Mr. Data

You sure can. I just did it five days ago at LAX. You can just follow your spouse into the non-citizen area, they don't care. 

Sorry to hear you are going thorugh this OP. I admire your grit and positivity in the face of what must be a really gut-wrenching situation.

I think I'm lucky in that my situation with a foreign spouse was about as risk-free as they come. We met in her home country a lived there together for more than three years before making the move to the U.S. If she has been maintaining a secret boyfriend this whole time it will truly be the scam of the century.

AFAIK it can take a couple days to show up. 

You're really gonna need to be more specific Robert. 

I wonder if ICE or any other government agencies lurk on this forum. 

Call me cynical but it seems like the OP is more interested in getting a visa at all costs then actually getting the second masters. 

I think for my wife's visa, they gave us an expiration date based on her medical date. 

For example if you get your medical on March 15 and have your interview on March 21, they will give you a visa that expires on September 15. 

36 minutes ago, JFH said:

I saw something on another thread and thought it was appropriate here.

 

"It is a well-known fact that immigration distinguishes 4 types of countries:

 

1. low-fraud countries

2. medium-fraud countries

3. high-fraud countries

4. Nigeria" 

Out of curiosity, where does China fall on this spectrum?

I'm about to do this in about one month...... 

*sweats profusely* 

9 hours ago, br9k said:

I think on this forum the only answer you can reliably get is "I got mine"  

 

FWIW - I feel that anyone that wants to live anywhere should be able to do so, legally. Immigration is, by and large, not a "zero sum" game. It's good for everyone (but it will, in short to medium term, inevitably, create the usual human tensions and bring out the worst in some). Less artificial controls and more simple, welcoming, immigration laws would be better for all of us. After all, if no one is "illegal", we would not have to be dealing with what we deal now. 

"Anyone can live anywhere" would be an existential catastrophe for developed countries.

And the forum is only saying "I got mine" if the meaning of that phrase is "we spent thousands of dollars and years of our lives to do this the right way, why should other people get to just break the law and skip all that process and get away with it?"

1 hour ago, LightSear said:

Thanks Mr. Data.  I do have a couple more questions for you:

 

After you received your Notice of Approval, how soon did you receive instructions from Guangzhou about applying for a visa?  I see you had 4 months between your notice of approval and when you submitted your DS-260 (online visa application).  Was that because you weren't in a rush to apply?

 

It looks like you had a month between your DS-260 approval and your medical exam.  Was that just because it took a while for you to get around to booking a medical exam time or was it hard to get an appointment?

 

Considering the dates in your timeline which days where you in Guangzhou?  If I understand the process right, you were only there June 8, Dec 3, and possibly Nov 27 if you did your medical exam in Guangzhou.

 

As for your question about Beijing.  Beijing offers I-130 filing, but filing the petition only so you don't have to go to Guangzhou twice if you are in the north.  If I knew it was going to take a month and a half, I'm not sure I would have gone through Beijing.  My wife and I still have two months left before we have to leave the country, but the uncertainty of timeline is making me anxious.

 

We received the visa instructions two or three days after receiving our notice of approval. You are right, the four month gap before submitting the DS-260 form and the one month between the approval and the medical were just because we weren't in a hurry and were actually worried about getting our visa too fast since we didn't plan to leave China until this Spring. If we had done every step of the process back-to-back, its not unreasonable that we could have gotten the whole process done in a month and a half or less.

Luckily for us, we live in Guangzhou, so that made everything way easier. If your interview is in Guangzhou, then I think you might be required to take the medical here as well, but that will be made clear to you when that step in the process arrives. 

21 minutes ago, LightSear said:

Thanks, payxibka. that clears up a lot of questions. 

 

Does anyone have some experience with DCF in Guangzhou that could mention their story on when they got their petition approval from Beijing and how fast was the rest of the processing?

I just went through DCF in Guangzhou over the course of the last year. I'm not sure what you said you are getting from Beijing, as far as I know everything was from Guangzhou. Processing was amazingly fast, check the timeline in my signature. Also feel free to ask me any questions you have about the process. 

Edit: OK I see now that you filed in Beijing but will be processed by the Guanghzou USCIS / Consulate? So a bit different from my case, since I did everything directly in GZ, but I’m sure the overall process will be the same.

Scary headline attached to a not-so-scary story. 

2 hours ago, vb8188 said:

Hi all, 
I am on H1-B visa and I was laid off on 29th March 2019, Also I recently got married on 23rd Feb 2019 and I was thinking maybe while I am technically still in staus, (60 days grace period), I was thinking to have my wife's H4 visa processed before my 60 days run out.  if it's not advisable what would be the best thing to do to bring my wife here in the US. I would really appreciate any answers.

Vaibhav

What is the end game though. You were laid off and your visa is expiring soon. Why bring your wife to the U.S. now, wouldn't it make a lot more sense to use your grace period to be making plans to live somewhere outside the U.S.?

In principle I would usually trust professional legal advice over what you heard from "some people on facebook". 

Why are you so dead set against visiting China, if I may ask. 

Living with your parents after marriage is a recipe for disaster, no matter what the nationalities involved are. The contentious issues your mom and wife have settled on just happen to revolve around the VN culture issues you mentioned, but in 1000 families there will be 1000 reasons for mothers and wives to butt heads.

Move out and move at least 200 miles away if you can. Conflicts like this will be inevitable and you need to choose your wife over your parents, if you are ready to be an adult and start your own family unit. Just my 2 cents OP, hope everything works out for you guys.

I always wonder what people are looking to get out of threads like this. OP you are already in touch with lawyers on the divorce. Consult an immigration lawyer if you want to halt is process and pull the 864. 

There is no silver bullet. 

Is your gf unemployed for any particular reason?

2 minutes ago, Hemutian said:

Thanks for the explanation.

I'm an American living in China, too, but I'm here on a 10-year tourist visa, no Chinese residence permit. Hopefully since mine's a K1 not a CR1 application, this won't affect me.

I would assume that if you are on a tourist visa, you will not be able to take advantage of DCF and will need to file your fiancé’s petition with the USCIS lockbox in the U.S. In which case, this policy change wouldn't affect you since you won't be interfacing with any China-based USCIS units. 

That’s just my own uninformed read on the situation though – you might want to consider starting your own thread on the forum to ask a DCF expert.

8 minutes ago, Hemutian said:

Sorry for my ignorance, but what does "DCF" stand for?

Will this only affect CR1 applicants, or will it affect K1 applicants as well?

DCF stands for Direct Consular Filing. It is a process that allows qualifying immigration petitioners who are living outside the U.S. to file certain forms and petitions directly with USCIS units housed within US Consulates and Embassies abroad, instead of filing with the lockbox in the U.S. To qualify for DCF you will usually need to prove that the petitioner has legal residence status in the jurisdiction covered by the consular USCIS unit, and isn’t just traveling. For example, I’m an American living and working in China, I had to first show the Guangzhou Consulate that I had a valid Chinese residence permit before they accepted our I-130 petition and related documents. The upside of DCF is that (at least in my experience) it is much, much faster than filing in the U.S. Our I-130 was approved in four days.

I’m not sure how the process differs for K1 visas. Based on my quick glance at the Wikipedia article, it seems like maybe DCF is not available for K1 applications, since the petition required is different? Maybe someone else can chime in here.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct_Consular_Filing

The important thing is not that you must have x, y, or z piece of evidence. The important thing is that you can clearly demonstrate that your relationship is bone fide.

For my wife and I, who are both in our early- to mid-twenties, we didn't have any financial co-mingling or joint holdings/accounts of any kind. Instead, we thoroughly documented our three year relationship with 10 pages of photos and about a 5 page chat transcript sample. With the photos, we paid special attention to the times that we visited each others families and traveled together. I also included photocopies of entry / exit passport stamps from both of our passports to show that we had traveled together, and newspaper clippings from the wedding announcement I had published in my local newspaper in the States. Even though none of these were legal or financial documents, they proved beyond doubt that we were a legitimate couple and our marriage was bone fide. 

58 minutes ago, jg121783 said:

It's international law that the first country you enter is the one you claim asylum in. In addition to that most asylum seekers crossing our southern border only have the claim that they are fleeing poor economic conditions which does not qualify them for asylum under US law. I am sure a handful of the claims at the southern border are legitimate but a vast majority are not. In most cases it is an excuse to get your foot across the border then disappear within the US before your first immigration hearing. I am not talking about asylum claims as a whole. Only the ones at the southern border.

 

All that to say my original point stands that if what the article says is true (that's a big if admittedly considering the source) resources are being diverted from those who pay for them to those who don't and a lot of times have invalid claims. If USCIS was being funded by tax dollars that would be bad enough. It makes it worse when those who pay for USCIS services are depriortized ahead of those who don't. I have talked to more than one LPR and their spouses who are upset over the fact that they do everything the legal way and wait and pay thousands of dollars in fees only to see illegal aliens have the red carpet rolled out for them. After forking over a bunch of money to USCIS I can't even get them to issue an extension letter for my step son who we filed ROC for along with my wife more than 30 days ago despite spending hours on the phone with USCIS so excuse me if I seem a little annoyed over this situation.

I have always wondered about this... how can people say they are fleeing violence in Central America, but then traverse the entire length of Mexico to present as asylum seekers at the U.S. southern border? Surely the claim that they fear for their lives back home doesn't hold any water at all, given that they are thousands of miles from the purported danger.

Its a shame that cases like this at the southern border are taking resources away from legitimate legal immigrants and refugee claimants. 

Wow，this is big news for DCF. I'm glad we already finished our DCF process in Guangzhou and have our visa in hand now. 

11 hours ago, Kpone said:

Wow, thank you all for your generous input! 

Nativeson, is this a good or bad thing? Idle hands = ? 

At any rate, may I ask ballpark what your joint assets amounted to? PM me if you're willing  

 

To all, I'm planning on having a joint sponsor ready just in case. 

My next step is contacting the IRS. Two of my previous year's earnings in Japan were rather low as I had been relying on savings plus my wife's income. Is it necessary to provide previous three years of taxes, or is the previous year (2017-18) sufficient? 

 

Finally, I have found controdicting info about joint filer's required documents: Will copies of most recent tax return suffice, or does the joint sponsor need to also provide the past three years of tax returns? 

 

Thank you all for your great help! 

 

If you have seen conflicting info, then rely on the official instructions for the Affadavit from USCIS's website. It is very clear that you need three  years of returns for both yourself and your joint sponsor.