Tommy Lee Jones
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Posts posted by Tommy Lee Jones
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Took my wife to the social security office today to request a social security number.....the took copies of her passport....visa and birth certificate. And said if everything checks out she should receive her social security card in the mail in a couple of weeks.
I think I requested a social security card when I did the immigration paper work but I have heard that people have waited months to get their social security card.....so I figured I didn't have anything to lose by apply at the local social security office.
The social security office in Phoenix is to the general public....but one of the things that they will let you make an appointment for is a first time social security card.
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23 hours ago, ineedadisplayname said:
To make sure everything is delivered you can call a deferred inspection around your location and they might take it. You might be one of the odd ducks where the embassy switched to digital between issuing the visa and your entry time since u said it was like 5 months. Make sure u don't open it and still try to deliver it in my opinion.
There is nothing to open....there is a CD and papers stapled together.....no yellow envelope that needs to remain sealed......but none the less my wife was told to deliver the CD and papers to immigration and no one wanted them....tried to give them to any agent we spoke with and they just said the didn't need them and that they have everything the need.
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I entered the USA at the Miami airport a few days ago with our 3 year old US citizen child. We used the non citizen line. We entered a little over five months after she received the visa so things may have changed about the medical papers she was told to give to immigration. Because no one at the immigration in the Miami airport would take the papers....they just said that they aren't necessary. Not sure why since the embassy told her to deliver them by hand to the US immigration check point.
They took us into another room before we could pick up our luggage. The wanted to make sure that they had the correct mailing address and phone number to contact us and send the green card.
I made an appointment at our local Social Security Office. One of the few reasons they will actually let you make an in person appointment is for issuance of a first time Social Security card. I was told to bring her passport along with her birth certificate and her I 94....I told them that she did not receive an I 94 and they told me that the stamp that immigration put on her visa will suffice.
If anyone is interested I'll give an update as to how things went at the social security office. After we go on the 3rd of Feb.
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6 hours ago, Mike E said:
I
What does “first time” mean? Has she entered the USA on her immigration visa yet? Does she have a valid I-551 yet?
Whether you stay together depends on the answer to my question.
My wife has never been to the USA before....she has an immigrant visa due to our marriage.
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Im a US citizen..and I'll be traveling to the USA with my immigrant wife for the first time along with our daughter that is also a US citizen.
My question is what line should we use when passing through immigration....do we stay together and use the US citizen line or split up with me and my daughter using the US citizen line and my wife going through the non citizen line at immigration
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6 minutes ago, Timona said:
I used the below to translate and certify BC for FIL from Spanish to English. It was accepted by USCIS.
I chose standard delivery because I didn't wanna pay their 24 hour delivery but they still sent it to me within 48 hours. Hahahah
I think I paid $25/ page. Per calculation, this would be cheaper than your current quotation.
All you need to do is upload documents online, they'll translate and email you the results.
https://clickfortranslation.com/
Thanks for the info. I'll check them out.
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Sent two divorce decrees in Spanish that need to be translated to https://www.universal-translation-services.com
One was 6 pages and they quoted me $220 and the other one was 3 pages and they quoted me $170. Does that seem like a reasonable charge or are there better and less expensive translation service providers out there?
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18 hours ago, Boiler said:
Tales of the Green Card?
Tales of the tourist visa.
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6 minutes ago, JFH said:
So, have I got this right... Both your wife and this mystery woman are married to USCs. And both have a mother-in-law in the US who is very sick?
You sure know a lot about the financial circumstances (value of their home, whose name the home is in, amount of money held in the bank) of those mystery people.
Are you an immigration agent? Jajaja
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6 minutes ago, millefleur said:
So your wife, married to you, a US citizen, is living abroad with her husband, applied and got a tourist visa. The situation is extremely similar here to the woman you started this thread about. Yet, somehow you're concerned this 31 year old woman you keep talking about won't get a visa, but your wife somehow did, even though she's in an extremely similar situation?
My wife had a tourist visa before I met her. And just to keep the thread on track the woman seeking a tourist visa isn't my mistress.
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1 minute ago, millefleur said:
Care to explain your previous post about your wife already having a tourist visa? It seems we are not getting the whole story here. Your previous post also mentions applying for an immigrant visa.
Why do I have to explain my wife's tourist visa? We are in the process of getting her an immigrant visa.
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19 hours ago, Jorgedig said:
Uh, to save 12-18 months off the timeframe by avoiding the queue of people already waiting. Happens all the time.
She wouldn't be saving 12 to 18 months ....she would be destroying her life. If she wanted to immigrant she would request an immigrant visa. If she went to the USA and over stayed on her tourist visa ...she might never be able to immigrate to the USA in the future if she wanted to.
If she became illegal she might be deported and be separated from her child which is a US citizen...while never being able to work legally. I'm sure there are crazy people that have no options for an immigrant visa and do just that. But this woman is not in a position to have to do something crazy like that.
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19 hours ago, Jorgedig said:
Do you really think the IOs at the embassy are not aware that people try to do things like this for the sole purpose of creating "ties"?
Well she has a family here and her sister has the same family ties and she got a tourist visa.
Now the woman has a free and clear house ,car and about 15 grand in savings .... unfortunately she married an American and has a child with him..,..so from what people say here she doesn't have much of a chance I don't think it would hurt her to enroll in a College.
I think it is just random luck.
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13 minutes ago, geowrian said:
Having long established ties to an area would be one factor as well. Generally, the elderly are not as easily able to uproot their way of life by immigrating to another country, and there may even be a loss of financial incentives for doing so (like certain government benefits). It absolutely happens, but it would be less common than somebody younger who hasn't established a long, adult life in the area.
The issue with a USC spouse is if granted the visa, there would be a means to use it to bypass the legal immigration path. If they were married to a non-US resident, that pathway does not exist. There is less of an ability to misuse the visa...or at least more consequences for doing so.
Side story: It's actually not that uncommon for "visa agents" (or applicants directly) in some countries to claim a marriage to a local resident as a means to show a tie to return back home. It does come back to bite them - often severely - later, but it doesn't stop people from trying.
Interesting....are you aware of any down sides to her apply for an immigrant visa and using it to visa the mother in law and then returning to Colombia to live.
What if later on she wants to move with her husband to the USA. Will they hold it against her that she had previously applied for and received an immigrant visa and then never immigrated to the USA.
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1 minute ago, geowrian said:
That's one way to look at it. For comparison, Philippines is "only" 24% refusal but either a single young Filipina or one married to a USC getting a new visa is a rare occasion. Specifics matter the most, but country involved is a factor as well.
No harm in trying, so long as the fee isn't an issue.
So being married and old is an advantage to getting a tourist visa. Hahaha Who would have guessed.
Doesn’t surprise me that woman married to a US citizen who lived in the USA would be denied a tourist visa.
Just seems odd that they would use the fact that an American lives with his wife in a foreign country against her. Would they hold it against her if her husband was a foreign national living with her in her country and both of them were applying for a Tourist visa.
I agree specifics do matter the most.
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3 minutes ago, geowrian said:
It was posted above. Here it is again:
https://travel.state.gov/content/dam/visas/Statistics/Non-Immigrant-Statistics/RefusalRates/FY19.pdf
That link is the most recent B visa adjusted refusal rate. This only covers B visas.
By "adjusted" it means it only covers unique individuals within that fiscal year. So if somebody applies 3 times in a year and gets denied all 3 times, that person is only counted once as a denial. If they apply 3 times and are approved on the last one, they are counted only as an approval (no denial).
So the rate is actually deflated in you consider all visa applications...more visas are actually refused than the percentage shown.
6 minutes ago, millefleur said:It was posted twice earlier in the thread, see above. ~42% refusal rate for Colombia, that means 42% if applicants who applied were denied.
Which also means 58 percent were approved with a surprisingly high number of people applying for tourist visas considering the average Colombian makes the equivalent of $6180 dollars per year. The average American makes 10 times that. I would say that this woman is in the top 10 percent of all Colombians as far as wealth and marital income.
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37 minutes ago, SusieQQQ said:
So the refusal rate is meaningless in your eyes? Ok then... I really can’t add anything more here. Good luck.
Where are the country refusal rates? worldwide refusal rates aren’t of much interest to me.
I can look at a countries population and number of approved tourist visas and see that there is a great disparity between countries .....but obviously if you can find the per country refusal rates that would be very helpful as well.
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30 minutes ago, millefleur said:
This link is for "IV" issuances which means "immigrant visas" - so, not relevant to this situation at all.
Bad link
This shows the non-immigrant visa approvals for the month of Oct. 2019.
Which shows 19385 B1/B2 approvals for Colombia Oct 2019.
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9 minutes ago, SusieQQQ said:
Yes. Your wife wants a visit visa. The relevant rows above are B1/B2 or B2. The others are not relevant to her case. The absolute number is meaningless too, of course a country with a bigger population is going to get more than a smaller population and don’t forget in a number of countries most nationals don’t even have to get B visas, so those will be low too. I mean... yes it’s interesting looking at all those visa types but as your wife is not applying for a work, managerial transfer, crewman, exchange worker, student, outstanding achiever, performer, religious worker ...etc visa, they’re meaningless here.
Yes only the tourist visa approvals are relevant so I'm only looking at the B1/B2 visa numbers
Colombia only has a population of about 51 million people
And the numbers of tourist visa approvals compared to other countries is quite large
So I do think it demonstrate s a correlation between country and approval odds
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1 minute ago, millefleur said:
It's also not a matter of just rolling the dice and she has a 42% chance of denial because that's what the statistics last year were. Many individual factors (such as a USC spouse) will be taken into consideration, and that is what @Lucky Cat meant earlier when he said the IO's have discretion as to how they make their decisions. By all means, she could get an IO who will happily want to see all her supporting documents or she will get an IO who won't look at them at all. The only way for her to know is to just apply and go to the interview and see what happens.
Seems to me the odds of approval or denial are influenced by the country you are applying in.
As I noted in the link above. Many more tourist visas being issued in Colombia compared to other parts of the world.
Well I'll advise her to bring all the documentation she can about her spouse but there are very few questions about a spouse on the DS 160 application.
My hope is the her having filed a joint US income tax with her spouse and her putting her ITIN on the application ....will give them more information about her spouse before the interview.
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26 minutes ago, SusieQQQ said:
No, there was an earlier post about showing his ties.
The link you have above is for immigrant visas. Unless the wife really is trying to immigrate, it’s not relevant to this thread. The link you actually want for your situation is the one for the B visa refusal rate. Colombia at 42% refusal rate is not the worst, sure, but it’s hardly among the best, especially when you strip out countries with security concerns. https://travel.state.gov/content/dam/visas/Statistics/Non-Immigrant-Statistics/RefusalRates/FY19.pdf
also understand that none of the any above discussion - other than spouse and child details, family in the US, and previous visa denials - will be on the DS160 application form. Whether or not she gets a chance to even talk about it or convince the visa officer of it is something no one can guarantee one way or the other here. You know that bit of information you dismiss - to apply and find out? That’s literally the only thing you can definitively do.
There are a lot of links on the page ...this one shows the approved visas for all visa types
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12 minutes ago, SusieQQQ said:
You seem to want a magic bullet. There is none, particularly with ties to the US and previous visa denials on her record. If what you wanted to learn was some sure fire way to get her a visa, then no, nothing to be learnt here.
I'd settle for a helpful hit. It doesn't hurt to ask....never know if someone else knows something you don't.
Do past visa denials more than 5 years ago really have an impact on the odds of approval. and if so why? I persons personal situation and change quite a lot in 5 or more years.
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11 minutes ago, SusieQQQ said:
Well, I'm also a US citizen, but I wasn’t always, and I don’t presume to know posters’ entire backgrounds and histories before making assumptions.
Actually I thought I did give you a useful response in showing your own (assuming you are in fact this third person husband) and therefore the entire family ties to Colombia, but if you think enrolling at a vocational college is better, I’m not going to spend any more time trying to convince you. Good luck.
Are you referring to the husband applying for Colombia citizenship?
He is eligible for Colombian citizenship after living in Colombia for three years while married. So he has another two years or so to go I believe before he can apply for citizenship.....But he could still change his mind. hahaha
I think the best news is just to look at the stats for Colombia.....many more tourist visas are approved here compared to other parts of the world.
I think this link might be helpful to anyone seeking a visa and trying to determine what kind of visa to apply for as the category and number of visa approvals very greatly by location.
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2 minutes ago, gregcrs2 said:
What is your role in all this? Here's a suggestion, she should apply for a tourist visa and find out for herself.
As I suspected....nothing really to be learned here
Entered the USA with my wife a few days ago.
in Moving to the US and Your New Life In America
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Well if my wife's social security card doesn't show up in a couple of weeks.....I'm told that you can call this number 1 800 772 1213 to find out the status of the card.