Xu & Rick

Why not follow the example?

http://www.visajourney.com/forums/index.ph...p;page=examples

Again, everything you need is here on this site if you'll just take the time to look.

It is being very optimistic to think that "everything you need" is on that site. The example form DS-156 on that page contains several items which cannot be filled in on the mandatory on-line form which generates the barcode.

Take question 22, "When do you intend to arrive in the U.S.?" The example form says "when visa is granted". The actual form will only accept the entry of a date, but not text. Telephone numbers in standard international practice begin with a plus sign, but the on-line form will not accept a plus sign. The on-line form will not accept N/A because it does not accept a slash. Many addresses, especially foreign addresses contain commas, but the form will not accept a comma in an address. The example form contains several commas in addresses.

So anyone who studies the sample forms is still going to have questions and problems.

A few posters are reading the minds of the form authors and stating that question 34 only applies to immigrants. Just reading the question in a straightforward way (names and relationships of persons traveling with you) there is no reason why you could not write the name of your sponsoring fiancé here. In fact, if he is indeed traveling with you and if he is a person, then the question specifically asks for his name. It is just one more indication of a genuine relationship.

I have just checked, and there is now a revised GIV-24, since I printed mine, it looks like the same basic format but a different layout

Interesting that the old GIV-24 required the Chinese telegraphic code for the Chinese name. The new version of the form (May 2007) has dropped this requirement.

My wife is Chinese, and her first name is 2 parts, Ying Ying, her family name is Zhao. I am unsure how to enter her name.

FIRST: Ying MIDDLE:Ying LAST:Zhao

FIRST Ying Ying MIDDLE LAST:ZHAO

FIRST: Yingying MIDDLE LAST:ZHAO

John DeFrancis' Comprehensive English Chinese Dictionary (ISBN 0-8248-2766-X) contains a fantastic 98-page appendix which includes the rules for writing Chinese names in the Peoples' Republic of China. Appendix 1, section 4.2.3 on page 1343 states "Chinese people's names are to be written separately with the surname first, followed by the personal name written as one word...." This rule took effect on July 1, 1996, and is specified in the National Standard of the PRC (ICS 01.140.10), approved and issued by the State Technology Supervision Bureau on January 22, 1996.

Therefore your third version is correct, if your wife is from the PRC. Hong Kong, Singapore, etc. might follow other rules.

Welcome. You'll probably find a lot more China timelines at http://www.candleforlove.com as well as good China specific support. Please tell them I sent you. Not running you off at all.

I tried to register at Candle for Love, but each time I try to validate the registration, using the User Number 4728 which Candle sent me, I get the message <We could not find any member matching the User ID that you entered. Please double check the URL, or the data you entered into the form. If the error persists, please contact a member of staff to assist you.> Clicking on the link to contact their staff produces an e-mail form addressed to ss@, which obviously is not going to go anywhere. Writing to ss@z-sh002.zipa.com gets me an Unknown User response from my postmaster.

Their registration system uses the terms User Name, User ID, User Number, Display Name, Password and Validation Key, which seems a bit complicated to me. Since the web-page structure of Candle and VisaJourney is very similar, I wrote to the VisaJourney administrators detailing this problem, and got an automated reply dated May 24 saying they would get right back to me. No reply yet. So for the last seven weeks I have been kept in the dark without a candle.

K1's get transferred to CSC. Mine did and I live in Georgia. I knew it ahead of time yet I still had to send it to Texas, which then forwarded it to CSC. It's just the way they do things...nothing you can do.

P.S. The Visa Journey Timelines page shows 1342 K-1 visas being processed in Nebraska. Dozens of these are current petitions. Are these petitions all actually being processed in California, or are just *some* petitions forwarded to California?

Thanks for your quick reply. I had done a lot of reading in the forums but somehow never ran across this piece of information!

After the Nebraska Service Center received our I-129F on May 16, they sent it to the California Service Center, which is strange, since my home address is in Ohio!

The CIS Case Status Online Page says they (California) sent out the NOA1 on June 4, which we have not yet seen (a long way from California to Ohio). The CIS processing times page says they are just now beginning to process K-1 petitions which were submitted in November 2006, which looks like a total processing time of about ten months, assuming they take three months to come up with an NOA2. The Visa Journey Graphs (Service Center Stats) show processing times of 90 to 120 days, or three to four months from submission to NOA2. I don't quite understand this contradiction.

When I read that a member's fiancee had been denied a visa in Guangzhou because she did not present a notarial unmarried certificate, I did a little checking and discovered some inconsistencies in the forms and instruction checklists which can be confusing and might cause other couples to lose months waiting for a new appointment to be scheduled. This info refers to Guangzhou, China, but it could be applicable to other countries as well.

The I-129F lists four categories of marital status: Married, Single, Widowed, Divorced. The DS-230 and the DS-156 clarify the word Single by adding "(never married)". The confusion starts when the Guangzhou Consulate starts talking about "Unmarried persons". It turns out that this designation includes not only single persons but also divorced and widowed persons as well.

The required certificate also has different names. The consulates call it the "Certificate of Marriageability" when they issue it to a US Citizen. But they call it the "Unmarried Certificate" when the fiancee obtains it in China (weihun zheng). Guangzhou Form OF-171 refers to an "Unmarried Statement". And one Guangzhou website K-1 Checklist states "If you were married previously, obtain one Notarial Marriage Certificate and Divorce/Death Certificates". What is this Marriage Certificate? Since Marriage Certificates are not required, presumably they mean to say "Unmarried Certificate" here. But a single person who was never married would not need it, according to this (erroneous) checklist.

The sad thing about the Unmarried Certificate is that it does not and cannot prove that the holder of the certificate is unmarried, only that he or she swore that he or she was unmarried at some point in the past.

P.S.

As a sidelight on the bureaucracy of Unmarried Certificates, I would note that for non-Chinese who marry Chinese citizens in China, some provinces require the Certificate of Marriageablilty and some do not. An Austrian friend of mine planned to marry his Chinese fiancee in China so that her family could celebrate.

They gave up their plans to get married in China because her province required the Certificate of Marriageability from Vienna. Vienna would only issue this certificate if they had photocopies and German translations of the complete Chinese identity documents (passport, ID card, family tree book) and divorce certificate of the bride. These translations would have to be notarized in China, then the notarization would have to be notarized in the Chinese foreign ministry, then the notarization of the notarization would have to be notarized at the Austrian Embassy and forwarded by diplomatic courier to Vienna. After issuing the certificate, the certificate would have to be translated into Chinese, and both the certificate and the translation notarized in a Vienna district court, then all signatures of the notaries notarized in State court, then at the Vienna foreign ministry, and finally notarized at the Chinese Embassy in Vienna and sent by diplomatic courier to China. The resulting certificate would then prove that my friend had claimed to be unmarried. It would not prove that he had not recently married someone else somewhere, making the whole bureaucratic process somewhat worthless.

They decided to get married in California, where (in some counties) the only requirement is to present a valid passport and to state that you are not presently married. That's right, state. They actually believe you!

Out of 1000 marriage aspirants, maybe one is a bigamist. Instead of prosecuting bigamists when they are found out, the law makes all the rest of us go through the process of obtaining notarized certificates and translations (weeks of waiting, many dollars in notarization fees) in the hopes of deterring that one bigamist, who, if he really wants to commit bigamy, simply has to state that he is unmarried and sign a paper. In the end, the authorities will have to prosecute him anyway, when they catch him.

It is a legal mentality which assumes that we are all liars until we can prove otherwise. If Macy's operated like this, you could not enter the store to buy a pair of socks without presenting a police certificate that you had never been convicted of shoplifting. Immigration to the USA is like a big theater with thousands of people waiting to buy tickets at the box office. While we wait patiently in line for months, people are streaming in the unlocked back doors of the theater (the Rio Grande) and taking seats. That's life!

grismar,

And other K1 petitioners have received RFEs for doing so. Yet it's so easy to avoid the risk.

Yodrak

Other k1 help websites tell you to use N/A though

Not only other websites tell you to use N/A, but Item 2C of the official filing instructions from USCIS for form I-129F tells you to use N/A and when to use it.