Dear family,
My VAWA journey is over after a little less than 3 years. Nov 2019 filer, I360 approved Dec 2021. Very mixed feelings, not so ecstatic as I expected I'm gonna be. Totally calm actually... Maybe due to the fact I've been waiting for this for almost 13 years...
Anyway, I want to say thank you you all for your kind words and encouragement and advice during this journey. I did everything myself (with a 100% help on here) no attorney involved at all. Thank you @sandranj , @Stillwinning!!!😊, @Demise, @Pinkrlion@shiva32 and all others members of this forum that I forgot.
After all I can say this place is amazing. I knew nothing about VAWA when I joined - now I know more than some lawyers 😁. Keep supporting each other - it's hard to describe what this community did for me - I'm ready to give my share back.
I went through it all, horrible marriage, Stokes, I130 denial, life threatening assault, hospital etc etc but back stronger than ever. Never ever give up!!! There is always a hope! Once I read God only throws on us what we can take. In October 2019 I lost everything: status, wife, job, business equipment, place to stay - basically my whole world collapsed. Everybody turned back on me - everybody stopped answering my phone calls. Almost 3 years later everything turned around. A lot of people wrote here - God works in mysterious ways and it's definitely true.
Had an interview on Friday for like 45 min. Very nice officer - but first question was like:
So tell me - how come you have I360 - it's usually for women? But after reading here for years I knew what to say and I pointed him to my affidavit and said I really can't go through all of that again... Then later I explained a new moments that are still going on after filing I360.
He was curious why my addresses don't match at all (ID, VAWA, IRS, USCIS, car registration joint with abuser) nothing actually matches. He was surprised but my explanation was perfectly logical and he was like Oh - WOW - you`ve been through a lot.
When did you have last contact with your wife, did you file for divorce, how long did you date before getting married, did you ever get arrested and I485 questions. Gave him medical and last 3 year taxes, marriage certificate certified copy and that's it. He handed me that piece of paper that says your case is under review, we can not make a decision at this moment and will let you know if we need anything from you bla bla
I left field office feeling after like a stroke hitting 3 red lights in a row (thank God Chicago downtown doesn't have red light cameras) and took me a whole day to get myself together. I thought oh God they are gonna keep me waiting for weeks now... (Chicago is notorious for that) At 23:15 Lawfully app started blinking and I was like - oh not that stupid sh*t again with their commercials etc but I opened it and here we go...