gtessier

We haven't received any text or email about CSC sending our case to NVC. I think CSC doesn't send anymore notifications after the approval/NOA2. *sigh*

Wait about 10-14 days and call NVC and get the case number. Its is an MNL number. Then you can go online and call the embassy in Manila and schedule your interview

The important thing is to look at the IMBRA Act and understand the spirit of the law and why it was enacted. What complicates matters is that the definition of "International Marriage Broker" is loosely defined and includes "some dating sites", which is vague and misleading for the adjudicators.

While you get the Wikipedia reference, check this one out and read the second section titled "International Marriage Agency", and read it's definition:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mail-order_bride

The key point is that the agency/broker facilitates the introduction rather than the couple finding each other on their own. So, having said that, I would see this being the difference:

Cherry Blossoms, Match.com, cupid.com, Zoosk.com, plentyoffish.com, etc are Dating Sites.

Look at this site as it would be an example of an "online website" that is definitely a marriage broker:

http://www.alena-marriage-agency.com/

or this one....

http://www.youmemarriage.com/

So looking at the difference between a "dating site" and these two examples, I can understand why the confusion by an adjudicator when the applicant states "we met online". However, I specifically stated Cherry Blossoms and any experienced adjudicator should recognize them as they have to have seen hunderds of applications go through USCIS from meetings on CB.

Now, here's a couple of websites that get into a gray area. "AnastasiaDate.com" and "AsianDate.com" make you pay for "credits". You use the credits for chat time and reading and sending emails. If you think that is a rip-off, it gets worse. They act as a barrier between you and the women and you cannot get their information when emailing them or chatting with them. They block the email addresses, the words "Facebook", Yahoo Messenger" and so on. You have to use 100 credits to arrange a phone call and frankly, I would be unsure if it is even the same girl you would have been chatting with as I have read their reviews and members bought a phone call and the girl did not even remember, or was unfamiliar with the content of their chats and emails. Regardless, this is a paid site that starts in a gray area and gets stickier with regard to IMB definition as you move closer to a relationship with the woman. However, don't get too confused as it it really a scam to keep you hooked and keep throwing money at girls you will never meet.

gtessier,

I have been following your case closely because it follows mine very closely. I received and RFE the same day probably at the same as you..... in fact my RFE is the same as yours. Very close anyway.

My RFE states the following

"You stated that you met the beneficiary through Cherryblosso.com. This website may be considered to be an International Marriage Broker (IMB). An International Marriage Broker is a business that charges fees for providing dating, matrimonial, matchmaking services, of social referrals between United States citizens and foreign nationals. Therefore, you are required submit a copy of the signed written consent form that the International Marriage Broker obtained from the beneficiary, **name here**, authorizing the release of his/her personal contact information to you.

As you can see they even spelled the website name wrong. They also mention that the website may be considered an International Marriage Broker. I've been searching for a correct way to respond to this. I have found all the topics that you have mentioned in your post. I would appreciate any insight that anyone might have as to what can be done about this.

Here's an update on how I am handling the situation:

Yesterday (Monday) I called Cherry Blossoms. I spoke with a woman there that works in their visa service department. They also have a service that prepares paperwork for visa procssing, like many other websites, immigration lawyers, etc. She collected my info and I sent her a copy of my RFE so that the owner, Mike, could read it and know how to address the matter correctly and write a letter to USCIS/CSC.

She consulted with Mike and only a couple hours later I had a PDF emailed to me, addressed to CSC and personally signed by Mike. While the letter was in full color and a high quality scan, she asked me if I wanted the original. I told her I thought it might be a good idea and emailed her a prepaid USPS shipping label for a flat rate Priority Mail envelope. Keep in mind that CB is on the big island of Hawaii and any mail takes at least 3 days to arrive by Priority Mail. This document should arrive by Friday.

That is document #1...

I let Melanie know what to do for document #2. She prepared her own affidavit that states that she never paid for any membership at CB. She also stated that she never gave them any of her personal information as they never collected it. We met in July 2012 by introducing ourselves to each other by email and then exchanged Yahoo Messenger ID's. From there, we went off-site and the relationship began. We closed our profiles a month later and there was never any further involvement by CB of any sort. Its Wednesday morning there now and she will go to the DHL office there and send the document to me with her original signature and it should be here by Thursday or Friday.

That is document #2...

Between now and Friday afternoon I will prepare my statement on the matter. It will echo the same statements of both Mike at CB and Melanie and I will likely add their IMBRA exemption as well as reiterate that CB is a dating site where the members only post personal ads and meet for fun, friendship and possibly romance. It's up to them to take it from there and see what evolves. God knows I kissed a lot of frogettes on CB before I finally met my princess. It's really no different than meeting a woman in a nightclub and asking her for her phone number and calling her the next day and the relationship evolving from there. The nightclub does not arrange the relationship - they only provide the venue. And using that comparison, it would certainly not make the nightclub or its owner a matchmaker or marriage broker.

That is document #3....

So now we have both sides with signed statements and also the owner of CB. I hope that's enough. I will also include a copy of the DHL airbill as proof that Melanie's documents are originals and the signatures are original. I realize that its not actual proof, but it does show that we put forth the effort to get an original signature from her and not a copy and for sure not forged.

By Friday night I will have the packet ready to mail and it should be on somebody's desk Monday morning.

As a side note, I want to thank the people at CB, especially Elena, for their super quick and diligent handling of the matter. I did not doubt that I would get help, but the speed at which they handled the matter was unexpected and truly appreciated.

Just to throw in my two cents on the marriage broker/dating site RFE's, I printed off screen prints on our first conversations on Facebook because when we got engaged, I met with two different immigration lawyers and was told that meeting on a dating site could come under the marriage brokerage act. I wanted to make it clear that our petition wasn't subject to that law.

If the lawyer mentioned dating sites to me, then others must have had problems with it, but probably more in TSC. Other threads are suggesting that there have been new adjudicators hired for TSC, so they may be told to get this information, or who knows what else.

May the RFE's be resolved quickly!!!!!

Actually, this latest rash of RFE's are coming from CSC, not TSC. I would agree that it must be due to new adjudicators reviewing the apps and not familiar with the loosely written IMBRA law and its ambiguity. Apparently they are choosing to err on the side of caution and trying to go by the letter of the unclearly written law.

"REF" is the guy at a football game wearing the striped shirt.

"RFE" is Request For Evidence. Its when an application is incomplete, missing information or the adjudicator needs clarification on a matter. Until the information requested in the RFE is resolved, the application is put on hold and processing suspended.

As a separate matter, please turn your CAPS LOCK off. It is considered shouting and we can all hear you just fine!

32 days already since I never seen any changes in our case status. I seen March 12 notice date like mine they already got a NOA2

Did you tell them you met on a dating site?

Am I the only one that is noticing the coincidence of this rash of RFE's for this "marriage broker/dating site" issue at CSC and the transfer of TSC files to CSC?

Odd timing. Perhaps it's a way of pushing aside some of their own workload by delaying their processing and making time for the TSC files

Next trick of theirs will be to start issuing the same RFE on the TSC files. Ouch!!

If you don't mention that you met online, how would they know? I never told them in our application how we met (we both lived in UAE, and didn't think it was relevant). I only put down our last vacation together, which was in November in Malaysia. That is truly all they know about our relationship, other than the pictures and flight information I submitted of our vacations we've taken together in the past year. So they "technically" don't know how we met.

I'm just curious why you would need to add where and how you guys initially met.

It's called full disclosure and being honest. Eventually not being forthright will catch up to you.

Can you imagine you did not fully disclose how you met on your application and then when the fiancee' is in their interview they tell them on a dating site?

"Which one?"

"Cherry Blossoms"

"I see. This is not on the application. We consider them a marriage broker."

Thank you for playing. He have some lovely parting gifts for our contestants on the way out the door....

So, then how do you fix it? Maybe the only way is to get married and do a CR-1. I don't know.....

Hmmm, well I guess I need to be prepared for an RFE as well. I met my fiancé on Okcupid an online dating site just like CherryBlossom. I didn't specify anything only that it is an online dating site. I guess I better get my info started now. Sigh.....

I dont think the rest of you need to get worked up over this. Look it up in search here on VJ and you will see that hundreds of other people have used Cherry Blossoms and stated as such in their applications and no issues. I just got unlocky and got an overzealous adjudicator looking at my paperwork.

I got my RFE paperwork in the mail today. Get ready for this....

International Marriage Broker (IMB)

"The evidence submitted indicates that you may have met the beneficiary through the services of an International Marriage Broker (IMB). You stated that you met the beneficiary through a dating website. Although your answer to question 35 on the fiancee' petition indicates that you did not meet the beneficiary through the services of an international marriage broker, you did not establish that the website is not an international marriage broker as defined by regulations. An International Marriage Broker is considered a business that charges fees for providing dating, matromonial, matchmaking services, or social referrals between United States citizens and foreign nationals. As such, you must submit a copy of the signed written consent form that the International Marriage Broker obtained from the beneficiary authorizing the release of her personal contact information to you, or documentations to establish that the website is not an international marriage broker."

OK, we met on Cherry Blossoms just like numerous others here have and had no issue. Apparently we got a trainee that is reading (and misinterpreting) the IMBRA law and must be his/her first day on the job. Cherry Blossoms is essentially a personals website and NOT a marriage broker.

After researching this so I can provide the needed and pertinent documentation, I found out the following:

• Cherry Blossoms does not charge the women a fee.
• The women post their ad and no further personal info. You need to introduce yourself by IM or email first and make contact. It is not arranged. You and your "penpal" take it from there. CB only is only a platform for people to meet and the rest is up to you.
• CB is exempt from IMBRA as it is worldwide and men (and women) from other countries have the same opportunities as US men to meet the women.
• No personal meetings are arranged. Once the two people meet from their first introduction (also unarranged) to each they are on their own and go from there, usually offsite (YM, Viber, Skype, etc....) After the initial meeting, Cherry Blossoms' involvement ends. We met July 2012 and closed our profiles about a month later. So for over 2 1/2 years we have had zero involvement from CB.

This was a response to the issue that I found from Cherry Blossoms on another message board:

"We do not consider our company a marriage agency because we do not charge the women nor do we charge couples that end up marrying who have met on our web site. Our government has written a very broad definition of Marriage Broker that includes almost all companies where men and women meet either on line or in person.

We have found that when our K-1 and K-3 visa clients call the USICS for clarification they are usually told that web sites like ours are not considered marriage brokers.

The intent was to make women safer and reduce fraud from marriage agencies in other countries that charge men and women for introductions. There are marriage agencies in other countries that charge the women up to $10,000 to marry a U.S. citizen. These companies profit from the marriage whether it is a valid marriage or not. These companies have an agenda in making the marriage happen. With companies like ours we are not compensated if you meet and marry someone on line.

Hope this gives you some clarification. If you would like to call the USCIS their number is 800-XXX-XXXX and at the voice prompts push 1, 2, 3, & 6 to get to the correct department.

If you need our assistance with a Fiancée Visa petition please let us know. We have assisted with over 700 petitions’ since the law went into effect without any problems relating to IMBRA. The U.S. government does have you complete a form that discloses past criminal history and domestic violence charges."

And here is the exemption info:

"Please be advised that section 4 (B) (ii) of IMBRA exempts dating
companies whose principal business is not to provide dating services
between US citizens and foreign nationals so long as it charges comparable
rates and offers comparable services to all individuals regardless of
gender or country of citizenship. Consequently our company is exempt as it
falls within this exemption (as do many other large dating companies)."

So, my thoughts are to print off the following from their website:

"Cherryblossoms.com is the leading Asian dating website. You can join for free today and view over 61,000 single women and over 11,000 single men- Thousands of profiles with pictures. With a free membership, you can create your profile, send smiles, view member profiles, get personalized matches, and ask top ten questions. Take a few minutes to become a member of Cherry Blossoms and start browsing through our profiles and see thousands of single Chinese, Filipino, Thai and Vietnamese Women who are looking for online dating, love and romance.

Is Cherry Blossoms a Mail Order Bride Service?
NO! Cherry Blossoms, Inc. is NOT a Mail Order Bride service: Our goal is to provide a safe platform for singles to place their personal ads and meet for fun, friendship and online romance. We provide our members with an opportunity to connect online by email, chat and instant messenger, so they can get to know one another without risking their privacy or exposing confidential information."

So, correct me if I am wrong - this should be easily corrected and some misinformed worker at CSC just wasted about 3-4 weeks of our time between NOA1 and NOA2.

GRRRRR!!

They require English translation for any language other than English and the language of the country of the embassy/consulate where you have your interview.

I will have my interview in France, so police certificates in French and English are acceptable, but not German.

For Sabrina and Chuck, German is fine because the interview will be in Germany. However, in their case, a French police certificate would have to be translated into English.

To be safe, I would get anything not in English translated to English

Congrats to all who got their NOA2, Im being hopeless for our case and I can't do nothing about it. Notice date of March 12 but still no status.......... ahhhhhhhh

I hate to say it, but we got NOA1 on the 10th and other people were getting their NOA2 before us that had NOA1 after mine. We ended up with RFE a couple days ago and waiting for the letter why.

I hope that's not your issue and its just a lazy adjucator at CSC.

Hi guys, please help me with this I'm kinda confused in poverty guidelines. Is it before taxes or after taxes computation? My fiance earned like $1900.00 on his job before taxes but after taxes its like $1400 to 1500.

They use Adjusted Gross Income from your last tax return

you dont need to send birth certificate for beneficiary for 129f .. isnt it for consulate interview document list?

Perhaps. But better to have more documentation than not enough. We put the statement that these are copies and originals are availabl upon request or at interview.

I have seen people submit tax returns with I-129F when they dont need to be shown until the interview

what is RFE for???

Not sure yet. They only show that the RFE was mailed yesterday. CSC is 20 minutes frm me here in Orange County, CA so it is only one day by mail depending when they actually put it in the mail. Hopefully know today or tomorrow. As soon as I know I will post here. Seems I was the first March filer and also first with RFE. But explains why others got NOA2 ahead of us.

RFE is usually for missing, incomplete or illegible documents. I'm wracking my brain trying to figure out the problem as I had a pretty thorough checklist. Only things I can think of are that Melanie's birth certificate from Phillippines is very light copy. She also signed in blue ink and her signature is very small and hard to read.

Hopefully neither of those two are the issues as she would have to resend them and I would need to wait about a week for them

Got notice on the USCIS website that they sent an RFE today.

GRRRRR!!!!

dsldesch, you may want to wait to contact legislators until after 5 months after your NOA1 date. They might not take any action if you are within the 'typical' processing time. Hopefully, Texas starts working in a more reasonable time frame!

I would agree. dsldesch, you are only 30 days into the process. I don't understand the need for alarm at this point.

You guys are probably so dang close to approval!!! If your NOA2 is March 9th, then you are probably on the top of the CSC stack. Now we will see if yours gets approved before they start working on the neglected TSC cases. I'll be keeping an eye out for messages!

Its hard to say how these will shake out chronologically. The only thing I can think of is that a supervisor issues batches of files in bundles of maybe 10 at a time to each worker to review. Some will process faster than others and each case is different and would require more or less things such as background checks, etc.

I actually started this post/thread as I was the first March filer to send our application on March 2nd. I got the NOA1 on March 10. There are people that have filed shortly after me and got NOA1 on March 9th and some that have even filed and got their NOA1 later than ours and already gotten the NOA2 this past week. So if all is well. I am execting our NOA2 sometime soon.

Having said this, I need to consider what I mentioned in my first paragraph of this post. Its possible that our file requires a little more diligence on the part of the person reviewing it or possibly the other files with NOA2 already have people reviewing them that work just a little faster.

Another thing to consider is that this is Easter holiday season. I live 20 minutes from the CSC in Laguna Niguel, CA. Here in Orange County, the schools have spring break this past week and also next week. A lot of people that work government jobs have a lot of vacation time accrued and will take a week off during spring break to spend with their kids while they have the time off from school. There's always the chance that my file is on the desk of one of those workers that has this past week off and will get looked at next week.

I connected with a guy from this forum who also has a fiancee' from The Philippines and were processed at CSC. They filed on Jan 3 and got NOA2 in only 16 days. She arrived early last week and were married this past Wednesday. That's about 90 days from sending the application in to rings on their fingers and now being Mr. and Mrs. My first wife and I met in early 2001 and it was 5 months from NOA1 to POE here in the US. Considering the procesing speed of CSC these days, I am hoping for somewhere between this other couple's timeframe and my prior experience. Frankly, I have so much on my plate right now, 90 days would almost seem too quick.

Look at it from the other side. Maybe the person attempting to commit visa fraud posts "Engaged" and shows it as "Proof of relationship". Do you think that carries any weight? Uh, no...

Both my fiancee' and I have our relationship status as "In a relationship since July 4, 2012", which is true and we also state in our documents as the day we first met.

I think CSC has slowed down. No March filer has reported getting their NOA2, that I know of.

Not true. Please click this link:

http://www.visajourney.com/timeline/k1list.php?cfl=0&op1=4&op2=d&op3=1&op4=5&op5=5,6,8,10,11,13,14,15,16,17,18,20,21,22,25,26,27,28,108,110,111,208,210,211&op6=California%20Service%20Center&op66=All&op7=All&dfile=No&adv=0

Please note that two NOA1 from 3/9 were NOA2 on 3/20. Darryl and Madelyn were NOA1 also on 3/9 and went NOA2 today, 3/30. And before you jump to conclusions, just because two went NOA2 after 11 days and the other took 21, does not necessarily mean CSC is "slowing down". Do your research and you will see that 11 days is crazy fast and 21 days is about the recent norm. A lot of filers would be tickled to get an NOA2 in 21 days.

Next, click page 6 under "K1 Visa Timelines" and you will see more NOA1 from earlier this month and you will see more NOA2. If you continue to watch the progression over the next week or so, you will likely start seeing some of the holes getting filled in with more NOA2's.

Folks, let's stop the speculating. Files from TSC just got transferred last Friday. Who knows when they will arrive and how CSC will give them priority over the existing CSC files. Right now there is NO data to work with since it has just happened in the last couple days. Let's get a larger sample size before we start making assumptions or judgements.

Finally, there is way too much consternation over things that none of us have control over. Watching the kettle boil will not make it boil any faster and watching grass grow will lead to insanity.

You are not being "discriminated against".

You just live in a state that gets routed to TSC. It is supposed to be done with the intention of balancing the load amongst the other states between the service centers. You just drew a bad card.

The issue, which I have previously explained is poor management at TSC and mentality of government workers. It's not like a regular corporate job where a desk full of files gets you fired. Instead, it guarantees you have work tomorrow and possibly some overtime. Having spent time in management in a corporate environment as well as dealing with more branches of the Federal and State governments than I care to share, I am familiar with both side - private sector and government.

People are motivated in the workplace by three by things; 1. Money, 2. Time off and 3. Recognition. Maybe TSC employees get overtime, but judging by their case load, probably not. Maybe time off. Again, judging by their case load, probably not. And tell me if you have ever been to a Federal building parking lot and seen an "Employee of the Month" parking space.

Why do you think TSC and CSC have such an egregious descrepancy between processing times? The system is setup to balance the load evenly by numbers between the service centers. Yet CSC has average processing times recently of less than a month while TSC is well over 6 month. Why the difference? Bad management. Period...

So, the TSC workers get to slack off and get some of their workload transferred to CSC. The CSC appears to be well managed and running smoothly. Their reward for doing their job well? More work! Other people's work!!

I'm glued to this site to check on the progress! No one can control what will happen, but we sure would like to get an idea of when we can get our NOA2!

No one knows and no one can predict.

Use the "Immigration Timelines" resource in the site and use the filters for CSC and ALL countries. If you have trouble doing it, use this link:

http://www.visajourney.com/timeline/k1list.php?cfl=0&op1=4&op2=d&op3=1&op4=1&op5=5,6,8,10,11,13,14,15,16,17,18,20,21,22,25,26,27,28,108,110,111,208,210,211&op6=California%20Service%20Center&op66=All&op7=All&dfile=No&adv=0

By using this filter and checking NOA2's that people have reported, the most recent NOA2 are on 3/24 and 3/25 that were NOA1 on 3/3. Our NOA1 was issued on 3/10 and there are two NOA1 shown with 3/9 dates that were NOA2 on 2/20. 11 days.

It seems that if you were to look at the average of the last 10-20 NOA2 from CSC they seem to be on a 14-21 day average.

Having said this, these most recent approvals this week on 3/24 and 3/25 were only three weeks from their NOA1 on 3/3. There's no way right now to see how this purported transfer of files from TSC to CSC will affect the approval timeframes at CSC. Give it 30 days to get a better sample size and see if there is any effect.

Finally, my educated guess would be that the existing files at TSC will remain at TSC and any new files that would normally get routed to TSC will get routed to CSC unitil TSC handles its backlog. Those files would then get in the same line for processing as the files that are normally being routed to CSC. It appears that CSC is better managed and their reward for having their act together is more work.

In case any of you don't understand the mentality of the government worker, a large pile of files on your desk = job security.

Ours filed in California but when we saw in USPS confirmation it delivered in Dallas TX. March 10, 2015. What does it mean?

Dallas (actually Lewisville) is the lockbox and where the central location for applications are filed. They then route to the appropriate Service Center for processing. If you are from California, it will likely get routed from there to the CSC

Duplicate thread. Moderator, please merge to existing thread

Greetings!

No you are not the only one! :-)

We sent ours on March 2nd as well. March 6th we received a text and an email: "Accepted and routed to California Service Center for processing!" :-)

Regards,

T&N

I got the same text messages and emails today. So I feel better now and will just let the process run it course now. I think you got your email and text sooner than I did because you didn't get the snafu at the Dallas sort facility delaying delivery by two days

It will be interesting to see how and if apps dated the same run a parallel course during the process.

Am I the only March 2015 filer? Seems weird its 9 days into the month and no other March filings

Sent app in on Monday 3/2 by USPS Priority Mail. I watched tracking and it should have arrived at the Post office on Wednesday 3/4. It got stuck at the Dallas soft facility and took until Friday to get delivered. Hoping to get some sort of acknowledgement like a cashed check soon. Also, lookig to possibly get NOA1 by week's end. Fingers crossed. :-)