skaratso

Thanks. I sure have cried, several times, including last night. It's rough. I wish everyone a speedy process, no exceptions!

I initially thought we were January filers since I mailed the petition on January 27. But then the NOA1 received date was February 1, so I switched to the February filers thread. I know there is some overlap between the January and February scans, so I decided to post this here as well as in the February thread.
 
I received NOA2 today, finally.
 
The case tracker is still not working; it just says received. No e-mail notice either, even though I filed form G-1145. Our received date was Feb 1, and the NOA2 was dated May 16.
 
To everyone else still waiting, hang in there!

I received NOA2 today, finally.
 
The case tracker is still not working; it just says received. No e-mail notice either, even though I filed form G-1145. Our received date was Feb 1, and the NOA2 was dated May 16. I will be sending @iamdegie a private message with our case number so she can update her records.
 
To everyone else still waiting, hang in there!

I received NOA2 today, finally.
 
The case tracker is still not working; it just says received. No e-mail notice either, even though I filed form G-1145. Our received date was Feb 1, and the NOA2 was dated May 16. I will be sending @iamdegie a private message with our case number so she can update her records.
 
To everyone else still waiting, hang in there!

I received NOA2 today, finally.
 
The case tracker is still not working; it just says received. No e-mail notice either, even though I filed form G-1145. Our received date was Feb 1, and the NOA2 was dated May 16. I will be sending @iamdegie a private message with our case number so she can update her records.
 
To everyone else still waiting, hang in there!

I received NOA2 today, finally.
 
The case tracker is still not working; it just says received. No e-mail notice either, even though I filed form G-1145. Our received date was Feb 1, and the NOA2 was dated May 16. I will be sending @iamdegie a private message with our case number so she can update her records.
 
To everyone else still waiting, hang in there!

Well, it all depends on how much time you want to spend together and what work plans in the meantime are.
 
If she wants to work in Canada up until she gets ready to move to the US, then get married first and do the CR1. The average wait is 10-12 months but could be longer. When she arrives after getting the visa she will have her conditional green card already and can start looking for work right away.
 
With the K1 she could still work in Canada until she moved here, but she'd have to wait 3-4 months for the employment authorization afterwards. The K1 visa takes about 6-9 months, but after you get married she gets to stay while going through the green card process (you file for green card and employment authorization simultaneously. AOS takes up to a year, the EAD takes about 3-4 months). On the plus side, not working for 3-4 months would give her a chance to adjust to life in the US.
 
What I'm doing with my Canadian fiancée is the K1. Just like Cryssiekins and her husband.

Well, it all depends on how much time you want to spend together and what work plans in the meantime are.
 
If she wants to work in Canada up until she gets ready to move to the US, then get married first and do the CR1. The average wait is 10-12 months but could be longer. When she arrives after getting the visa she will have her conditional green card already and can start looking for work right away.
 
With the K1 she could still work in Canada until she moved here, but she'd have to wait 3-4 months for the employment authorization afterwards. The K1 visa takes about 6-9 months, but after you get married she gets to stay while going through the green card process (you file for green card and employment authorization simultaneously. AOS takes up to a year, the EAD takes about 3-4 months). On the plus side, not working for 3-4 months would give her a chance to adjust to life in the US.
 
What I'm doing with my Canadian fiancée is the K1. Just like Cryssiekins and her husband.

There is a difference between coming on a B2 visa, and while here, meeting someone and falling in love and getting married, then going back to your home country and filing for a CR1, or even staying in the US and adjusting status, and coming on a B2 visa with the intent to get married. One is an unforeseeable circumstance, the other is a clear intention to skirt the rules.
 
Also, as others have pointed out elsewhere on this site, the USCIS is aware of immigration forums and they do read them. A few people from there even participate in threads sometimes. More often than not, no matter how secretive you are when trying to skirt the rules, the truth comes out eventually, and then you end up in far worse circumstances than you would have been had you been totally honest up front.
 
And if you're totally honest up front about the intentions with the B2 visa, it will not be granted in the first place.

If you have any sort of mental health issue it is always a good idea to get a letter from your doctor detailing how long you've had it, how well controlled it is, and what you take for it. This is especially true for people with disorders that might cause them to harm themselves or others.
 
USCIS is going to want to know how likely you are to be a problem because of illness and so the panel physician is going to have to rely on the reports of the doctors who know you best in order to make the decision on how to classify any health problems you might have.
 
With respect to the amitriptyline, chances are the panel doctor will understand that you're not using it for depression. Tricyclic antidepressants are not used very much these days for depression because we have other much better and safer drugs for depression. But they are still used for other, non-depression conditions. If you're still worried it won't hurt anything to have your doctor mention it too, though.

Yes, the average processing time has increased, and probably for a variety of reasons. The estimates given by the website are based on the people filling out their timelines. But not everyone who files for a visa has a timeline here, and a given petition can take less than the average or far longer than the average to be processed. The government says it can take up to 6 months. They don't update their website until they have completely processed all the petitions received on the date they list. Their website currently says October 15, even though the majority of applications being processed are probably in the second half of December to the first half of January, according to VJ timeline estimates. That means that some people who filed in October and November are still waiting, even though there are others who filed after they did who have been fully approved already.
 
What could some of the reasons for the average length of time increasing? People rushing to file before the fee increased, some cases being more difficult than others to process, the "extreme vetting" guidelines, people quitting their job and a new person not being hired to replace them because of the hiring freeze the president ordered the day after he was sworn in (although, if a story I read yesterday is true, that freeze is going to be lifted).
 
It sucks that we have to wait, but eventually we will hear something, and most of us will have a happy ending. Even if it takes a few more weeks or even a few more months than we expect.

Yes, the average processing time has increased, and probably for a variety of reasons. The estimates given by the website are based on the people filling out their timelines. But not everyone who files for a visa has a timeline here, and a given petition can take less than the average or far longer than the average to be processed. The government says it can take up to 6 months. They don't update their website until they have completely processed all the petitions received on the date they list. Their website currently says October 15, even though the majority of applications being processed are probably in the second half of December to the first half of January, according to VJ timeline estimates. That means that some people who filed in October and November are still waiting, even though there are others who filed after they did who have been fully approved already.
 
What could some of the reasons for the average length of time increasing? People rushing to file before the fee increased, some cases being more difficult than others to process, the "extreme vetting" guidelines, people quitting their job and a new person not being hired to replace them because of the hiring freeze the president ordered the day after he was sworn in (although, if a story I read yesterday is true, that freeze is going to be lifted).
 
It sucks that we have to wait, but eventually we will hear something, and most of us will have a happy ending. Even if it takes a few more weeks or even a few more months than we expect.

Yes, the average processing time has increased, and probably for a variety of reasons. The estimates given by the website are based on the people filling out their timelines. But not everyone who files for a visa has a timeline here, and a given petition can take less than the average or far longer than the average to be processed. The government says it can take up to 6 months. They don't update their website until they have completely processed all the petitions received on the date they list. Their website currently says October 15, even though the majority of applications being processed are probably in the second half of December to the first half of January, according to VJ timeline estimates. That means that some people who filed in October and November are still waiting, even though there are others who filed after they did who have been fully approved already.
 
What could some of the reasons for the average length of time increasing? People rushing to file before the fee increased, some cases being more difficult than others to process, the "extreme vetting" guidelines, people quitting their job and a new person not being hired to replace them because of the hiring freeze the president ordered the day after he was sworn in (although, if a story I read yesterday is true, that freeze is going to be lifted).
 
It sucks that we have to wait, but eventually we will hear something, and most of us will have a happy ending. Even if it takes a few more weeks or even a few more months than we expect.

It may be best if you plan on the visit being under 90 days. I've heard sometimes there can be an issue with staying longer without applying for a tourist visa.
 
My fiancee visited me from Canada from the middle of October 2016 until the second week of January 2017. Her trip was 89 days. Up until then we were boyfriend and girlfriend (I hadn't proposed to her yet). She was not working (she'd quit her job a couple months earlier), but she was going to school, had a letter stating she was a student in good standing, printouts of bank account balances (sometimes they want to know that you have the money to support yourself while you stay), proof of travel insurance, and of course, her return ticket. I drove up and picked her up at a Canadian airport and we crossed back to the US in my car. The border agent requested to look through all her documentation. He asked her if she owned or rented her home. She said she rents, which is true (she did not say that she lives with her mother and pays her rent, because she wasn't asked that). The agent said, "Okay. Next time you might want to have a copy of your receipt for the rent that you pay." and "Okay, have a good day. Don't overstay." And that was it. 
 
We had talked seriously about getting married for a good 6 or 8 months before the visit. I deliberately didn't propose until we'd had an extended stay so we could be certain we wouldn't get sick of each other, plus I'm certain that if we'd been engaged the officer would have turned her away.
 
I proposed to her a few weeks before she went back home. When I took her back to Canada to fly home, we declared her engagement ring, but the Canadian border agent didn't charge her any import duty because "she's just going to be bringing it in temporarily because she'll be moving to the US when she gets the visa." We figured he didn't want to fill out the paperwork.
 
The next time she crosses back into the US will be when she gets her visa.

Actually, I'm American (and a physician, but not a panel physician). My fiancee is the one from Canada. As far as I know, the pneumonia vaccine does not appear to be required, unless you're over 65.
 
That's according to http://www.visadoctor.ca/usa.
 

People here have done things like that and then gotten to the interview and the consular officer has found out about those ceremonies and denied them the visas on the grounds that they are "too married for a K1 and 'not married enough for a CR-1'."
 
There is a very real possibility they could find out, so be prepared to get fully married in that case because if they find out your only recourse will be to marry and file for CR1.

People here have done things like that and then gotten to the interview and the consular officer has found out about those ceremonies and denied them the visas on the grounds that they are "too married for a K1 and 'not married enough for a CR-1'."
 
There is a very real possibility they could find out, so be prepared to get fully married in that case because if they find out your only recourse will be to marry and file for CR1.

How about a situation like ours, where we met on an online forum (not a dating site) in 2009 and established a (initially platonic) friendship that eventually organically developed into a long distance dating relationship over time. We didn't "officially" start dating until August 2014 when I traveled to meet her in person for the first time (we've since had several in-person meetings). In my statement of how we met I just said "we met online," never specifying where.
 
Is it possible they might request proof that the site is not an IMB? Or since I did not use the words "dating site" it would be okay. What do people do when (non dating) sites shut down and disappear between the time people meet and then decide to get married and they get asked for that kind of proof? (Fortunately in our case they still exist and I can get a statement if necessary, but others will not be so lucky... internet forums come and go all the time).

Finally some movement on my petition. According to my bank they have cashed the check.

Finally some movement on my petition. According to my bank they have cashed the check.

Throwing my hat into the ring...
 
After 7 and a half years of friendship, 2 and a half of those years dating, spending 3 months together from October 15 to January 10, and getting engaged in December, we finally got everything together and filed for the K-1 visa.
 
I mailed the package out yesterday, via USPS Certified Mail, return receipt requested. All we can do at this point is wait. We figured it's going to take a while.