dowd001

Expatrica - I am entirely empathetic. My fiance is also from the UK, and we our case has not been touched by USCIS since May 1st. And my Congresswoman and Senators are being extraordinarily unhelpful and particuarly bold given that i am a law-abiding, voting constituent.

We were told that our petition was mailed to Vermont from NVC on June 27th and still nothing. No one is helping, i am left with that sinking feeling of lost deposits and missing my fiance.

Is there anything else I could be doing? I'm phoning Vermont (1-800-375-5283) but I am routed to some one in the main USCIS office who reiterates the painful obvious fact that my "case has been approved on April 19th..."

Help

I also just called Vermont, but no help. All she tells me is that their system does not reflect that my petition has been received back. Even though a man at Vermont told me that it was but if he lied NVC told me they sent it back to VSC on June 2. I am so sad about this whole situation. Considering that I was one of the first to be recalled and our interview was sceduled on May 15, I am furious that my case has not even made it "back" into the system yet!! For all she knows ( the VSC customer service) is that they do not have it back. So she tells me to wait

There is a reason that the people at VSC tell you a petition is back when it is not. They have two files for you. One is the local file that they had to recall from the local office. they track when that comes back. The other file is the file that gets forwarded to the Embassy through NVC. That one also has to come back.

They did the same thing to me - telling me my petition was back at VSC when it had not even made it to NVC. The reason is that the guy on the phone was thinking about the file that they get back from storage on your case, not the actual petition. It took me a while, but I cleared that one up with USCIS, so I thought I would pass the info on to you.

And here is another bit of info: USCIS still has hundreds of petitions that have not arrived back at the service centers. Some of us may be stuck in there.

My petition is one of those. It has not even been received back at VSC yet. 7 weeks just to get it from Moscow to VSC and it is not even there yet.

So the nightmare continues.

You can add me to the list.

NOA1: March 20

NOA2: March 24

Reoponed: Not done yet

RFE Update: None

RFE Email: None

VSC - Moscow

Now, I cannot even get information from the 800 number, even going through to VT using the special way we talked about, because the automated system cannot access my receipt number. It's been like that for a few days now. Says that the system is down.

Last i heard, my petition made it from Moscow to NVC only on June 30, having been recalled on May 25 or so. It has not even reached VSC as far as I know. This is crazy, since we were just days away from the interview.

Called 800-375-5283. After entering my case number (EAC...), the recording tells me that the system is down. It's been down all day.

Anyone out there get through today?

I'll repeat what I said earlier, as my feeling on this has not changed. The short answer: good intentions, but they could have written the law to cover only those situations where, by the standards set by IMBRA proponents, abuse is likely.

None of this explains why the law does not attempt to draw distinctions between on the one hand those foreign nationals who do have significant knowledge of their fiance(e) and who are also knowledgable about their rights and protections available in the U.S. and on the other those foreign nationals who do not have that knowledge. It also does not draw a distinction between those using the fiance visa process to marry someone they met without using a marriage broker, and those that do use a marriage broker, as far as the K-1 process goes. It's a good law because it can accomplish some good things. It's a bad law because it is not narrowly tailored enough. When the burden faced by thousands of people who don't need the protection outweighs the benefit provided to a few, a law is overall not a good law.

My fiancee is fluent in English, has been employed in the U.S. for years and has 2 graduate degrees. We have lived together in both her home country and here in the states for years. She knows me better than anyone else on the planet and knows the U.S. better than most Americans with half her education. She has connections to people who support her in the U.S. well beyond just me.

Yet I just cancelled our wedding, losing a couple grand in the process, and now have to submit myself to a criminal background check just to marry her. She is stuck in Russia now, and cannot get back here until the government steps in to protect her, something she neither needs nor wants, even if measured by the standards that IMBRA set for itself. I won't be able to see my fiancee for months, unless we take a trip together somewhere in between the U.S. and her country, to the tune of a couple thousand more dollars, a temporary solution we are talking about now. She had to postpone her education another year.

Most people would be willing to put up with some inconvenience in their personal lives to accomodate efforts to protect women from violence. Most people should be willing to do that. It is an important issue. But those accommodations should not include losses of thousands of dollars, needless separations from our loved ones while criminal background checks are conducted, and, most significantly, the government interposing itself between couples before getting married without regard to whether or not the foreign citizen really is at the informational disadvantage that the law presupposes. Without that informational disadvantage the law talks about, this is simply the government getting in between two adults in a decision that will likely be the most important decision they ever take together. That is exactly not what you want the government doing. That is a very high burden to pay for protecting foreign citizens.

This law is a perfect example of people with good intentions who nonetheless don't really understand what they are doing. By not distinguishing between situations like mine, and the ones where the potential issue of violence against women really exists, it serves not to protect women, but rather it burdens those people who really care about their foreign girlfriend/fiancee and who could do a lot more to prevent violence against them than the government could ever do.

It is hard to see the importance of protecting women in the abstract when the law has in reality served to harm the one woman I really care about.

Besides, when they passed the LIFE Act a few years ago, and created the fiancee visa process, the same Congress concluded that the burdens that we are facing today are serious and need to be corrected. That is why they created the fiancee visa - to make the process shorter and so Americans can spend time with their families. This Congress inverted that, and now all of a sudden the burdens imposed on Americans are not all that important in comparison to the women who might be saved. This Congress essentially undid the LIFE Act to a great extent.

When you write a law, a good legislator understands that the law will be implemented by a bureaucracy, with all its delays. That needs to be part of the balance. It was not part of the balance with IMBRA, which is why it is a bad law.

Mine was sent from Moscow Embassy 5 weeks ago and has not even reached the NVC yet.

6 weeks to get the package from AMEMB Moscow to NVC seems a little ridiculous.

I give up.

My petition was approved March 24, and we got all the way to the Embassy, granted an interview and everything. And then the interview was cancelled in May, a few weeks before the interview.

NVC tells me that they have not even received the petition back from the Embassy. Embassy sent it over 6 weeks ago.

Anyone else in that situation? Anyone else waiting for NVC to get the petition back?

IMBRA2005:

The interest groups who wrote this law could have designed a better law to take into consideration the wide array of people who use the K-1 process.

The fact of the matter is that they did not. This is just a really poorly written law. There is no excuse for legislators and interest groups simply not taking the time to understand the people they are about to burden. If they had done so, they would have easily recognized that the majority of people who use the K-1 process do not fall into the risk groups discussed in all of your social science.

But the fact of the matter is that the legislation was so motivated by disdain for marriage brokers, particularly, and this is a quote from the Tahirih Justice Center website, disdain for a system that allows men to find "subservient wives," that they completely overlooked the majority of people who don't fit into their preconceived notions.

For example, Congress could have required registration of marriage brokers in a manner similar to the way securities broker-dealers register with the SEC and NASD under, respectively, the Investment Advisors Act and the NASD rules and regulations. They could have required that marriage brokers file with USCIS on a quarterly basis, explaining their own means for providing for the safety of their clients and the foreign women, and subject the brokers to strong anti-fraud regulation to ensure that those procedures are met. They could have required that marriage-brokers provide a supplement to the 129f to anyone who uses their services when that US citizen then files for a K-1, triggering a requirement to provide criminal information to the government as part of the K-1 for only those who use marriage brokers. They could have similarly required more substance in Question 19 of the 129f, requiring petitioners to explain their relationship in detail, including such things as whether or not the foreign citizen has spent time in the U.S., whether or not he/she speaks English, what her level of education is, and all the factors that inform your social science conclusions on the relationship between violence against women and immigration. They could have developed a set criteria that trigger further review, tailored to meet the criteria that the social science reflects. This is, by the way, precisely how the government hires people, so they are quite accustomed to such an approach.

But of course they did not look into any of this. Sometimes, people who see the world in political terms on a variety of issues (not just this one) blindly defend legislation that meets their goals without asking themselves questions learned in the 3rd grade..."Is this the best you can do?" This law is clearly not the best they could do. But that really does not matter to them because they do not have to bear the burden of their poor drafting.

And regarding your proposal that I get married overseas. Read the LIFE act. The very piece of legislation that created the K-1 process, and you will see that what I am doing is precisely what Congress intended when it designed the K-1 process. They carved out an exception from the normal immigration process for fiances - an exception that my fiancee and I relied on. We did exactly what Congress recommended by using the K-1 process. I am not making a choice independent of Congress, I am instead influenced in my decision making by what Congress says and does. They are complicit in this by steering behavior in patterns they can create. That makes them culpable when they change those processes, and also should require Congress to think twice before changing things.

When Congress writes a bad law, you cannot just turn around and say, well, the K-1 process could be "taken away at any time" and therefore they can do the lesser-and-included harm of simply making the system poorly reflect the goal it intended to achieve. Whether that goal is allowing an expedited process for foreign fiance(e)s to enter the U.S., or ensuring that foreign women are not subject to abuse, the LIFE Act and IMBRA read together no longer establish a system that effectively does either of those goals.

IMBRA2005:

Even if I agree with you, it does not explain why the law does not attempt to draw distinctions between on the one hand those foreign nationals who do have significant knowledge of their fiance(e) and who are also knowledgable about their rights and protections available in the U.S. and on the other those foreign nationals who do not have that knowledge. It also does not draw a distinction between those using the fiance visa process to marry someone they met without using a marriage broker, and those that do use a marriage broker, as far as the K-1 process goes.

My fiancee is fluent in English, has been employed in the U.S. for years and has 2 graduate degrees. We have lived together in both her home country and here in the states for years. She knows me better than anyone else on the planet and knows the U.S. better than most Americans with half her education. She has connections to people who support her in the U.S. well beyond just me.

Yet I just cancelled our wedding, losing a couple grand in the process, and now have to submit myself to a criminal background check just to marry her. She is stuck in Russia now, and cannot get back here until the government steps in to protect her, something she neither needs nor wants, even if measured by the standards that IMBRA set for itself. I won't be able to see my fiancee for months, unless we take a trip together somewhere in between the U.S. and her country, to the tune of a couple thousand more dollars, a temporary solution we are talking about now.

Most people would be willing to put up with some inconvenience in their personal lives to accomodate efforts to protect violence against women. Most people should be willing to do that. It is an important issue. But those accomodations should not include losses of thousands of dollars, needless separations from our loved ones while criminal background checks are conducted, and, most significantly, the government interposing itself between couples before getting married without regard to whether or not the foreign citizen really is at the informational disadvantage that the law presupposes. Without that informational disadvantage you talk about, this is simply the government getting in between two adults in a decision that will likely be the most important decision they ever take together. That is exactly not what you want the government doing.

This law is a perfect example of people with good intentions who nonetheless don't really understand what they are doing. By not distinguishing between situations like mine, and the ones where the potential issue of violence against women really exists, it serves not to protect women, but rather it burdens those people who really care about their foreign girlfriend/fiancee and who could do a lot more to prevent violence against them than the government could ever do.

It is hard to see the importance of protecting women in the abstract when the law has in reality served to harm the one woman I really care about.

My petition has not been recalled. I talked to the Embassy in Moscow today and to USCIS about it. They insist that we are still good for June 13.

We filed on March 10 through VSC, after the March 6 deadline.

Is this IMBRA really affecting only cases that has to do with marriage brokers or everyone?

Some parts affect everyone. The part about the number of petitions is one. About the rest of the law, WHO KNOWS????? We are still trying to figure that part out.

Here is my take on the law: See this thread.

http://www.visajourney.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=2962

JamesT:

That is normal. They only update the schedule on a periodic and irregular basis. It is supposed to be every monday, but sometimes gets delayed.

Hey all.

I just spoke to the Embassy, and my interview has not been cancelled. I will confirm with USCIS shortly that my NOA2 has not been rescinded.

I wonder if during this early implementation period for the new law the USCIS is taking a case-by-case look to determine if to recall the NOA2s?

What would help is if those who had their interviews cancelled could provide some info as to whether they met their fiancees online, through a broker, or on their own. We may see a pattern then. If you don't want to let us know this, totally understandable.

The law applies to all petitioners, in so far as we all need to have our criminal records presented to fiancees, regardless of whether or not you used a marriage broker. But still, the USCIS might be looking at this in another way for the interim period until they can get it all in line.

I met my fiancee while working in Russia as a federal employee for the Embassy (although I am not one anymore), so they might have let me slip by. Did not use a broker or the internet. But that theory would only apply if they are doing a case by case look at things, rather than a complete "recall".

You are correct, I did have an old copy of the Act.

I checked on Westlaw for the final version. Congress basically requires that the 129f have a section disclosing criminal background information.

It is unclear if they need to conduct an investigation or not.

I would caution people who are thinking that this applies only to either those citizens who have applied more than once or marriage brokers. It applies to all petitioners.

Read Section 4 of the Act

SEC. 4. CRIMINAL BACKGROUND CHECK.

Section 214(d) of the Immigration and Nationality Act (8 U.S.C. 1184(d)), as amended by section 2, is further amended by adding at the end the following:

`(3) A petitioner for a visa under clause (i) or (iii) of section 101(a)(15)(K) shall undergo a national criminal background check conducted using the national criminal history background check system and State criminal history repositories of all States in which the applicant has resided prior to the petition being approved by the Secretary of Homeland Security, and the results of the background check shall be included in the petition forwarded to the consular office under that section.'.

That criminal background check should be completed prior to the approval of the 129f, and applies to all applicants (US Citizens). this is not part of the process conducted by the USCIS currently, and so they need to change proceedures at all service centers to get into compliance. In short, the law does not just regulate marriage brokers, it also strengthens the review for all applicants.

The question is, is the USCIS going to rescind approvals for 129fs received after March 6 in order to conduct the now required criminal background check on the US petitioner, or are they going to just hold up the process from here forward as they start conducting the background checks?

If someone has information about an interview that was scheduled and cancelled because of IMBRA, I would appreciate some info as it may affect me as well.

I sent my 129f on March 10 to VSC, received NOA2 on March 24. NVC has already completed processing and my financee already received her packet from the Moscow Embassy. Her interview is set for June 13.

I was after the March 6 date completely, and it moved fast for me.

My only concern is that USCIS will re-assess their approvals made after March 6 in order to conduct the criminal investigation and such. I have not heard any word about people getting their approvals "revoked" yet, but would be interested to know if anyone else has heard such a thing.

I highly doubt that the USG has the energy to revoke the approvals made after that time...they are probably still trying to figure out what to do with the ones coming in.

Let's just wait and see what the Embassy says on all of this. I am also right around the March 6 date, depending on how you look at it.

If anyone gets any information from the Embassy in Moscow on this one, please let the rest of us know.

I can give my tax returns and recent pay stubs, which shows plenty of income, but no letter since I left my job for a new one last week. The timing on her interview was just too perfect (as in bad), and landed in between my two jobs. That was not supposed to happen.

I am in the same boat as you all. Natasha has her interview on June 13 in Moscow.

Do you all have any info as to whether they ever actually ask for the I-134?

My work situation is strange at the moment, and I don't want to have her explain it if she does not need to.

the thing that kills me about Citibank is that they knew exactly what I was talking about. they say that they do "Consular Letters" all the time to help clients in doing affadavits of support for the immigration process. They were quite well informed about all of this, and had a process set up to get the letter out ASAP.

Nonetheless, they never put on the letters any statement about a summary of deposits as the I-134 says to do.

It was strange.

I meet the 125%, but my job is only through August, and says so on my letter from my employer. See other post from me. So, I am adding my bank information just in case the temporary nature of my job causes them an issue.

So my fiancee's interview caught me in between jobs, it went a lot faster than we thought it would.

But, my temporary job through August 11 pays well over the 125% required in just three months, but it is obviously temporary.

Anyone have an experience using a temporary job that meets the 125%? And if so, what do you all suggest I put down on my annual salary on the I-134? Do I annualize my weekly salary or state the total for the three month period only?

Letter from employer says that I am employed through August 11 at $X per week. It's a trial period, so they don't want to give any written commitment for a period after August 11. We were expecting her interview to be after I got the full time offer, at which point I would have a legit annual salary to specify.

Your thoughts?

Sure. I can print all those out. But that seems to not meet the requirements as stated in the I-134 instructions that the letter from the bank needs to have that amount listed.

It seems that Citibank will not give me a letter that states the total amount deposited over the past year, as required in the I-134. Anyone else have this problem before?

Any suggestions?

Fiancee and I are flying back on Sunday from overseas. She is entering on a tourist visa. She has been back and forth to the States on a number of occasions.

We plan on submitting the 129f the day after she enters the states, with the proper I-94 information and all that. We are obviously doing this so we can be together while we process the fiancee visa. But, my understanding is that there is also some risk of entering the country on a tourist visa with an intent to immigrate. Submitting the 129f one day after entering the country seems to suggest such an intent to immigrate.

Does anyone out there have an experience with submitting the 129f immediately after entering the country on a tourist visa?

Thanks.