space-cadet

10 minutes ago, Lazybones18 said:

Boiler is right...  ur case is a exception 

 

in Pakistan it is very rare for a parent to allow their daughter to travel with a unmarried male ... it’s more a Pakistani thing than a religion 

 

regardless 98% of Pakistan population is Muslim 

Apologies if my response came off as combative. That was not my intention. I agree with @Boiler in that the vast majority of Pakistani fathers likely wouldn't be ok with their unmarried daughters traveling with another man. I was simply pointing out that i only know 1 that was ok with it and i felt that those who aren't ok with it are influenced by both religion and culture. 1.59% of the Pakistani population is apparently Christian according to wikipedia which is still 3,339,000. Anyhow, that's neither here nor there. i fully accept that this denial was definitely my fault and should have done a much better job with respect to taking all the things that have been mentioned into consideration

9 hours ago, geowrian said:

What does the attorney say about the "too married" reason for denial?

@geowrian the attorney was dumbfounded and simply kept asking for a letter of denial (which we never received but from my understanding doesn't even have to be provided to us). Really felt like the attorney was unwilling to accept what we mentioned as the truth 

5 hours ago, Boiler said:

What Pakistani Father would allow an unmarried daughter travel in such circumstances?

@BoilerI personally know one. I know this is far from the majority and i see your point though i think  you really mean "What Muslim Pakistani father." Many non-Muslims live in Pakistan and they very well may not have had an issue with their engaged daughters traveling with someone whom they themselves are also close to 

4 hours ago, Amit&Julie said:

In my opinion, it was the living and traveling together, presumably without any chaperones, that really put the nail in the K1 coffin for the Pakistani OP. 

 

It's been a while, but I do remember reading some cases on here from India at least where a K1 was denied because the couple traveled together, especially to romantic places like Maldives, and it was just the two of them. Couples may do that nowadays, sure, but the CO still viewed it as being outside cultural norms and probably figured they were already married. With Pakistan I can see that being even more outside the norm.

 

Sorry, OP. Gotta go for the CR-1 now. Best wishes.

1 hour ago, Amit&Julie said:

It's water under the bridge at this point, but I really don't think the engagement party/ceremony was the root cause. I'm saying this because I don't think @moejangda's example should be cited in the future as evidence of this. Engagement party is the red herring to me. Bigger picture issue was that 2 supposedly unmarried people, at least 1 of whom is from a traditionally very conservative culture, lived and traveled together.

 

This wasn't mentioned originally, but @moejangda, is the US citizen also of Indian or Pakistani descent? If so, might make the pre-marital "adventures" doubly suspicious in the eyes of the CO. Are there other red flags such as age gap, religious differences, prior marriages or kids etc.?

 

If the CO was already suspicious of the couple's "history" and then happened to see photos from the cousin's party where they both dressed up, that might have sealed the deal. But again, I don't think it's the root cause.

Firstly, thanks for your response. Here are the answers to your questions:

1. I am the US citizen and i am of Pakistani descent.

2. There's a 4 year age difference between my fiance and I, no religious differences or prior marriages.

I believe your analysis is spot on. Cultural norms are definitely something we should've considered but unfortunately didn't. Neglecting to consider this is something that will irk me for a very long time but seems counterproductive for us (my fiance and i) to sit and mope about. We're going to pursue the CR-1 and not take it as lightly as we did the K1

Thanks for your wishes

8 hours ago, Derik-Lina said:

Personally, I have noticed more and more K1 denials in Certain countries, and rightfully so; 

It is both culturally and religiously unacceptable for a couple to live together unmarried.

Yes, there are exceptions, but the CO s look at the cultural norms as a whole.

Honestly, it is difficult to see true K1 s in places like Morocco or Pakistan.

Families and Girls/Women are extremely careful when it comes to Virginity and Honor.

Why they go for K1 Visas instead of CR1s? One could safely say K1 takes less time.

My advice is that you start your CR1 process asap and best of luck to you two  

 @Derik-Lina Looking back i do feel pretty stupid that i didn't take this into consideration. you're totally right. We asked our attorney whether we should pursue a CR-1 or a K1 and took their advice without looking into anything ourselves. That's our fault. Thanks for the positive words!

9 hours ago, George & Roth said:

I got engaged and had a party, I also included photos from our engagement in my submission. We had our names put up on some of the decorations and I was certain to pick ones which had some decoration including the word "engagement." It also was labeled that way on the photo booklet we received from the photographer. 

 

I included a few notarized letters, for example from my parents saying they met my fiance and attended our engagement. Letter included other details but the party was one of them!

 

Even though I included this on my initial submission you can still go and get it done now if you hadn't already.

 

 

Just trying to "unfreakout" the people worried. Now is your chance to gather that additional evidence so you are prepared!

Providing letters with what you mentioned is an excellent idea and i truly wish i would've thought of this beforehand! Generally, i feel terrible because i can't shake the belief that i let my fiancé down by being ignorant and not doing my own research or putting the amount of time, care and detail into this process that i should have. I unfortunately put too much faith in the notion that our attorney and paralegal knew what they were doing and had it under control but that was my mistake. I should've been on top of everything from day 1. This next time around i'm not going to make the same mistake

10 hours ago, SusieQQQ said:

Small consolation but no, she’d just have been waiting for her CR1 interview rather than a K1 interview.  

@SusieQQQ, my mistake. What i meant was that: had we gotten married while she was still in the states after she graduated (assuming that was possible and not a violation of her student visa) we wouldn't be in this position in the first place. Regardless, i was a bit emotional when i initially posted this and feel i came off a bit too harsh. I definitely see what you're saying though given that i was ambiguous 

10 hours ago, bad4tatt said:

Absolutely, he eluded to him thinking you're already married based on the CR1 statement and I agree with you about Pakistani weddings, they are HUGE. I have been to a few.  I wonder if you can file an appeal with proof that you are not married???

Thanks for your response @bad4tatt. We sat down and considered our options for awhile. We're hesitant to move forward with an appeal because if it gets rejected we'll have wasted the amount of time it took to file the appeal and have it seen through. There is of course the chance that the decision gets overturned due to the appeal. I think we would feel a bit more confident about an appeal if we could find statistical data or a distribution of how many appeals were actually successful though even then (assuming success > failure) it might be difficult because the numbers may mask the likelihood that everyone's reason for appeal is quite different.

We're going to decide for sure tomorrow but we're both leaning towards the CR-1 route. We've made it through one year apart and we both have very high hopes that we can make it through another. While i'd never ever wish this upon anyone else, our time apart has most definitely strengthened our bond and we're hoping that this additional time apart will continue to strengthen our relationship even more.

12 hours ago, adil-rafa said:

You can not appeal a denied K1 

and although your attorney did not know this was way outside the cultural norms,  you do

now, to be together,  you need to marry and file and wait

it does look like u were too married and happens with many countries

Interesting. My fiancé did mention to me that the CO said our options were to file an appeal or apply for a CR-1. Nonetheless, she could've misheard. Thanks for your feedback

1 hour ago, Going through said:

It's a very common reason for denial and for them thinking you are "too married" with an engagement party---many times members here ask about having an engagement party (no matter how big or small) and it's generally advised NOT to for the very reason of denial you experienced.

 

Best of luck with the CR-1 filing.

Thanks!

5 hours ago, Abcd1234 said:

Was she asked about your cousin's wedding pics or engagement.

   What did she reply? 

She wasn't asked about my cousin's wedding pictures or engagement. In fact, no engagement photos were even provided or put on facebook so i'm not even sure how they'd know. They're nowhere to be found online.

4 minutes ago, UAtoUS said:

We are waiting on our NOA-2 and getting ready for the interview. I know that that she is coming from Ukraine and the culture is different but i am glad I came across this post and now we will not bring any celebration pictures or sound "Too Married" Sorry to hear that it happened to you and thank you for sharing. 

@UAtoUS i wish you the best of luck

1 minute ago, OlayemiLoray said:

Yes, the attorney given you not so good advice..I'm sorry this happened to you so now the only thing to do is to marry and file the CR1 petition..Wishing you well on your continued journey..

Thank you!

We also attended my cousin's wedding in Pakistan together 3 days before our interview. Our moms put up a lot of photos of us dressed up for all of his events. There's really no way for the CO to know that these pictures aren't from our own wedding. It'd be so hard to tell because we're all so dressed up 😞😞

3 minutes ago, gsdc23 said:

Unfortunately yes, they have threads about this everywhere on VJ telling people who do K1’s to never have any engagement parties or celebrations of any sort. They just automatically tell you “you’re too married” when in reality you’re not, but they don’t care. It’s stressed to a lot of people not to do this and especially not to send pictures of it either. You can do a search on VJ and see many denials because of this.

😔I guess we we were misled by our attorney. We should've done our own research. Thanks for the information

4 minutes ago, OlayemiLoray said:

Well there it is...The engagement party is what got you denied..As the CO stated, get married and file the CR1.

@OlayemiLoray, We ran this engagement party by our attorney well before we pursued it. Both my dad and hers who are both alive didn't even attend and like i mentioned earlier, It's far from what you'd expect for a Pakistani wedding especially if we're relying on cultural norms here

@gsdc23 Thanks for your response. You think so? there were at most 20 people there, it was at my uncle's house and it was far from what you'd expect for a Pakistani wedding

@NuestraUnion Yep there was an engagement party and we never referred to each other as husband and wife

My fiancé's visa was denied in Islamabad because the CO believed we were "too married." Has anyone ever heard of this before? we've traveled together to three different countries after we filed the initial petition and he seemed to be quite bothered by that. We also lived together back in the states for awhile when she was a student. It really feels like he made an assumption based on Pakistani cultural norms in the sense that most engaged couples haven't lived together or vacation together until after marriage. He said to file for a CR-1 or to file an appeal but how does one even argue against someone saying we seem "too married"? If we were married we wouldn't have gone through this year long process in the first place because we'd already be together in the states.... What's our response supposed to be here? "Sorry we try to do as much together as we can until we're legally allowed to be married and live together. We'll try to love each other less."

Did anyone take the ORIGINAL I797 for the NOA2 to the interview? my attorney gave me the copy they received which says courtesy copy on it and i'm wondering if that's enough