millefleur

Plenty of interesting dead mall videos on youtube as well. Pretty much all the local malls I grew up with are dead or abandoned. Apparently crime played a role in the demise (which is so strange to me as I remember all these places being super safe in childhood.)

I didn't grow up in an area with a Macy's so never knew what it was like during its peak. However, since I've lived nearby a few stores, it just seems like they totally gave up on merchandising or attempting to make the store appealing in any way. Things just seem kind of randomly placed, understaffed, picked over etc. I suspect this has been a long, slow decline and the store closures were overdue, sadly. The site isn't that great either, to be honest. I do get some good discount codes from time to time and the sales are decent but the whole enterprise feels a bit neglected.

What do you mean by "covered" and required for life? I'm not familiar with this. I know there is an exit tax for very high earners, but never heard of it being required for life.

Good to hear! Huh never knew that, had always just assumed those were embassies. The more you know.

Oh ok, that's just the first time I've heard of it going through a consulate and not the embassy. Thank you for informing.

Feels inevitable to me. I've shopped online for children's clothing as they had good sales on the site, but going in person was always very disappointing. The sad part is that shopping centers losing another anchor store will just lead to more struggling and/or dead malls.

**Moved from General Immigration-Related Discussion to RUB regional forum**

Waiting for a good long while and applying again is really all you can do. With visitor visas, there's no other recourse. You can't appeal the decision in any way, frustrating as it is. There is one other way to show no immigrant intent, and that is to file for the spousal visa and then have her relinquish the green card showing she truly has no intention to live in the US.

214(b) is for immigrant intent, basically she didn't overcome that. The previous ESTA overstay is a bad look for her case unfortunately. Since she is married to a USC, she can easily adjust status and stay in the US. Very common. They are not required to consider or look at documents you bring to make their decision. Hm, it's an odd question as you'd think the embassy staff know that but who knows. What did she give as an answer? Maybe something she said sounded suspicious immigrant intent-wise, combined with the other stuff stacked against her (USC spouse, overstay etc.) That's not good that she said "No one" especially given the context of having family in the US. It sounds like she was nervous but the CO probably just marked that down as another suspicious response. Just in the future, if they ask a question like that, it's not about "reason for travel" but just being upfront about ties to the US. Her having family in the US is a tie, and saying "no one" could appear like she was trying to downplay it, which could be seen as suspicious. Unfortunately this situation overall doesn't look good. She can wait a year and apply again and see. Not much else she can do.

**Moved from Bringing Family Members of US Citizens to America to RUB regional forum**

It definitely sounds like AP. Just keep waiting and see what happens, it's possible the embassy might come back and ask for more documents later. This happened to @rikko as you can read in their thread here:

Sounds like his case might be in Administrative Processing, which is normal. Everyone goes through it. It can take longer for some people given their backgrounds (education, profession, nationality or connections in their home country etc.) There have been some cases of Russian men here having longer AP for various reasons. Unfortunately there's no way to know how long it takes. You just have to wait it out. Did they ask him for further documents, like a CV or anything like that?

Even if they did look at it, a 6 months contract is not a strong tie at all. I would not bother bringing any job related paperwork unless it shows a more permanent situation.

**Moved from Moving to the US and Your New Life In America to Working & Traveling During US Immigration; topic is travel** You're good to go. It's possible they might inquire about the reason for the sudden trip back upon reentry at the border, but I don't suspect it would be any more than just the normal questioning unless there was something else suspicious about your reason for travel. Also, technically any time you enter they can always pull you into secondary for any reason. It's just unlikely unless something suspicious triggers it.

Only error I've been getting so far is "Visajourney is taking too long respond" ("This site can't be reached") but then it loads eventually after some lagging seconds. Not sure if something on my end or related to the other issue.

Speed could play a role as some kind of anti-spamming measure. I'm curious if anyone else felt it popped up due to speedy browsing and clicking around the site.

Just keep making noise about it here and let's hope @Captain Ewok will address the issue soon.

My understanding is you are obligated to provide info on links to any social media you have now. This is the same for the DS-260 (so spousal visa) application. ESTA might be different, but even on the tourist visa DS-160 you have to list you social media accounts now. https://travel.state.gov/content/dam/visas/Enhanced Vetting/CA - FAQs on Social Media Collection - 6-4-2019 (v.2).pdf

It would be the US embassy in Italy as embassies are the ones that handle immigrant visas. Looks like that would be Rome. https://it.usembassy.gov/embassy-consulates/

Supposedly a new round of sanctions is about to drop. Not sure what else they can throw at it that they haven't already.

Noticed that too. Seems like there's been absolute crickets on this story shortly after the initial news broke.

Gotcha. There are different visa centers all over but they can only do so much since it's up to the embassies/consulates to issue Schengen visas. We had a recent thread on the topic, you might find it helpful:

I'm just curious what you mean by this as my whole Russian family is from St Petersburg and being located there has not made it any easier to get a Schengen visa? Is there some service or office you know of where people have been having success?

You can translate yourself as long as you are qualified to do so and include a note saying you certify the translation to be correct and that you are fluent in both languages. From my experience hiring a translator in Russia was generally pretty cheap, but it's your call. The times I did my own translation most of the work went into formatting the documents to match the originals, so sometimes it is worth outsourcing it just for that.

Having done a previous K-1 means choosing the spousal visa was probably the smart choice anyway. You won't regret going that route, everyone here who has opted for spousal visa vs K-1 has been happy with their choice.