Innocence

Denial of a tourist visa will not in of itself adversely affect the immigrant visa process.

That's great but do they still put a stamp in your passport with the denial? I'm only worried about that and having some kind of permanent record of denial.

I remember when I was about 15 I wanted to visit a friend in the UK during school vacation, the people at the UK embassy told me after looking over my application that I'd be denied visa because of being 15 and female mostly, but that they would return my application fee and not stamp my passport if I chose to withdraw. This was nice since it meant my passport was clear after that.

I was planning on applying for a B-2 visa in Ukraine to go visit my husband in the US and finally meet my in-laws before returning home to do my interview whenever the date is set for that back in Ukraine. We are at the NVC stage currently waiting to get our packages processed. My worry is not so much that they'll deny my visa (I know that's a possibility), but that they will stamp my passport with denial and put it on some kind of permanent record which could affect things for me in the future. Do they put a denial stamp in your passport if you are denied a visa based on your immigration case? Losing the visa fee which is 160 USD is really not a big worry for me, but having my passport stamped is scary. Anyone know what the situation is like in this case? Much appreciated.

me and my US citizen wife living overseas since day one of our marriage ,by the time i go for interview it will be 1 year and 7 month of our marriage ,my question is ..is there any possibility of getting 10 years green card ? or as usual 2 years as still 5month to go for 2nd anniversary ?

I'm not an expert but from everything I've read here and other places, if you ENTER the US after the second anniversary of your marriage you get a 10 year GC, if you ENTER the US before you get a two year conditional GC. The time of the interview could be much earlier, the only thing that decides your status is when you actually step on US soil.

Hi again everyone,

something I noticed today on our paperwork, maybe someone has any ideas or experience with this. When we got married I hyphenated my last name, so now it's my maiden name plus my husband's last name. Within a month or so of our marriage I already had my new passport with the name changed and my "traveling passport" which in Ukraine is for traveling abroad, has all your info in English instead of Ukrainian. Well, I was going through some of the old NVC correspondence my name still appears only as my maiden name. However, my husband printed out the bar-coded cover sheet to send in the pictures we forgot to send with the original IV package and that cover sheet has my full name on it. When my husband first petitioned for me he definitely used my full name so what the heck happened is unclear. I'm so confused why in some correspondence they don't use my full name and in bills they do. Has anyone seen anything like this and how likely is it to affect the process or cause confusion with the paperwork?

To register for an online account you would have to provide your spouse's information including SSN.

Thanks Ariani, I think it worked activating by phone using my husband's SSN instead of mine. However, when I check online I still do not see my name added as an authorized user. Wonder if it's just that it takes them a while, or there's a different glitch.

Today,I'm going to try finding out more about the F-1 overstay and how it might affect my interview. If anyone has useful info, please chime in. Thanks everyone.

I'd still be worried about the F-1 overstay. I'm surprised no one has commented on that. I really don't know enough about overstays to say much, but I hope someone who does will come along.

You're right, slangofoil, I've been worried about it too. The lawyer says I do not need pardon for that overstay but considering she forgot to mention the photos to send as part of the IV package, it makes me question her judgement and expertise (even though she is charging an arm and a leg for her services).

If you're sure the lawyer didn't send the two passport photos, then yes, it might be a good idea to send them asap. You can send them now if you wish, you don't have to wait to have a checklist before sending them stuff. Just include the bar-coded cover sheet from the IV bill, then include a cover letter as to what you're sending in and why (you forgot to send them in the IV package). Make sure your full name, date of birth, and case number are written on the back of both photos. I'd suggest you put them in a Ziploc bag, then staple the bag to a plain piece of paper. So, in order: cover sheet, cover letter, photos.

And as I mentioned earlier, every bank is different. So, some banks require SSN and others don't. Looks like the one you tried requires it.

Thanks again, Saylin, I'm going to go out and get pictures taken tomorrow and transfer files to my husband and let him print them out and send them in. The lawyer for some reason mentioned two photos before but only that I needed to have them for the interview. I find this conflict of information rather worrisome, as I've been relying on her to do her job properly and provide accurate information. We're going to send in the pictures and then call the lawyer after the holidays to get an explanation from her and to check again about the F-1 overstay which has caused me quite a bit of worry.

As I was reviewing all the checklists and package info, I noticed that 2 passport style photos were one of the things to include in the IV package, which our lawyer definitely did NOT mention. So now I'm thinking what I should do next. Is there any reason to send them in now separately BEFORE being checklisted or we now have to wait to be checklisted and THEN have to send the pictures? If we can send them in now to chase our Dec 11 submitted docs, how would we mark them correctly so they'd get added to the correct file? Any thoughts are appreciated.

Also, Ariani, I tried to activate both by phone and through that link and every time I try to sign up it still requires my SSN, so I'm just gonna have to go a different route. Thank you for trying to help.

From experience I can tell you that they will not ask for a SSN for the authorized user. Ask your spouse to include you in utility bills, car(s) titles, insurance, emergency contacts, etc.

Maybe I misunderstood how it works, but when I called Cap 1 to activate the card, it asked for the last 4 digits of my SSN. Maybe it's different for different banks?

Many people have had this issue lately. Could be why they now ask for just photocopies.

Does it vary by country? Because our lawyer specified I needed to provide an original of the birth certificate, not a photocopy or a cert. copy. I was actually pretty nervous about sending an original document because I know that replacing something like that if it's lost can take ages and is a complicated process.

I just called up my husband and confirmed that we did, in fact, submit the DS-260 and the packages. I guess I'm not expecting to hear from them ridiculously fast because we submitted the last few pieces of documents through the lawyer around Dec 11 so I'm guessing I have plenty of time before I even get assigned the interview date.

He'll go to the bank after they open back up after Christmas and try to get me on his checking account or at least get a letter from a manager explaining that we tried but need a SSN. I'm gonna have to browse the links about Ukraine processing experiences more closely to figure out how long it will take after they review the case to be assigned an interview. I hope we don't get this "checklist" stuff again, especially since we now have an actual lawyer handling the case and if that happens, I feel the lawyer fees are not justified. And those links on organizing the stuff for the interview have also been very helpful so thanks for that too. It really helps to get actual people to talk to, because I was feeling pretty down and confused about this whole thing, especially with it being the holiday season and being apart really sucks especially at times like these.

So thanks for all the replies, I now understand it a lot more clearly and feel much better and have a game plan. I'll try to fill the timeline more soon and keep your posted on developments. Have a great night (or whatever time of day it is where you are).

I didn't check if there was an expiration date on the little piece of paper they issued me at the local police HQs, but I will call them tomorrow and ask how long it is. If it expires fast I'll just go request another one right away since the last one took like 3 weeks to receive. As far as I know, we sent in all the forms required by the NVC already, but I will again have to ask my husband about the DS-260 since he was filling it all out on his computer and I do not remember the form names now. I know the last few pieces we gave to the lawyer to send in where the corrected affidavits and IRS records for him and his dad, my birth cert, police cert. and copies of my passport pages.

Since Ukraine didn't give my husband a visa during entry at any point, can I show them a printout of his Delta account with all the flights to Ukraine in the last few years? I'll have to ask him if he has any stamps from Ukrainian customs in his passport and send me a copy of that page if he does too.

Because we hired a lawyer, are we still supposed to receive emails from NVC or is she in charge of that now? Because I honestly don't think we've received anything from them in the emails since late September, which is starting to worry me.

I tried to fill out as much of the timeline as I can remember off the top of my head, but I will need to ask my husband for many of the dates as they are mostly in his email (I only have several copies in mine).

Wow, thanks a lot, Saylin. That's a lot of useful information.

I went through the possible interview question list, and I can answer pretty much 99% of it. The only thing I feel we have really made a mistake with is not opening any joint accounts for finances or anything like that. I'd feel a lot better going into the interview armed with those. Can we open a joint bank account now so I could use that as further proof at the interview or will that look too fishy (the recent date)?

My other concern is how I'm supposed to provide police certificate and original birth certificate at the time of my interview when both of them are currently at the NVC in the States. Will they send these papers straight to the embassy so I don't need to worry? Do I need to obtain yet another police certificate?

The 600 dollar fee is not a huge deal, unless of course the timeline is such that it would be days or a couple weeks before our 2nd anniversary, then I'd just wait and get the 10 year GC.

Thanks a lot for such a quick response, Dave.

It's nice to have the information spelled out for us laypeople, because I haven't spoken with the lawyer personally, and when I tried calling to get some answers today, the answering machine said they're closed for the holidays and won't be at work until the 6th of January so that's another 2 weeks just to get in touch.

We might wait until our 2nd marriage anniversary for me to enter, although that's another half a year and we've been waiting so long already to finally live together. The upside is that he was made a VIP client by Delta for how many skymiles he's racked up in these years flying here. Is the fee to get the conditions removed very high? If not, I might just enter right after getting my visa approved because being apart has been traumatic enough these last few years.

As for joint accounts, last time he came he brought me a credit card making me an authorized user for his account. However, I still have to call Capital 1 to activate it and I'm afraid they'll ask for my SSN which I, of course, do not have yet. So that might be a no-go. He hasn't filed taxes while married yet because in the last two years he hasn't needed to file due to the fact that he hasn't been permanently employed outside of the home. It's not a very great situation for us but taking care of parents is very important to both of us.

Thanks again for taking the time out of your day to read and answer.