some money so that's really great! Living on a grad student stipend for two hasn't been easy.

I called NBC yesterday and they noted no problems but didn't really have much else either, just wait.

One last thing, we signed her up to get e-mail notifications on the 'my case status' website - will she get an e-mail about the interview? Is the spouse needed at the interview?

Hi all,

In short, my wife arrived here on K1 in July, married in August and submitted 485 for AOS concurrently with 765 and 121 for EA and AP by the end of August. She did biometrics in September and she received her EA and AP combo card about a week ago. So it's been about 2.5 months since our I-485 was received, yet if I check its status online it still only says Acceptance, even though the receipt numbers for EA and AP show them having gone through all the stages.

My question, is it normal for the I-485 to not even be under initial review? I am in Pennsylvania and am not sure if Pittsburgh or Philadelphia will be my local office, but both say 4 month processing times. Still I would expect it to be under review?

Most of the details of our visa journey are in my signature below or you can view the full timeline of course.

I'm itching to know because I am going out of the country for December basically then we will both go out of the country for most of February and March. It would be nice if we at least knew the interview date or something.

Thanks for your help,

Larry and Xinji

I was also confused about this. For example, on the fees website they specifically state no additional fee is required for I-131 if you are filing with the I-485. The section for I-765 refers you to its instructions, in which case I was unable to find anything about filing with I-485 even in the 'special instructions' section mentioned earlier for the I-765.

However, in the special instructions for I-485 you do find this information, and it is also in the PDF of the instructions.

"Please note that, if you file Form I-485 to adjust your status as a permanent resident on or after July 30, 2007, no additional fee is required to also file an application for employment authorization on Form I-765 and/or advance parole on Form I-131. You may file these forms together."

Maybe that just shows I haven't read all instructions thoroughly but it'd be better if this information was where you'd expect. I use VJ as a guide, but in the end I double check everything. Still, I've never found anything wrong in VJ guides!

Sorry, didn't realize about the barcode. We never used this online form so I was working under the logic of downloaded PDFs. It's always better safe than sorry with this.

www.ctrip.com is a great way to get hotels in china. if the english reviews are good the hotel is fine. you can also search by area within a city - though i'm not sure exactly what that would be for the consulate.

I would note that there has been some confusion about the unmarried certificate. I e-mailed the Guangzhou consulate directly and got a response on this. It should be a sworn and notarized statement by the beneficiary of being presently single and able to marry.

Also, they don't really want a white book - they are asking people to remove the covers now - but it was not an issue to do that at the time of document intake.

I like Rosetta Stone personally. It won't make you fluent or anything but gets you started and gives you structure. I was using it for learning Chinese though. Then I picked up a beginner's dictionary which is really helpful. Maybe there is something like that for English too. You can look up a word then it not only gives the definition but explains how to use it. I also use grammar and vocabulary books. One of the hang ups of Rosetta Stone is that you get stuck sometimes. Fluenz is another software where there is also a recorded teacher that explains concepts instead of making you grasp at straws at times.

The fact they'll be around English all the time though will be the biggest contributor to quick learning.

It's helpful if your fiancee knows people with passports that she could just ask. It's a lot easier for a Chinese person to explain to another Chinese person how to navigate their system.

If you haven't gotten police, marriage, birth certificates prepare to freak out. You can really be of no help, she has to do it.

You can also add text to non-fillable forms with image editing software, such as the free software GIMP - that would be another way around the problem.

http://www.gimp.org/

Still, unless you're doing the packet 3 shortcut what's the point? I think most people just write it in when they get it.

Also, in case you don't know - characters are the same in all Chinese languages - Mandarin, Cantonese, etc. Only their pronunciation is different. Traditional characters are used outside the mainland, and simplified characters are used within the mainland. Based on my understanding anyways.

It is misleading because Chinese characters are not an alphabet, but yes, that should be in characters, with family name first as is Chinese tradition. In other words, it's how the Chinese government would have a record of their name.

Are either of you planning on learning the other language? I don't think that will look good to an interviewer - they are concerned that you can have meaningful communication. Even though the American interviewer conducted the interview in Chinese they still asked my fiancee how we talk. Fortunately she speaks English quite well and I'm learning Chinese.

DS 156 and DS 156K are different forms:

http://www.visajourney.com/content/k1forms

Both are required. Is the confusion that you thought you only need the 156k?

Pay attention to details.