Mike and Yaoling

Busy day today. Obtained 3 newly certified copies of my divorce papers, full and proper judgements (did you know they expire after 30 days?), renewed my driver's license (will expire while I am in China) and submitted my application for the Chinese visa. Plus got a bunch of information and documents from the new lawyer. Moving right along! My boss ok'd me taking off a month to get married.

I know you had a heartbreak denial but your attitude is really positive,

and I have a gut feeling that your marriage will be a happy and successful one.

While you are in China, be sure to create lots of evidence (pictures, receipts, etc.),

and you might even consider helping her to apply for the right documents this time.

Best of luck!

The denial really stung like a wasp in my eye, but nothing can stop my baby and I, there is always another way! We really do love each other. We are very happy and have always been. When I get down, I just have to see her face in the video chat and all is well. And when we are together in real life, it is always heaven!

We should be married before the month is out. I'll be traveling to Beijing next week to get affidavit of marriageability then we are off to Zhengzhou, Henan for the marriage license followed by a wedding party in Pingdingshan, Henan. Then we are off to a warmer place in South China for the honeymoon. We will also celebrate my birthday on December 16th together so that is a plus!

Life is great!

Thanks for the response guys. I think I just need to have more patience, lol.

Patience is the meal no one wants to eat, it's always burnt, cold and too salty.

Btw, I love the picture in the chef's hat. Too cute!

Congratulations!

Thank you so much!

Congratulations so happy for you both

Thanks a bunch!

A good lawyer will cost nearly all the money you have saved, ($5,000 USD) even if you have an easy case. A $2,500 lawyer will just buy stamps and mail the papers that you did all the work yourself on. I am speaking from experience after getting burned with a cheap lawyer. Then you have to pay all the fees to USCIS. Then you have to buy plane tickets. If you are young, take it slow, ask a billion questions and read everything 8 times to be sure and you'll be ok. If you don't feel 110% about something, ask another question. The guys here are super helpful.

Pro tip: USCIS site may tell you very little about how much paperwork you need to send. Ask others about things such as "front loading" a petition and get an idea on how much stuff you need to submit. What needs signatures and so on. Be paranoid and send more than is needed.

Since you are so lucky to be able to work together during the process, I highly recommend that you get married and go for the CR-1 as it is less risky and you have more options to appeal decisions made against you. With the K-1 you have less options. K-1 is better for people that have to live apart and are trying to rejoin ASAP with their loved ones or just prefer to get married in the states.

We are getting married soon, November or December wedding in China with my baby and her family! Getting my Chinese visa and the other paper in order now.

Have a good trip and enjoyable visit.

Thanks!

I would honestly follow your gut instinct.......

Have a good trip and good luck. I really can't wait to hear more about you two

Thanks! I miss my baby so much, I have not been there since last October, we were saving for a wedding and honeymoon in the US and to build a house together. But this way, getting marred in China, her parents can be there. We will have a wedding party in the US once she makes it here. Two parties are better than 1!

I found that scan, fax and copy are acceptable. Sometimes they ask for the original letter of invitation. I will have my baby scan and email it to me followed my snail mail just in case.

I plan to travel to China soon to marry my fiance of almost 2 years. Since we met my visa expired and I need a new one. I plan to use the L tourist visa to get there. Does anyone know if the Letter of Invitation signature from my Chinese fiancee needs to be the original when I send it to the consulate in for the visa or can she scan it to me and a submit a printed copy?

Also, should I say on the paper that I am her fiance and we plan to get married? My gut instinct tells me to say friend as I did the last time and say traveling.

We are talking about a winter wedding in China and me living there 4-6 weeks. I can do it. I think it is best. Getting married in her province then going to South china where it is warm, traveling while waiting for the marriage certificate to be processed. Then return home and file for CR-1.

What was the denial for??

Failure to establish eligibility for the benefit sought within the meaning of section 101 (a) (15)(K)

Did not demonstrate that my fiancee's previous marriage was terminated.

Submitted the wrong divorce paperwork twice.

Failure to establish eligibility for the benefit sought within the meaning of section 101 (a) (15)(K)

Did not demonstrate that my fiancee's previous marriage was terminated.

Submitted the wrong divorce paperwork twice.

The first lawyer sent in a reply to the RFE without any research or supporting documents stating why we sent the wrong form. She basically just threw it in their face and hoped for the best.

This is so hard. Deciding what to do. Don't want to make another mistake. Try a fresh K-1? Get married? sigh....

Got the hard copy of the denial letter. New lawyer says it is a waste of time to appeal since USCIS was right, the first lawyer messed up too bad, we have nothing to appeal, just a waste of time and money.

We will spend a few days to talk and think about everything and try to make the right decision. Lawyer advises us to get married, less difficulty at the consulate that way. What to do... what to do...

The K1 and CR1 take around the same amount of time.

Isn't there a way she can have a female friend or family member stay with her, or her with them while this is processing?

She has a female room mate that will have a baby this month and then move out to her husband. The new lawyer knows Kung Fu it seems. We are discussing many things.

I think we are going to try to salvage the K-1.

She is so fearful of her ex husband. He has a drinking problem and gets very violent. So she worries we have to keep the marriage a secret for 14 months.

Will update as things change.

Still waiting for the letter of denial to make the right choice.

Yay congratulations

Thanks!

Well my baby agreed to get married in China! So we are planning a wedding now. Just got to get a few papers together and a new visa. I could be ready to go in a week.

I believe that you should list the number of people listed on your fiancee's prior tax return, aka number of people she is responsible for. Is she listed as a dependent on her parent's tax forms?

I haven't read entire message thread...

so at this point, are you going to get married and do the spouse visa?

Or try the K1 visa again?

I have decided on the spousal visa but my fiancee is sleeping on it since it was 1:30 a.m. when we stopped Skyping with the new lawyer and I don't want to force her into making a quick decision when she is so sleepy. I'll update with wedding plans if she agrees to go the spousal visa route. The poor thing will be so exhausted tomorrow.

Regardless, I wonder if you can find out definite denial reason,

so that you are better prepared next time.

I hope all goes well the next time.

Me too. Thanks!

Just a question, have you ever thought about filing for another I-129F petition without a lawyer? Most people don't have a lawyer, in my opinion they are expensive and a good amount of them is money hungry, plus the forms are not that difficult to fill out and gathering the required docs isnt that hard either if you read the all the guides and look at the example forms here on visajourney.

Great question.

Originally I planned to do it all myself. My fiancee is always on my case for being wasteful (sorry I'm an American ) so she thought there was no need for a lawyer. I did some research from this site and many others and had it 99% together when I ran into the Chinese mailing address thing, the Chinese home address thing, the forms just made me not feel 100% that I was doing it right. I worked hard all of my life and now make great money and the legal fees were just a small thing in my opinion, what was most important was to not get a denial letter. So I hired a useless lawyer without researching the right lawyer for our situation...

(Chinese baby facepalm)

We have some issues that can cause problems for K-1 once we hit the consulate, leaving us no room for appeal and another 6-8 months wasted It's risky and I don't want to waste more time. Going for a spousal visa on the other hand gives us more options if things get hairy at the consulate.

Besides, we have not met in a year now and any excuse to go to China is good enough for me. Marrying my baby in a couple weeks from now is icing on the cake. Leaving my new wife behind in China is going to suck though.

This time I have an attorney that can explain things in her Chinese Henan Dialect and it is just so much smoother having an experienced lawyer in our corner this time. My baby speaks English well 99% (I changed her British accent closer to my South Louisiana accent), I have learned a little Chinese (working on it) but there are still little pieces here and there that need a little explaining sometimes. Having the attorney that can speak to us on Skype in both languages gives us a feeling that we are not alone in this, it is buying a piece of mind and that is worth it to me when I am looking at another year of waiting.

It's a tough decision, but money is not an issue and I'm trying to leave myself options at later stages in the process, and I miss my baby.

Wow! I'm surprised they just wouldn't send another RFE saying that you didn't send the right one.

I know, right? Any other people would have called and said "Hey bro, we need this something something from somewhere somewhere". The denial felt like a cold slap in the face. But it needed to happen I guess, that lawyer was useless and even refused to help at the phase between NOA2 and Adjustment of Status, offering no help at all with the consulate. She basically said "fill out these papers, pay me $1400, write another check for the USCIS fees and I'll write a cover letter and buy the stamp".

Is she a member of the Communist party? Has she worked directly for the government? That can cause a denial.

We were denied at the I-129f petition stage. Communist party affiliation is not inquired about until arriving at the interview in (on a pre-interview questionnaire in China) Guangzhou at the consulate and then again when filing for Ajustment of Status. USCIS will not adjucate that matter and puts it in the hands of the consulate at that later stage. So to answer your question, no, that was not the reason. We submitted my fiancée's divorce documents to my lawyer who felt it was not her job to check that they were the correct documents as required by USCIS. We were then issued a RFE for the correct document. For a second time the lawyer sent the wrong document and so we were denied. The lawyer felt it may not be the right documents, but refused to ask a more experienced colleague or do any resarch into what was the correct Chinese divorce document, blaming me for giving her the wrong paper. She is history now.

Fired my useless attourney. She has no idea what she is doing and refuses to do any research needed and even got rather ugly in an email when I said that I was disappointed in her. What a joke.

Hired a new attourney licensed in both China since 1994 and my state in the U.S. Since 1999. Bonus points for being from the same Chinese Provence as my fiancée and speaking the same dialect. She knows the Guangzhou consulate very well and the things that can go wrong. She brought up so many things we had not considered. That is extremely useful and worth it's weight in gold. My fiancée, I and the new attorney skyped for an hour this morning and went over the options and details. This woman knows her stuff. For that she is expensive but you get what you pay for and I want a piece of mind the second time around. I was not hoping to wait another year but that's life I guess. With divorces, kids, and other issues it is a little mess but we won't give up.

The trouble is that her ex husband holds onto the Hukuo book as a means to try to keep her in China. So it is a pain to get it every time and it is needed to get most official documents. We also want a baby together and her age will become a problem soon, so this delay is extra painful to bear. I hired a lawyer who seems to know little about China and did not research it as she should have which helped us to fail. The good thing is that our love is strong enough and I'm not worried that we will overcome this. We even joked about us both moving to Singapore and living there together. We will find a way.

You don't need to get all you documents professionally translated and notarized. If you speak the language you can translate it yourself with a statement on the translation that you're competent to do so. Notary is a waste of money on a translation.

OP- Your fiancee's house book doesn't count as a divorce certificate. Two different things. The house book is like a never ending census. I ran into a similar problem in Vietnam. The house book will mention the divorce but the divorce was filed at the ministry of justice which is where I had to go in Vietnam. It can't be much different in China.

You need to ask the question of how to obtain an original divorce certificate in China on that portal.

She has both a house "Hukou" book and a divorce book. They are separate things. We had also gotten a notarized divorce certificate, but the notary did not list he ex husbands name on it. We will get to the bottom of it when we get the letter, then I will file a motion to reopen and send the correct info.

Was it the decree or notarial certificate? See

travel.state.gov/content/visas/english/fees/reciprocity-by-country/CH.html

We sent both. We sent the notarial certificate at first. Then in response to the RFE we sent the decree (Chinese divorce booklet). That's why I'm drawing a blank as to what went wrong.