sashitaski

Thanks, everyone! It looks like a tourist visa is the way to go. I did not realize they could issue hotel confirmations as well. That is quite a relief.

I do have one more question: For anyone who recently applied for a tourist visa, did you get the visa for a full 3 years, or only for the duration of your stay?

Regards,

Alexandra

Hello! I was wondering if anyone has had the experience of obtaining a homestay (private) spouse visa to visit Russia with their Russian spouse. Tourist visas used to be the way to go, but now it looks like they are requiring hotel reservations and such for the duration of the stay. I would be staying with in-laws, however, and would not require a hotel. Normally private visas can be a pain to obtain because getting an invitation from the inviting Russian party requires them standing in line at Russian government offices and then possibly waiting months for the document. However, I recently found out that if you are the spouse of a Russian citizen who has permanent residency in the U.S., and you plan to travel to Russia together, then the Russian spouse can write a letter of invitation him/herself, without waiting for any documents from Russia. Some information about this can be found here: http://www.ruscon.org/visa_dep_ENG.html

One of the obvious downsides to this seems to be that the visa will be issued for 3 months only, not 3 years, like most other types of visas for U.S. citizens as per the new visa agreement.

Has anyone tried to obtain this type of spousal visa before? The part I don't understand is that you are supposed to specify the dates of your visit to Russia (and possibly even provide a copy of your ticket, though I am not sure). Generally, I think it is a bad idea to purchase tickets before you have received your visa, in case of denial, delayed documents, and other unforeseen problems. For this reason I am a bit hesitant about this type of visa. Does anyone know if it's possible to get this visa and just give them a three-month period of time, and then decide on the exact dates later?

We have been trying to call the consulate as well, but they are quite difficult to reach.

Thank you!

Alexandra

I just wanted to give a brief description of our recent experience rescheduling the N400 interview, in case it is helpful to someone else. There are many horror stories on Visajourney of people's applications getting lost, of the processing dragging on forever, etc. Some people also advise never to ask the USCIS to move the date unless you have an emergency such as a death in the family. I have to admit these stories scared us, and we thought long and hard about whether we should attempt to have the date moved. However, because we had a long-planned vacation scheduled for the week of my husband's interview, we decided to try our luck at getting his appointment rescheduled. While I know that many people have had bad experiences in the past, I am happy to report that for us it was a fast, easy, efficient process. Please note that our local office is in Washington, D.C., and things may be different at other offices. On the other hand, according to Visajourney and USCIS statistics, Washington, D.C. has one of the longest processing times for the N400 journey, so I'm not quite sure what to make of that.

Here is what we did:

8/25: received notice that an interview had been scheduled for 9/27

8/26: sent an e-mail to was.interviewreschedule@dhs.gov, an e-mail account that exists just for the purpose of rescheduling interviews in our area. Note that they do NOT tell you in your interview letter that you can send a rescheduling request by e-mail; they say that you need to send the original letter along with an explanation note by snail mail. I found the e-mail address here: https://egov.uscis.gov/crisgwi/go?action=offices.detail&office=WAS&OfficeLocator.office_type=LO&OfficeLocator.statecode=DC

8/27: sent the original interview letter and explanatory note to them by snail mail, since we wanted to make sure we had all our bases covered.

8/27: received e-mail confirmation that our request to cancel the 9/27 interview had been received. The confirmation came less than 24 hours after sending the request!

8/29: received the same cancellation confirmation by snail mail

9/4: received a new interview date of October 5 - only one week later than the originally scheduled interview!

As you can see, the whole process took just over one week, and the interview was also delayed one week only.

I believe the key to this was the fact that we submitted a request by e-mail. If your local office offers the option to send a reschedule request by e-mail, I would highly recommend you try it!

That said, I would not recommend trying to have your interview rescheduled if the original date is only slightly inconvenient for you. I would always try to rearrange my own schedule before asking the USCIS to rearrange theirs, because you never know with the USCIS (what if your application does get lost and the process is delayed for months?). I also read somewhere that it may be very difficult to have an interview rescheduled a second time, so you should try to avoid that at all costs.

Good luck on your own visajourney!

For those of you who are eligible, I would highly recommend looking into USAA auto insurance. While they primarily provide coverage for those in the military, even if one of the USC's parents was ever in the military, you may be eligible. When my husband moved here I called Amica to get an auto insurance quote. They said my husband would be charged new driver rates. I then talked to USAA, and they said they only information they needed was how many years my husband had been driving. They didn't even require any kind of proof of his driving history in his home country.Their quote was three times less than Amica's.

Some background information: At the time I was looking at insurance quotes,my husband had had his U.S. license for about 6 months, and had been building credit history for as long. We live in VA, and as many people have said, policies do vary in each state.

He's here! My husband made it through the immigration process and is here for good! No more immigration paperwork until citizenship!!!

Thanks, everyone, for all your help along the way!

And, of course, you were right, POE was no big deal.

Thanks, guys, for your help!

they're going to ask him a few rote questions about the visa he's traveling on

What types of questions might these be? Just, "What is the purpose of your visit?" and "What type of visa do you have?" ? Anything else?

Thanks guys, I appreciate your help. And yes, I do realize that there's really nothing to worry about. For his self-confidence though, I'd like to give him a short list of possible questions, if anyone remembers what they are.

Finally, the wait is almost over! My husband will be immigrating next Sunday!

Anyway, he doesn't speak much English, so I'm trying to prepare him for possible questions they might ask, but it looks like there aren't many, if any at all. At least, that's what it looks like from reading JFK POE reviews. The only thing he has to worry about is that his visa says it is CR/1, but actually he should get an IR/1/permanent greencard, because our second anniversary recently passed. I will make sure he makes a point of reminding the officer of that fact. Other than that, anything else I should do to prep him?

Thanks!

Even after reading these posts the procedure still looks rather confusing, I think. I have read about this procedure on other sites, and it seems the procedure should look like this:

When leaving the U.S., show your Russian passport when checking in. As someone here mentioned, it is the airline who cares whether you have the proper documents to be permitted into the country you're traveling too. When going through U.S. customs, show them your U.S. passport (If you show them your Russian passport they might wonder how you were in the U.S. without a visa). U.S. customs doesn't need proof that you will be allowed entry into Russia, just that your stay in the U.S. was legal.

Enter Russia on your Russian passport.

When exiting Russia, show your American passport to the airline when checking in for the same reasons mentioned above. When going through Russian customs, show them your Russian passport, so that there won't be any visa/registration issues.

Enter the U.S. with your U.S. passport.

Good luck!

Congratulations!!

A friend of mine (an American) and his wife (Ukrainian) took a cruise to seven countries in Europe several months ago. For France, Italy, Spain, and other Schengen zone countries, the rule is apparently that you apply to the country where you will spend the most time. She did get a Schengen visa, and the Italian Consulate even allowed them to interview (in person) at a different regional office that was a closer drive than their designated consulate. She needed a paid itinerary for the trip, and a ticket to Italy/POE. He of course doesn't need a visa for the EU. The ship did stop for a day in Croatia, and they both got a visa for Croatia (by mail from New York I think).

Thanks for adding your experience! It's good to hear from people it's worked out for.

Great news! I am very glad to hear that! I would hate not being able to travel.

Have any of you travelled to Europe with your Russian spouses? Is obtaining a visa from a European embassy in the U.S. a hassle? What is the likelihood of being turned down?

I know that in Russia unless you're very careful, especially for certain countries, obtaining a visa can be both a hassle and, after all your trouble, you could easily be turned down for silly reasons. This happened to my husband. Now he has a denial stamp in his passport (from the Czech embassy) and some people say that this could be a problem for future travel--i.e. now he will have trouble getting a visa to any European country.

However, I would assume that if he applies from the U.S., with his green card, his chances will be much better, because he is less of a risk for illegal immigration. Also, I would assume the embassies in the U.S. get much fewer applicants.

So how is the process? Anyone been through it?

Congratulations K1!! April 10 for us!

As I said in another post they didn't ask a lot of questions but they would not let her do the interview in Russian because she translated her own papers. Her English is good so it was not a problem, but she was nervous and would rather have done Russian. She also said they were rude and that was a surprise also.

Congratulations!!

Congratulations!

Did you have to provide tax returns for the co-sponsor? my mother is using assets only as a co-sponsor, and I don't want to use her tax returns unless we have to.

Yes, tax returns are a requirement for the I-864, which the co-sponsor also has to fill out.

Today my husband had his interview and was approved!!!!!!

We are finally done with all the paperwork, paying fees, and waiting!! (at least until citizenship...)

Thanks to all of you who gave advice or comments!

There were also no problems with the co-sponsor's I-864, despite the fact that he had recently lost his job (and used assets instead).

We will be partying tonight!!!

congratulations :dance: :dance: :dance:

Thanks, everyone!

An update for those of you in a similar situation:

My husband's interview was today and he was approved!

They accepted the co-sponsor's paperwork, which included the assets I described above, a letter explaining his situation, the last three pay stubs from his last job, and his last three severance pay stubs.

They didn't question anything. I think this is because we were well prepared, everything was well documented, and they could see that the co-sponsor, before losing his job, had a high, stable income.

Anyway, good luck to the rest of you using assets!

Woot!!! Congratulations to you both!!! That's gotta be a helluva relief.

So when is he coming over?

We are definitely very relieved! He is only coming over in summer, as I am still studying in Moscow and need to finish my semester first. But now we can actually buy tickets and make plans!

Today my husband had his interview and was approved!!!!!!

We are finally done with all the paperwork, paying fees, and waiting!! (at least until citizenship...)

Thanks to all of you who gave advice or comments!

There were also no problems with the co-sponsor's I-864, despite the fact that he had recently lost his job (and used assets instead).

We will be partying tonight!!!

We mostly just wanted to keep it a secret that we got married in Vegas ("What happens in Vegas..."). Then we were going to the whole marriage thing there for her friends and family. Will this situation look funny on the visa paperwork? I assume the answer to the next question is "yes", but: Do I have to report the marriage in Las Vegas if we have the subsequent marriage in Lima? Would the two marriages raise any eyebrows? We should probably just contain ourselves and act more like adults, I'm sure

I don't know about Peru, but my husband and I had two weddings. The first was in Russia, and the second in the States. We had no problems. In the States, no one knew we were already married (I mean family and friends did, but not the government). The only way they could have found out would be if I had gone to the appropriate government body and documented the Russian wedding, which I didn't. What this means is that theoretically you could have different wives in different countries, which I find kind of absurd. Before you make it official by providing documents, no one knows, so it shouldn't be a problem. In our case we decided that since we planned to eventually move to the U.S., it would be better to have the American wedding license rather than always having to provide the translated, apostilled Russian one.

Do you need to de-register? Where do you do that? And how would they know you're moving away permanently if you don't tell them? (I mean until the time comes for you to apply for a new passport)

If you are registered with the ward then you should be set.

Tourists and those on short stay visas (who wouldnt qualify for DCF) aren't registered with the ward, nor carry gaijin cards.

Unfortunately, I can't give you advice on Tokyo, and as people have said, this differs at different embassies, but I thought I'd let you know that in my case (Moscow, Russia) I was able to do DCF, even though I had only been in Russia four months by the time I applied. I came here as a Master's student for one year. As proof of my residency in Russia I gave them a copy of my year-long student visa and also a letter from the director of my program here in Moscow that says I will be here for a whole year as a student and will return to the States at the end of that year. For domicile, I used my driver's license, voting records, and also that same letter from the director of my program, since it said that at the end of the program I will be returning to the States.

It really depends on where you think you'll be spending most of your time. My husband and I plan to live in the U.S. (and possibly Europe someday in the future), so I decided to take his surname without the a. I could, of course, take the a, but for me it's not worth it to go through the hassle of explaining millions and millions of times why our last names are different but the same. If we planned to live in Russia, I would definitely take the a. However, I think that whenever we go to Russia to visit, I could add the a on for anything except official documents. For example, obviously my visa will not have my name spelled with an a, but if I open a discount card at a store or sign up for a class or something like that, I could always add the a on there.

The I-130 instruction doesn't say that the intending immigrant's birth certificate needs to be included with I-130. (I know I will be including it with I-485.) The guide here says that the intending immigrant's birth certificate needs to be included with I-130, and a lot of people's sample cover letters include it, too. So, what to do?

As I understand it, providing the immigrant's birth certificate used to be a requirement for the I-130. That's why if you look at old sample letters, they will have that included. If the instructions don't say you need it now (and they don't), then you do not need to include it with your I-130. However, if you have any doubts, you can always include it anyway, even if it's not required.