CAandLI

My senator was able to find out the reason for the denial.  "The visa was denied because your fiancé did not have sufficient answers to the officer’s questions, thus causing the officer to believe you do not have a bona fide relationship."

I am so disappointed in these Visa Officers.  My fiance did the interview in English and couldn't remember some of the words, such as the programming language I use.  The officer didn't contact me for any clarification of anything and based on the past experience of others, any appeal won't do any good and will just cost more time and money.

We will now pursue a CR1.  I expect a 15 month delay for that though (2 months until marriage, 1 month for paperwork, 12 months for approval).  During that time, I'll be making at least 3 more trips to China and I will be there during the next interview even though they won't allow me in the interview (another thing that I feel is stupid about this process).

I don't see the statistics anywhere, but I heard that the Guangzhou Consulate denies the most K1's at 22% denial.  The worldwide average is 5%.  They think they are preventing fraud, but they are really just hurting people.

On 5/14/2017 at 0:15 PM, PRC Rabbit said:

Perhaps I missed where you mentioned it  but how long was your relationship before the interview?

 

The relationship started 10 months before the interview.  The Visa Officer didn't even look at our WeChat (similar to Skype) records.  It seems he really cared whether my fiance knew all the details about my job.  We've never gotten into the details because my fiance is not technical at all.  So knowing the company, job title, and that I do computer programming were not enough.

2 hours ago, EandH0904 said:

I think there's a difference between a denial for something like lack of a bonafide relationship and being "not eligible" - OP - were you born in the US? I know someone who was not born here but came here as a child and something was just weird about her immigration papers and so she was "not eligible" - maybe its something that you don't know about or are just overlooking - I hope you can find out what this is! It must be so frustrating for you! 

I was born in the US.  I did have a previous marriage through a K1 visa, but that marriage lasted 10 years.  It's really ridiculous that they can deny you and not tell you the reason.  Subsequent emails to the consulate just result in a email template denial.  They won't give any further information.

3 minutes ago, Suss&Camm said:

This might be a dumb question but since you didn't mention it, did you also supply letter of intent from you?

Yes, we both had letters of intent.

21 minutes ago, ShanghaiSurfer said:

Did she present the certificate from the Chinese Bureau which states she is single? That's the only thing I can think of since you didn't mention this certificate. Sorry I forget the name of the bureau. If not then my money is on this certificate.

Yes, she had the certificate.  We had the paperwork reviewed by a lawyer and nothing was missing.  Also, shouldn't they give an RFE rather than a denial if you are missing something?

Thanks for the help.  I have contacted my senator to see what he can find out.  But it seems that it is difficult to impossible to know the exact reason of denial and that in itself is a long process.  After talking with a lawyer abroad and one in the US, it appears the best course of action is to get married and file for a CR1.  So now we have to reset our expectations of staying together from later this month to 12 months from now.  This whole process of immigration seems to be designed by a crazy person.

We have met 2 times, for 1 week each time.  We also us WeChat everyday morning and evening for audio, text, and video chats.

Evidence presented: Airline boarding passes, hotel receipts, passport stamps, 50 pages of WeChat screenshots, letter from beneficiary stating why she wants to marry me, and 25 photos

We both have been married twice before.  We both divorced twice so we are both single now.  My 2nd marriage was through a K1 visa and that marriage lasted 10 years.  So this is my 2nd K1 application.

Is there no way to know the real reason for a denial without guessing?

The consulate doesn't allow the petitioner to attend the interview, so I stayed in the US.

Only two things stood out to my fiance.  She was repeatedly asked about my job.  She correctly told them that I work from home, the name of my employer, and the I'm a computer programmer.  She was further asked what my employer did and what I programmed.  She responded that she didn't know to both of those.  She didn't really understand that my company is just a consulting company and she couldn't remember the tool I use to program.  She is not tech-savvy at all.  She also said that I sometimes travel to take tests.  He asked for further explanation, but she doesn't understand that these are certification tests related to my job.

She was also asked how much contact she had with my kids.  She replied that she had seen pictures of my kids but since I rarely see them, she hasn't talked to them.

So based on these questions, the only thing we can think of is that we were denied for lack of proving a relationship.

We are not married.  We would know the reason for denial then.

Our K1 Visa was denied after the inteview.  We are both baffled as to the reason.  I'm told that an appeal can be filed within 33 days, but I'm worried the USCIS still may take months to send us a letter (and even then, I'm not sure they specify the reason).  After the interview, my fiance was handed a paper that said:

"After the interview and a thorough review of your visa application, the consular officer found that you are not eligible for the visa category in which you are applying.  The fiancé/fiancée petition (Form I-129F) your petitioner filed on your behalf will be returned to U. S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS).  Once it has been returned, the Consulate General no longer has jurisdiction over this case. If you or your petitioner contacts the Consulate, no specific information will be provided nor will additional documents be accepted."

Through an online form, we asked the Consulate for the reason.  They replied with the exact same words as above.  Does anyone know how we can find out the specific reason for the denial?  We are both sick of waiting and don't know what to do next.

Just got a message that Trump is signing an Executive Order today to authorize "extreme vetting" of immigrants.  I hope this doesn't cause further delays for us.

1 minute ago, isabelleyri said:

Wow thank you for this geowrian! I was waiting for your list the whole day today! ? awesome job.

 

I saw there were random case numbers that got approved far ahead from other groups! Even one among the nov. 14 filers! Lucky draws indeed. 

I don't think that's what it shows.  To me, the chart is showing the number of each item that was worked on each day.  It does not show approvals by file date.  So there is no way to say that Nov. 14th filers got approved from this chart.

33 minutes ago, geowrian said:

Initial scan completed...off to work (darn weekdays!), but I'm going to put this out there so you guys can run the data however you want. I'm still working on the daily-update pieces. These are ONLY K1 apps.

 

Note: There's a bug with a few cases that show a future date. This is because USCIS....for some reason...doesn't have a date updated field on those cases, so my script mistakenly pulled the date from the wrong part of the status. These are are very few and far between, but that's why there's a few cases with February dates in the data.

 

This covers K1s from 1790048000 to 1790108000.

 

https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B1B_oR3Imoi-Y0l3a0ZpYk81SXc

 

Thanks for doing this.  If I read this right, in the past 3 months, we have:

• Only 167 cases have been approved
• 543 cases have been been withdrawn, rejected, or RFE
• 4817 are waiting for approval

So this happened today:

"White House chief of staff Reince Priebus sent a memo to federal agencies instructing the bureaucracy to cease issuing new regulations and to enact a federal hiring freeze."

Hopefully this means that USCIS can contract out the work instead to get these applications processed.

From the figures provided by Chellyandaaron, there are 1363 K1 cases remaining for the dates Oct. 31st to Nov. 9th.  This averages to about 200 cases per weekday.  Since my NOA 1 date was Nov. 22nd, there should be about an additional 1800 cases for Nov. 10th to Nov. 22nd.  This totals 3163 cases remaining through November 22nd.  At an average of 25 cases processed per day, that leaves 126 workdays until all are processed.  With an average of 20 workdays per month, that means that I won't see the NOA 2 for more than 6 months from now (8 months total).  I can't even imagine how the people that filed in December and January are feeling right now.  USCIS seriously needs a kick in the butt.  Did they go from 8 people processing K1s to only 1 person?

33 minutes ago, Ybhamster said:

I talked to an immigration contractor today who told me that there was a surge in petitions specifically from the Philippines when Trump won the election. The reason we can only guess, but the odd relationship between the two countries as of late may have been one of the reasons. She was surprised because the rumor was that there would be more DACA applications submitted, but that wasn't the case as far as she knows. She doesn't work K1 petitions, but knows that those who do so have been told to be very careful due to some perceived lax attitudes at the embassies approving K1's especially when a non-biological child is involved. She said that not many of her coworkers took vacation during the holidays as only one person per team can be on vacation at a time and you can only request it every other year due to caseload concerns and fairness. She will attempt to look into why some December cases have been approved when some November and October cases have not been reviewed at all, but did say that some IO's are better producers than others. As a side note she was brought in August with six others from other federal agencies to help out with the holidays, but doesn't know how long she will be assigned there. 

If the cause was a surge of applications, we should still be seeing approvals.  Even though they would occur at a slower pace.  However, we are only seeing approvals now for those that already had RFEs.  I feel it is ridiculous that we have to guess at the cause and even worse, guess when they will start processing again.

8 hours ago, caputo said:

RIght now (11:25 PST), there is a Twitter conversation at #AskUSCIS that is supposed to answer questions directly from USCIS.  Mostly bureaucratic, but may be worth a short at submitting more 129F/CSC questions.

 

https://twitter.com/hashtag/askuscis?f=tweets&vertical=default&src=hash

I don't have Twitter, but hopefully someone will ask them why there has been such a drastic slowdown in K-1 approvals for the last couple of months and when they are going to start cranking them out again.