Heather&Ramy

I was making a few lighthearted jokes. You don't need to tell me that some Egyptians are tall and some are short, and that they are people. I just read through the whole thread in one go and it struck me that a whole handful of people included in their story, "he was the tallest person I ever saw!" or something like that.... just saw a pattern. Thought it was funny. Also, for your curiosity, some countries DO have taller on average people than other countries (such as generally European countries vs. Asian). But many of the Arabs I know are shorter than average, so that pattern of statements made me curious about the scientific reality.
I also wasn't trying to imply that your husbands/fiancés are all cowards or something. I get your point though, and I can see how that plays in most of your stories. My story is a little different since I originally met mine IRL. But I still laughed and could relate to all the cute stories about PDA dilemmas since, hello, my fiancé is Egyptian and we were in Egypt! As we all know, it's not just a first meeting thing, it's a strict Muslim society thing! Even if you feel completely comfortable, you can't exactly start making out, or even looking too friendly there! I was just making a joke because mine crosses the line of what even I think would be appropriate in Egyptian public sometimes. I'm often thinking he is a strong mix of brave and stupid when he steals kisses on the mouth in public when he thinks no one is looking. For Egyptians, that's completely scandalous!

I'm not sure what "final review" means, maybe it was just their way of dodging the senator's inquiry and you are still in AP? I would go by the CEAC status. I believe it says "Ready" when AP is finished and the visa is going to be printed. Then you should expect to get it a few days to a week later. Total AP time varies to only a few days to a few months. Hope you get news soon!

Everyone has covered this really well, but I'd just like to add that my husband and I filed for the K1 in December 2012. We tentatively planned at that point to have our wedding on American soil in October 2013. My husband JUST finally entered America this past April 2014. People gave us the same warnings, but I too thought I had estimated the time well according to the statistics and gave a few extra months. It's 5-7 months (but varies considerably and upredictably) for the NoA2, but you have to realistically give yourself at least one more month for the NVC stage and then another month or two, minimum, for the embassy stage. Even that is cutting it short. It was over a year from NoA1 before we even had the INTERVIEW, and we had unexpected delays at every stage, including after the interview and after getting the visa in the passport! Granted, our country is quite a bitmore difficult to get through than Ireland, I am sure, but you should still be prepared for each stage going quite a bit longer than expected. I just urge you caution because soooo many of us go through the same situation as you and wish for the best, but then things don't turn out that way! We had our wedding venue booked and we are lucky that they allowed us to transfer the date to 2014. We just had our civil ceremony in the US and are now looking forward to having our wedding this coming October.
And speaking of non-official non-legal celebrations, we had a non legal celebration in Egypt before my husband arrived to America and we had our legal ceremony. But I think that is different than you flying here to have a non-legal ceremony in America. We carefully read the rules for marriage in Egypt on our embassy website and didn't break (or bend) anything in what we did... but in America, pretty much any ceremony is considered a real marriage by the USCIS. I wouldn't attempt it. The risk is too high.
Good luck! I hope your processing goes much faster than all that after all.
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Haha, my husband was so nervous too! I was really confident that it would go fine, but the day before the interview Ramy made me go to a coffee shop with him practice asking him all kinds of questions we thought the interviewer might ask, especially hard "worst case scenario" kind of questions like accusations we were already married or he wanted me only for the visa and stuff like that. He was SO afraid the guy would be rude to him. He was rude, after all, but what harm did it do? Rude and approval!

Yes, that's the thing to hold on to... despite apparent complications in your relationship or status, you qualify for the visa and you both have sincere intentions. I'm sure you will be approved.
Isn't it crazy how complicated immigration law makes our lives?

welcome new Egyptian spouses/fiances.. Hope you are finding the boards as useful and helpful as I have.
Do we need to start another topic about how America is the only country in the world to not be allowed to be considered to have a culture of its own? lol... No I didn't mean that I look white, I meant I look American. Not Native American. If you don't know what I could possibly mean by that, let it go...just consider me crazy.

This might be an overly idealized way to look at things, but when my fiance was gearing up for the interview and nervous I just kept telling him that as long as we qualify for the visa, we will get it. We are indeed in a real relationship intending to marry in the US in the required 90 days, we are both legally free to marry and neither of us are criminals... and we have provided evidence to those things. So why should we not be approved?
I realize there may have been cases where visas were unjustly delayed or denied even though the couple qualified according to those requirements, but I think it's good to just focus on presenting your qualifications as well as you can to the interviewer.
I also told my fiance that it we were for some reason denied, they would have to tell us the reason and give us a chance to answer it, and that there would be channels to attempt to overturn the decision. Worst case, we would just end up marrying and refiling for the CR1.
I know the system is far from perfect, but the idea is that everyone who meets the qualifications would be approved (even if it takes an agonizingly long time). That should encourage you!
(And from a purely academic standpoint, everyone is well aware that the MENA region has a relatively higher rate of denial because of a mixture of things...but I hope as an American citizen that this is primarily because of a higher rate of fraud in the area rather than racism or stupidity on the part of the embassy workers although that can exist too... Actually, I remember seeing real denial statistics somewhere, but I don't think it was VJ... I think there is a page floating around the USCIS or DHS website that has bona fide approval and denial statistics by country. You might try searching there. If I find it again I'll post a link. )

So a statement such as "you look French" is without meaning for you? Yeah I get it, most Americans are immigrants somewhere in their history. So are a lot of other people in a lot of other countries too. But somehow it doesn't stop people from assimilating to varying degrees and adopting distinctive looks and mannerisms--creating a living, breathing culture. My ancestors several generations ago were from Germany and Scotland but I don't look, sound, act, or dress much like someone recently born and raised and living in Germany or Scotland. I know its very uncool to talk about classifying people these days, but as I'm walking around in Hurghada its very easy to look around and guess by appearance alone who is from Egypt, who is from Russia, and who is from Germany, with a degree of accuracy that isn't perfect but is well above the degree of luck.

You don't know? The same way someone can look French or Brazillian or Japanese or Egyptian... people groups tend to develop similar looks and mannerisms, not to mention that whole genetic race thing...

Hey there, welcome to the site, I'm sure you will find lots of great information and support. I'm from Pittsburgh PA! I'm engaged to an Egyptian. You should DEFINITELY visit Egypt when you get a chance, I'm in Cairo right now and I've been to Egypt 4 times, for a total of nearly half a year... I was even here during the June 30th protests and the ousting of Morsi! Definitely be careful and use your best judgement, but it is certainly possible to visit Egypt and be as safe as you can be in America.. I've been in Egypt for the last 3 months, and my fiance just had his interivew today and so we have been in Cairo for a few days, and I've been walking the streets looking pretty darn American (but respectful) and I haven't had even a bad look. A lot of people are really delighted to see me and try out some English, actually. Of course you have to use common sense about being out late or in situations that might turn into a protest, but mostly Egyptians are very friendly and going about their normal lives.
Good luck on your adjustment process! It's cool to see someone else from PA on here.

Can't edit my previous post, not sure why,
but here is the clip from today:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=chtGonznBDE
Again, I can't edit it for some reason, but I wanted to include a quote from the above link in case you're not sure if you want to watch it.
He says,
“We need to get over our narcissism and realize what’s going on in Egypt isn’t about us, it’s about the people in Egypt and other peoples throughout the Middle East struggling against fundamentalist extremists who are our enemies too—people struggling to build modern, decent, tolerant societies.”

“We cannot determine Egypt’s future, the Egyptian people have to determine that… but we should try to play constructively and not automatically assume—ooh, military: bad— peaceful protesters who happen to be thugs : good. I’m appalled at hearing so many Westerner commentators condemning the military and seemingly siding with the Brotherhood…. The Egyptian people want a little bit of freedom, and the Brotherhood came to power and tried to take that little bit of hard-won freedom away, and now you’re seeing the reaction. Again, I don’t like military coups, but the real coup was what Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood did to the fledgling Egyptian democracy. We need to get our priorities straight, and our priorities should be on the side of modernity, tolerance, progress, economic growth, and decency. Not on the side of bigoted, medieval, primitive, hate-filled religion directed against peaceful Muslims above all, because we should remember that the victims of radical, fanatical Islam have overwhelmingly been decent everyday Muslims.”
and today( in the second link) he says,
regarding the President's repeated portrayal of the MB as "peaceful protesters"
"peaceful protesters don't kill policemen, they don't burn churches and attack and kill Christians, they don't kidnap secularists and imprison them in mosques and torture them."
He gets politically controversial after that, talking about if Obama's admin would react differently if it was Christians killing Muslims, and so you can take that or leave it, but at least SOMEBODY in the US is covering the violence from the MB!!!!! They are not innocent, peaceful, democratically-minded protesters!

I'm so sorry for your loss.
I'm sorry for all of Egypt today.
Thanks to everybody for sharing the videos and articles.
I saw this interview on the news yesterday, and I believe this is the ONLY guy in the American media who has any idea of what's going on.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ebjxrsDHiEM
He did another interview today on the same show, I will try to find it online. Today he addressed the escalation towards Christians and innocent non-MB civilians by the MB. "Are they just collateral damage or are they being specifically targeted?" They are being specifically targeted. It's not as if the tiny 10% of Christians in Egypt are single-handedly responsible for ousting Morsi and their ancient churches are basecamp for the military.

Can't edit my previous post, not sure why,
but here is the clip from today:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=chtGonznBDE
Again, I can't edit it for some reason, but I wanted to include a quote from the above link in case you're not sure if you want to watch it.
He says,
“We need to get over our narcissism and realize what’s going on in Egypt isn’t about us, it’s about the people in Egypt and other peoples throughout the Middle East struggling against fundamentalist extremists who are our enemies too—people struggling to build modern, decent, tolerant societies.”

“We cannot determine Egypt’s future, the Egyptian people have to determine that… but we should try to play constructively and not automatically assume—ooh, military: bad— peaceful protesters who happen to be thugs : good. I’m appalled at hearing so many Westerner commentators condemning the military and seemingly siding with the Brotherhood…. The Egyptian people want a little bit of freedom, and the Brotherhood came to power and tried to take that little bit of hard-won freedom away, and now you’re seeing the reaction. Again, I don’t like military coups, but the real coup was what Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood did to the fledgling Egyptian democracy. We need to get our priorities straight, and our priorities should be on the side of modernity, tolerance, progress, economic growth, and decency. Not on the side of bigoted, medieval, primitive, hate-filled religion directed against peaceful Muslims above all, because we should remember that the victims of radical, fanatical Islam have overwhelmingly been decent everyday Muslims.”
and today( in the second link) he says,
regarding the President's repeated portrayal of the MB as "peaceful protesters"
"peaceful protesters don't kill policemen, they don't burn churches and attack and kill Christians, they don't kidnap secularists and imprison them in mosques and torture them."
He gets politically controversial after that, talking about if Obama's admin would react differently if it was Christians killing Muslims, and so you can take that or leave it, but at least SOMEBODY in the US is covering the violence from the MB!!!!! They are not innocent, peaceful, democratically-minded protesters!

I'm so sorry for your loss.
I'm sorry for all of Egypt today.
Thanks to everybody for sharing the videos and articles.
I saw this interview on the news yesterday, and I believe this is the ONLY guy in the American media who has any idea of what's going on.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ebjxrsDHiEM
He did another interview today on the same show, I will try to find it online. Today he addressed the escalation towards Christians and innocent non-MB civilians by the MB. "Are they just collateral damage or are they being specifically targeted?" They are being specifically targeted. It's not as if the tiny 10% of Christians in Egypt are single-handedly responsible for ousting Morsi and their ancient churches are basecamp for the military.

So sad... praying for peace in Egypt. At the same time I admire the courage and resilience of the moderate overwhelming majority who are willing to pay this price to see Egypt freed from the rule of extremists and moving forward into the modern world.

I agree with everyone else, make it really short like one sentence, just detailing that you met in person once already and have tickets to meet again in August. Then add that more details are attached.
When I did my application I read somewhere about attaching a mini story of how you met and your relationship so far, as well as all the evidence of meeting and ongoing relationship that you can muster. So right behind the I-129 form I had a document in letter format titled "I-129 part B Question # 18 Supplement where I detailed our relationship and meetings, and then behind that I put all of our evidence (first of having met and second of having an ongoing, genuine relationship.)
Our application was approved so it seems it worked!
I can't figure out how to attach ours or I would give you an example..
I can't upload the attachment for some reason but here is our text:

Wow... really interesting... I'll watch it tomorrow. Thanks for passing it on!

Whew...
Well I have debated this with my fiancé as well.. We feel it is worth it to take a certain amount of risk in setting an American wedding date and booking things for it before we have the visa in hand. So we have had to talk about what will happen if he doesn't get the visa before the wedding date. We will lose a lot of money and the question is, will we wait and look for another date, or will we get married in Egypt and then wait more than a year for THAT visa, or will we try to beat the system in some way and marry unofficially for personal/religious reasons while we wait for the K1 to come through to make it legal?
I can definitely understand why the OP is considering it. If he takes the advice of "quit your K1, marry her in India in November, and then do the spouse visa," that will result in either him being closed out of his own country for quite a long time or him having to live separately from his wife, neither of which are pleasant options for most. Not to mention the high price of flying, I don't know who is able to just fly back and forth all the time like some are suggesting. If his whole life is in America and he can't just get up and move to India for a few years, then getting married over there is not really an option. It isn't for me and my fiancé either.
But I do understand the warnings too... I'm not interested in lying to the government, even if I wanted to I would be terrified (and pretty confident) they would find out.
So we are just too afraid of the risk of getting caught in what would be considered fraud to do that.
However, I do find the emails referenced interesting... perhaps we will try asking as you did to be clear.

Hello everyone,
I just wanted to introduce myself and my fiance and tell a little about our story. I'm an American citizen and my fiance Ramy is Egyptian. We met when I was working in Egypt for a few months in the summer as an au pair. If any of you are familiar with Egypt, the family I worked for lives in El Gouna on the Red Sea during the summer. That place is amazing!
Anyhow, we first attempted to have Ramy come visit via tourist visa, but that didn't work. It's notoriously difficult for young single Arab men to get visas to the U.S. So we began the fiance visa and it was recieved by the USCIS on December 19th, 2012. We just got our reciept a few days ago! We began planning our 2-country wedding for August 2nd, 2013 in America and the following weekend in Egypt. We hope that will give us more than enough time for visa approval.
Gathering all the materials was way more involved than I thought it would be. Boy is it quite a project! With the stakes so high, I was afraid every second that I was missing something or reading one of the directions wrong... I began to doubt my own English abilities! So I am really excited to find this forum and I suspect it is easier to navigate the intricacies of American immigration regulations with all this support. Looking forward to getting to know all of you and hearing about your experiences along the way!
Heather & Ramy

Hello everyone,
I just wanted to introduce myself and my fiance and tell a little about our story. I'm an American citizen and my fiance Ramy is Egyptian. We met when I was working in Egypt for a few months in the summer as an au pair. If any of you are familiar with Egypt, the family I worked for lives in El Gouna on the Red Sea during the summer. That place is amazing!
Anyhow, we first attempted to have Ramy come visit via tourist visa, but that didn't work. It's notoriously difficult for young single Arab men to get visas to the U.S. So we began the fiance visa and it was recieved by the USCIS on December 19th, 2012. We just got our reciept a few days ago! We began planning our 2-country wedding for August 2nd, 2013 in America and the following weekend in Egypt. We hope that will give us more than enough time for visa approval.
Gathering all the materials was way more involved than I thought it would be. Boy is it quite a project! With the stakes so high, I was afraid every second that I was missing something or reading one of the directions wrong... I began to doubt my own English abilities! So I am really excited to find this forum and I suspect it is easier to navigate the intricacies of American immigration regulations with all this support. Looking forward to getting to know all of you and hearing about your experiences along the way!
Heather & Ramy

That's a real bummer. I'm surprised they denied your application though, instead of just requesting more information... I was under the impression that if I missed something or they simply wanted more than the samples given, they would notify me and give me a chance to send it in. I think it's really easy to miss something. I don't remember seeing instructions asking for letters of intent or proof of genuine relationship in the form of emails, letters, phone bills, etc., I only added those things to be safe since websites like this recommended it as standard. Thank God for people who have been through the process before us!

Hello everyone,
I just wanted to introduce myself and my fiance and tell a little about our story. I'm an American citizen and my fiance Ramy is Egyptian. We met when I was working in Egypt for a few months in the summer as an au pair. If any of you are familiar with Egypt, the family I worked for lives in El Gouna on the Red Sea during the summer. That place is amazing!
Anyhow, we first attempted to have Ramy come visit via tourist visa, but that didn't work. It's notoriously difficult for young single Arab men to get visas to the U.S. So we began the fiance visa and it was recieved by the USCIS on December 19th, 2012. We just got our reciept a few days ago! We began planning our 2-country wedding for August 2nd, 2013 in America and the following weekend in Egypt. We hope that will give us more than enough time for visa approval.
Gathering all the materials was way more involved than I thought it would be. Boy is it quite a project! With the stakes so high, I was afraid every second that I was missing something or reading one of the directions wrong... I began to doubt my own English abilities! So I am really excited to find this forum and I suspect it is easier to navigate the intricacies of American immigration regulations with all this support. Looking forward to getting to know all of you and hearing about your experiences along the way!
Heather & Ramy