teg

Mu husband arrived on the 7th of this month and today he received his green card!

Was there an interview? If there was an interview there will be 120 to 180 day wait period for the USCIS to contact you. This is the time to prepare your evidence to prove you have a bona fide relationship. They will send you a letter stating the additional review and you will have to address those issues in a letter. They will send you a return address in which to send your response and your evidence. Good luck, teg

You will need a co-sponsor if you cannot provide enough evidence that you earn above the federal poverty guidelines. If you currently make above the federal poverty guidelines you need to submit your 2011 tax form you need a letter from your employer stating you work for them, how long you have worked for them and your annual income with their contact information. You also need to submit this years pay stubs showing that you are above the poverty lines. If your tax form from 2011 shows below it won't be held against you if you provide the other evidence. So for two people you need to make over $18,912. I just went through this with the consulate in Casablanca and my husband has his visa as of last week!

Ours lasted 180 days

I don't understand what packet you are talking about? The documents you sent to process gets sent from USCIS to NVC and then unto Casablanca or wherever you are to be interviewed. He should have received an email or some kind of letter stating his interview date and time which he needs to take with him as proof he has an interview. He also needs to take his police record and medical examination paperwork. If you look at the Morocco consulate web page it tells you exactly what you need to bring to the interview. I hope this helps.

the first interview they don't ask for evidence and if you bring it they might not even allow you to take it. My husband could only bring the documents they requested medical exam police records and any missing paperwork we did not already submit which were the physical and police records. They send you a letter telling you what you need to bring. From what I have seen very few people get their visa after the first interview and go into an administration review this takes 6 more months after your interview which allows for you and your spouse to gather all the evidence needed to prove you have a bona fide relationship. At our second interview my husband brought pictures, skype, and gmail messages to show that we are in contact every day. I also submitted bank statements showing that my pay is automatically deposited into my bank so they would see that I make over the federal poverty guidelines. We will submit his new physical, tax filing for 2011 and police record next week and our visa journey should be over. the first interview is different from the second so depending on where you are at they require different documents. the interview lasted 30 min to 1 hour and they focused on what I did from morning until bed time. They asked about my family and everything you can imagine about them. They also asked question of my spouse like if he had lots of girlfriends serious or casual and what he planned on doing when he comes to the Unites States. Hope this helps

It doesn't hurt to send a copy of your divorce decree. I had to have it translated into Arabic to get married in Casablanca and a copy stayed with our file.

To change your name you just show your marriage license to change on your social security number and your driver's license. I married in Morocco and just went to these departments and showed my marriage license and they changed my name. I hope that you have a translated copy of your marriage license because if you did not get this you will have to take your marriage license to the court house to have it translated and registered. Once you have these legal documents then you can change your bank accounts and all other accounts. First do your driver's license because they need a copy of your social security card and to do your social security card takes more time. I did my social security card first and they destroyed my old card, but luckily I had a ticket from SS stating that I had redone my card. Hope this helps

No it does not matter one or the other.

Today I received an email from my congressman wanting me to sign a release of information from the consulate. I hope this gets things settled before Christmas because I would really like to celebrate a Christmas with my husband after missing two already.

Thank you for your input. I have contacted my congressmen and I have e-mailed the consult and have asked them about non-taxable income for 2011 because that would put me over the poverty guidelines. I am waiting for a reply. I keep trying to think of things that would help, but I am running out of ideas and the consulate doesn't define what they will or will not take as evidence.

I believe everything will work out. It is just about TIME haha.

Thank you so much I guess I will have to wait until I file my 2012 income tax.

Hello out there. I never thought I would write on here because it seemed everything was flowing smoothly for us but now we are having some issues. The problem of the matter is I graduated from college last year and started a job that makes well above the Federal Poverty Guidelines, but I only worked July until present. My 2011 income tax reflects below the poverty guidelines I know this so I submitted this years pay stubs and a letter from my employer which verifies that I make 3X the poverty guidelines. The consulate says they have reviewed my evidence and still considers my income below the Federal Poverty Guidelines therefore I need a Co-Sponsor. I refuse to do this because I married my husband and he is my responsibility and I am not going to burden my family with this. Also they wouldn't be able to add to the income and last I make above the poverty guidelines. Is there something I am not seeing when it deals with the poverty guidelines? I took two years off work to earn my bachelors degree in English Education and the rest of the time I have worked. According to the instructions on the form I-864 EZ it states “You may include evidence supporting your claim about your expected income for the current year if you believe that submitting this evidence will help you establish ability to maintain sufficient income… For example, you may include a recent letter from your employer, showing your employer’s address and telephone number, and indicating your annual salary. You may also provide pay stub(s) showing your income for the previous six months.” They stated they reviewed all my evidence, but this does not seem to be accurate. I am sorry to say that I actually e-mailed my congressmen today because I feel I have done everything by the book, but obviously I am not getting things done correctly. Thanks for any help or solutions. My husband passed his second interview but the income is keeping us from moving forward. I also understand that I can wait to fie my 2012 income tax and have further evidence but when you have been doing this process over two years it just gets to be depressing to think about more time and when will that time be "the time".

You will be lucky if it is only 8 weeks. It will more likely be 120-180 days. good luck

ok....so I inquired about my case last week and this week i was sent a letter from the USCIS... which says ( Ill just type it out):

On(date) you, or the designated representative shown below,contacted us about our case. Some of the key information given to us at that time was the following:

Caller

Attorney

Case type

Filing date

Receipt

Referral ID

Beneficary

USCIS Account number

Type of Service requested

The Status of this service request is:

Based on your request we researched the status of this case. We are actively processing this case. However we have to perform additional review on this case and this has caused a longer processing time. If you do not receive a decision or other notice of action from us within 6 months of this letter, please contact customer service at the number provided below.

Has any one ever received a letter like this b4 and if so how was the out come? Does it mean well get an answer soon or much later as in 6 months?? Just wanna know if this is a good sign or bad sign? Like what are they processing so long?

Thanks in advance for your help.

Administrative review. they will send you a letter in 120 to 180 days with the reasons for the review and you will have to provide evidence to support that you have a bona fide relationship. They will give you the reasons for their review and you will have to address those reasons in a letter. My reasons were my spouse did not know enough about my children and appeared not to be a father figure, different religions and no official engagement date. I addressed each of these and sent a hugh package of e-mails, skype documents everything that would prove that I have contact with my spouse every day and indeed have a bona fide relationship. Hope this helps. Take care

I don't think this is exactly an administrative review. If it was they would have told you it was sent back to the United States for additional processing and you would be waiting 120 to 180 days. As long as it is in the consulates hands it is good news and probably won't take 120 days to resolve. Luckily you received an e-mail stating it was still at the consulate and not sent back. Take care God Bless

i just got here in usa like 3 month ago and my wife want me to go to church with her and i did but now she want me to be Christians but im Muslim and i can't be Christians and she know that from the first time she meet me

so she want to divorce me i know that crazy

i have green card IR1 10 years do i will have a problem if she divorce me about getting other green card after 10 years or they will revoked or denied this green card i have

my wife getting crazy about to be Christians but im Muslim and i will die Muslim please i need some help here i don't want divorce i love her but she want to scare me by divorcing me but i can't be Christians so what i can do now I'm lost

I am so sorry to hear this. As a Christian myself let me express that it isn't our job to enforce our religion onto people. It has to be from the heart to become a Christian not out of force. We are suppose to live by example not by force. This example is Christian love. I hope there are ways to remedy your relationship because I truly believe marriage is a sacred thing and not one to throw away no matter what the differences are. Maybe some marriage counseling would help. I would try this first. Take care and God bless

Just for clarification, I bought the plane ticket to be present for the interview... not for him to come to the US. And I didn't buy it until I had a formal statement of the interview date in writing from the consulate...

So in light of my clarification (see above), I'm looking to find out if it'd be possible to get them to change back to the original interview date so that I can be present for it! Any takers?

You won't be allowed to go into the interview with your spouse. They will not change it back.

Hi guys! i am about to send my rfe reply which is making me kinda anxious and very very careful with ff instructions. along with the blue notice, the white paper they sent me an an empty envelope with a po box in it. I read in uscis guideline that u have to use that envelope. apparently my documents wont fit because of its thickness. so what i did was stuff some in that empty envelope then used a big one for the other documents left and wrote the same address in front of the envelope that i used. is that ok? please comment!!! thank you so much!!!

I couldn't have possibly fit our evidence in the envelope and by passed it all together. I just made sure the address was the same on the envelope as my package and I had their cover sheet on top of all my paperwork.

I-130 was filed on Feb 15th 2011, interview was scheduled on Aug 23rd, 2012, it took so much patience, diligence, commitment, etc..., I & my Californian wife planned to start a life here in Morocco, but sadly her father passed away right after she was given a permit of residence in Casablanca, she flew for funeral on Dec 16th 2010 which was the last in-person day, we decided to get me to her due to several good reasons, here we are fighting to accomplish this visa process, only true love can stand bold resisting the unbearable days, i see that online dating and social networks serving on increasing marital engagements dramatically, and also dramatically making the USCIS, NVC, etc...harshening and complicating procedures, i wonder if someday a lie-detector will be used for the interview, with 100 psychiatrists testing a beneficiary , who agrees with me?

If it shortened the process and guaranteed national security it would be awesome!

Hi VJ

I thought it would be useful for other people to be aware of Additional Processing (also known as Administrative Processing or just AP). I had a smooth process for the K1 filing. There is a fantastic guide on here that tells you EVERYTHING you need to do in order for your K1 visa petition to go through first time (http://www.visajourn.../content/k1flow). The key thing is follow every single step of it to the word. I did this and sailed through the first part of it.

Ok, so I sailed through the first part of the K1 visa process, so what happened you may be wondering? My petition came back in 3 and a half months, earlier than the 5 months we expected. In this time I had already obtained my police certificates from 2 countries and my military records, as well as filled out all of the necessary forms that I would need to send to the embassy, once they asked for them (found these online). I was prepared like you would not believe. Everything went smoothly, I attended my medical and when I arrived for my interview at the US Embassy in London on April 16th, the first person was appreciative for my well organised pack, which made her job a lot easier (i just put the paperwork in a logical order. Anything to help).

The next step of the interview was to answer some questions. This person wasn't as friendly as the first and asked me lots of questions about our relationship. These went fine and then it went down hill.

I was told they didn't need anything else from me and that my case just required some additional processing which would take 2-3 weeks. I thought "fair enough" and took the blue piece of paper they gave me and walked out. When I looked at the blue piece of paper when I walked out, it said that I had been refused a visa and that my case was under additional processing. This was a shock to me because the lady at the embassy said nothing to me about a refused visa, she indicated everything was fine. Now, for those of you in Additional Processing, this is where my experience may help you.

I got home and immediately googled what this all meant. The message boards were all negative, horror stories of things taking over 6 months to be sorted out etc. I didn't panic too much though because my application was all neatly assembled, with more evidence than they needed, not a single mistake on the forms, so I must have been different.

At the end of the 3 week period, I called the London Embassy to find out what was happening, as I had not heard back. The call was not helpful at all. The operator was unfriendly, unsympathetic and just told me that my case was in additional processing, they can't talk about my case, and it will take anywhere from 2-3 up to 16-22 weeks. This wasn't good. I wasn't given this impression at the embassy and this totally screwed up many plans we had made.

We tried many things. I called the embassy a couple more times, including Washington to see if they could tell me more. Nothing good came of it, I got the same message, time and time again. My fiancee contacted her Congressman who enquired on our behalf, with his office also contacting members of the Department of State they knew. Again, they got the same response as us. The case is in AP and we just have to wait.

Further research showed us that you are most likely to be put in to AP for the following:

- You didn't submit documents (don't panic too much, this is a quick AP process for you guys)

- They don't believe your story (so they'll inform you of this and tell you they are sending the pack back to USCIS to do further checks)

- You have a surname that originates from a country, predominately in the Middle East and North Africa (doesn't matter if you've never lived in those countries, it's just the name)

- You have a background in Science, IT or other special interest areas that the US feel could be a threat

- You have served in a foreign military other than the US

There are probably other reasons for finding yourself in AP but they are the most common. From my understanding, when your paperwork is shown at the first window at the embassy, they gather it all, go through it and one of the final steps is to run your name through several security systems. if there is a potential name match with a person of interest (muslim names are obviously common in the current climate) the system prevents the visa being approved and manual checks have to be carried out by people back in the US. How long this takes depends on the agency/departments dealing with it.

If I had known about this before this whole process had started, I would have factored more time in to my plans (so my hopes didn't get dashed) and prepared myself mentally for the fact that it could take up to 22 weeks. I'm writing this post so that others can pre-empt this and prepare emotionally. I didn't know and it made my life hell. PLEASE, if you feel you have any of the above things that could put you in AP, just prepare yourselves for the fact that it could happen to you.

So, why do I care about your emotions. Well, the first reason is because as you'll find out, the embassy doesn't give a damn. You can't blame them really because they need to take emotion out when they are dealing with serious matters. In saying that, there is a line between distancing emotions and treating people with respect and understanding when calling for updates on their case. I had a dealing with an embassy rep just 2 weeks ago and just being polite on the phone and explaining things to me, it made a huge difference. I was actually happy when ending the call, not angry and frustrated like previous times.

Anyway, I digress. The next reason I am typing this is to tell you what you will go through if you do not prepare for AP:

- A whole lot of not knowing. This was the worst thing for me because I had played the game, filled in their lengthy forms and done everything right, so why was it taking so long. My advice, don't take it personal. It's just a process that you unfortunately may have to go through

- Depression. I am one of the most confident and easy going people you will meet. I am able to cut off my feelings so I don't get hurt....until it came to this. I think because the love of my life was waiting for me and they were playing with my life now, it got to me more than anything has before. I lost all motivation to do things, found it hard to work out and had a constant negative attitude towards things. This was not me and this is the biggest reason i'm writing this post. Just accept you'll be waiting in this process and plan for the full 22 weeks. It's the only way to stay sane.

- Calling the embassy and contacting your congressman etc....it does not work. Save yourself the time, money and future dashed hopes when you hear nothing back and just wait for the visa to come through. If you have nothing to hide, you have a genuine relationship, all will be fine. This remember is a bureaucratic process that you unfortunately got caught up in. It's not personal, it's just that a system forced manual checks to take place.

- Don't think your individual circumstances can change things, they can't, I tried. My frustration came with the fact that the I not only served in the military during 9/11 and the Afghan and Iraq conflicts, but I was also security cleared with the NSA (National Security Agency of America). Yes, if they can trust me with sensitive information, surely that should speed up a visa security check, right? WRONG!!! It does not matter. Although you see yourself as special and unique, you're not in this process. You're just in line and you have to.....yes, you're getting it now I'm sure.....WAIT!!!!

- I was told not to travel to the US because I would get turned away due to the visa having been refused. Although the embassy do not class this as a visa refusal (so why give us a refusal form?), the Border and Customs people do. If you can't give a reason why you got refused, they just won't let you in, simple.

- Leading on from the above point, I was unable to travel to the US to see my fiancee. This was really hard, so what we did was we brought our honeymoon forward and had a pre-wedding honeymoon. Hey, we can't leave the country for 3 months after we're married until I get Advance Parole, so we figured we'd do this. It worked for us because it was a much needed time where we forgot about everything bad and focussed on us.

There are probably more things but this post is dragging on a little now. You'll be glad to hear (I don't mean to rub it in people's faces) that yesterday (15 weeks and 5 days after going in to AP) that I received an email from the embassy telling me to send in my passport so they can issue the visa. I am not exaggerating when I say it was one of the happiest days of my life. Having felt so low to finally knowing we can carry on with our lives, it was an amazing feeling.

So, to sum up, here are my steps to surviving AP if you find yourself in it:

- Just wait and do not call the embassy, it does not help and just costs you money

- Do not call your congressman, it does you no good

- If you have a muslim sounding surname, expect to be in AP for up to 16 weeks or so and add this to your plans (better to be safe than depressed, believe me)

- Try and carry on with your life (it's easier if you already know you may be put in AP)

- Have a strong support network around you who can keep you busy and not thinking about this

- Set yourself things to aim for. The worst thing of this for me is that I felt like my life was on hold and I was powerless in moving forward. Take the time to take up a new hobby, where you do something maybe 3-4 weeks down the line. Goal setting will help.

- Last of all, just accept that this process has many flaws, the embassy aren't there to be your friends and lastly, it's not personal. They system forces checks and if you end up in it, your'e just unlucky.

I hope this helps those in AP, prepares those who could get put in to AP and makes those that didn't go in to AP realise that you were so damn lucky haha.

This is just my view, from my experience and from the information I came across. All cases are different and we can only speculate as to what happens inside the embassy and their processes. This is my best effort at trying to make sense of it though.

Feel free to comment and especially if you are in AP and are finding it hard, please feel free to comment or message me. If I can help just 1 person feel slightly better, this post will have served its purpose.

Thanks

Kam

Great way to sum it all up. Made it through the AP and also the extra call for evidence now waiting for the second interview. This process will have taken over two years to accomplish! I agree to set some goals to work on and achieve during the long depressing months that pass with no notice. Also at my husband's interview, he never received a paper saying they were requesting further investigation on our relationship. I never knew this site was available and I am kind of glad I didn't find it until the end of my 200 day wait for Administrative Review becasue I think it would have been harder to deal with, and ignorance is bliss!!! it makes the time go by faster any way not knowing a time frame.

I know the day is over but I want to share with you guys that today was a our first wedding anniversary, eventhough we are separated we will be reunited soon as her interview is next week.

We are very anxious and exited to finally complete this journey

Happy Anniversary! I hope soon you will be able to celebrate together lots more!

Hello fellow VJ members,

I have a question regarding NOA1 and I was worried lately coz my fiance send the petiton last 7-16-12 via UPS and when he tracked it it says that it was already delivered it 7-19-12 and then the checked was cashed on 7-20-12,BUT we didnt get any text or email that they got it.

*WHY IS THAT WE DIDN'T GET ANY TEXT OR EMAIL THAT THEY ALREADY GOT IT?

*IS IT TRUE THAT THE DATE THAT THEY CASHED IT WOULD ALSO BE THE DATE OF MY NOA1?

*IS IT POSSIBLE THAT USCIS WILL JUST SEND US OUR NOA1 HARDCOPY WITHOUT NOTIFYING US?

I will appreciate your answers and thanks in advance goodluck to us all

You need to give them at least 30 days.

i just cant wait the N0A1. how many days before i received that we sent my I-130 July 23 2012. i asked that cuz i dont want to stay at home doing nothing i need to work also

Give it at least 30 days.

i can work but my plan is to go in other country to work there. and my hubby we sent my I-130 tru mail not express mail..

If you can be working you should be because this process might take up to a year to finish.