toddandhien

in dallas it was divided, permanent resident/USC and Non residents. You and your spouse can go in the USC line together to get processed at POE.

or you can go in the new immigrant line together to be processed as in SFO. depends on the POE. But, regardless of which line you choose to be in, stay together.

Also, it is not the consulate's job to investigate. It is your responsibility to convince them that the relationship is bona fide. They are trained to believe it is a scam until proven otherwise. They don't care if she gets a visa or not. You do, so I would recommend complying with any requirements necessary.

The money issue is up to you. We did not offer money and they gave my wife a hard time, asking a lot of questions. She just kept answering them until the guy figured nothing was coming his way.

She needs to bring the sealed envelope and the x-rays with her in hand. Do not pack them in checked luggage.

Cabling and slugging are terms for how the embassies and other government offices communicate with each other.

You wouldn't be sending a cable, you would be inquiring about a refugee file at whatever AIT-Taipei is.

AIT is the American Institute in Taiwan. We do not have an embassy in Taiwan; rather we have a quasi-governmental organization that does everything that an embassy does, including consular services.

They cashed mine in 5. 21 days later and still nothing. I sicked my wife on them today to hash it out in VN. Will find out later how that went.

Here's an update for folks looking at the visa exemption. Plan WAY ahead! the website says 7 days. Nope. I sent mine in on 20 October and they now tell me it will be ready to mail on 20 or 23 November. Plan on a month+ to get it back.

sorry, clicked add before putting in the link

visa exemption

This should be what you're looking for?

http://mienthithucvk.mofa.gov.vn/Support/D...36/Default.aspx

We have another post going on this topic

Congrats!!!!

Click on My Assistant and then Edit Timeline.

he means that he wants to put his written TIMELINE into a reply as an attachment.

after you select reply and have the text window, look on the right side where it says browse and upload. browse to your timeline on your PC and select it, then upload.

CONGRATS!!!

Well it was 1900$ for the ticket. I had an open date I could leave anytime from the 12th to the 20th and come back on the 30th of December but the price was over 3,500. So now I am leaving on the 14th and coming back on the 28th.

I traveled United before but there tickets are around 7k right now so I had to use Northwest and go to Minniapolis then Chicago Then take Korean Airlines to Korea then to Ho Chi Minh

I have never been on Northwest or Korean airlines but the food on the Unitied Planes doesnt agree with me so I hope if the other ones serve food its alot better.

Thanks

Bryon, here's why I asked before where you were flying from and when. I never use an agent. I find that the best rates can typically be found by buying the tix directly from the airline on the website. I almost invariably fly China Airlines through TPE to SGN because they tend to be the cheapest and have good connection times for me since I have to come from Boston. On my upcoming biz trip to Asia, my corporate agent was not able to buy some tickets for me as cheap as i could get them from the website so part of the trip was booked outside the travel agent system.

But back to your flight. I assumed that you were flying from Omaha since your local office says nebraska. Right now, if you travel out on 12/14 and can return 12/29, you can fly SFO/SGN/SFO for $1304. Then buy a NWA ticket OMA/SFO/OMA for $224. Total cost $1528. Not bad for last minute and flying at Christmas.

I checked on Cheap tickets.com and they are very expensive. If anybody knows a place where I could purchase cheaper tickets could they please PM me? Thanks

It depends. what dates are you trying to travel and from where? Are you trying to fly into SGN?

You've not really given us enough information to offer opinions on the 'downside' of having LPR status vs. visitor visa. Seems obvious that being an LPR is more beneficial to a married couple, as you can spend your lives together as a married couple, instead of xxxx miles apart?

Sorry. Both of us live outside the United States. So I am not sure how much benefit there would be to apply for a green card.

qchuva,

In a previous post, you stated that you want your wife to meet your family and asked about getting a tourist visa. Now you state that she has a 10 year tourist visa(?). If she has such a valid document, bring her to the US and have her meet your family. If you intend for her to live in the US, you should petition for her and then upon approval have her file for a CR-1 visa so that she can legally come to the US and become a LPR.

Some of my fellow teachers are claiming that those exemptions are single entry. Any truth to that?

Love the 2 week processing time on your end Matt! Send me a PM when you get here. We'll head over to The Big Grill and talk politics.

Not sure why they would call it a 5 year exemption if you could only use it once...but will let you all know when I receive it. should be in the next week.

2 weeks and i will be there again... I have come to accept the fact that nothing can be rushed and it will be some time next year that she will get the visa... It usually takes a day to get the Cho Ray results... med one day results the next... We were going to do the med when I am there but decided to plan for her to take a few extra days when she goes for the interview and get it done a few days prior to the day... that will give her some extra time shopping in Sai Gon

Scott, I would encourage you to reconsider having her do it a few days before the interview. Anything can happen, including unforeseen delays and she cannot get the interview without the results. Once she has the date, get it done. When she goes to Saigon, she should be stress-free.

FYI, for anyone planning to do this soon:

I just spoke with the Embassy of Vietnam in Washington, DC. The lady told me that they are getting a lot of requests now for visa exemption and they are behind. It is now taking 15 working days to process.

Also, she said to be sure to include a trackable, pre-addressed envelope with postage paid so they can send it back to you. Better information is available here for those who can read VN:

Embassy of Vietnam Visa Exemption

I sent it to the Embassy of Vietnam in Washington, DC. I made the $20 check out to The Embassy of Vietnam. they cashed it so I guess that part worked. Now just waiting for it to come back.

I sent mine in almost 2 weeks ago. Last Friday would have been the 7th business day that they had it. the website claims that they will process in 7 working days. I expect it back any day now and will advise if what i did worked. I do know that they cashed my check last week so i take that as a good sign.

Jim, I believe that they do actually perform additional screening/checking/analysis in VN before scheduling your interview. So the rate at which you get notified is based upon the speed at which data is returned to them, the number of cases in the stack ahead of you, the number of people out sick (H1N1, etc) and the speed of the snail mail to your SO's home.

My recollection is that it takes about 3-4 weeks after you turn in Packet 3 to get a date and that date is another 4-6 weeks in the future. You are just coming up on 3 weeks so you will likely hear in the next week or so. I would think your interview would be around the week before Christmas.

when you filled out the I-485 for your wife, did you list her daughter on the form and did you check the box that says "applying with you?" And I trust you filed them together.

Trang and I barely talked over the phone. In fact most of our communication is through Yahoo chats. We also use the Yahoo Messenger Phone Call feature which is kinda like Skype. We use this alot as well. So basically we make phone calls to each other over the internet. I made screen shots on the webcam of both of us wearing our headseats as well as the call durations for our conversations on the headsets. Will the CO think this is strange or will they want copies of actual phone bills instead?

-Travis & Trang

The CO will not look at them, I even said in our time line that is what we did, Binh also had screen shots as well with us both in the picture. They should, but what you will have to do is MAKE them take them, they will not do it on their own. I suggest doing what you are doing, and keep taking screen shots, and just stress to your fiancée that she try to give them to the CO at the interview over and over and over again, and to stress to them that you use Yahoo and Skype, not the phone. If this does not work, and they give you a blue slip, when you get what they want turn in all of those as well. At this point they will have them no matter what, and I do not know if it is possible to do this or not, but ask for some sort of paper that shows you submitted "blank number of pages" this way if the CO lies as they did in our case you can say "Hey where did all those papers go? DID you file them in the trash receptacle??" but as I said I am not sure they will give you any type of receipt, but if you turn it in they have to accept it. Good luck Jerome and Binh

The issue at hand is not what we all feel that we want to do or what SHOULD be acceptable. The issue is that you have to convince a third party (the CO) who is highly skeptical at best. Think about it. Every day, they see fraudulent cases and people trying to rip them off with scams that are elaborate. How hard do you think it is to create a speadsheet that looks like the Skype Call Exporter? I used it, too, but only as one tiny piece of a mountain of evidence. The best proof is something that is irrefutable. You can fake chat call logs. You can fake the screenshots because you could change clothes 50 times on one session. With a green card at stake, these are small prices to pay.

Consider this. We all know that cell phones in VN are pay as you go. Don't have the VN person do the calling. US petitioner, you make the calls. Call from a land line that gets a monthly bill or a cell phone that gets a monthly bill. Don't use pre-paid cell phones, unlimited services or calling cards as your PRIMARY call evidence because you will not have documentation. As I mentioned before, call with some verifiable method once or twice a week for 20-30 minutes. Now, you have irrefutable evidence because the bill you get from Verizon or ATT has your calls from YOUR number to the VN number (just be sure that the number you are calling in VN is the same number that the applicant will use on the DS-156 and other submitted forms).

After you have established this PRIMARY evidence, build your SECONDARY evidence with chat logs, screenshots, etc, etc.

That isn't practical for a lot of people. An 18 minute call from my land line phone to Phuong's cell phone costs $135. Also, creating an authentic-looking call transcript from AT&T would be just as easy as faking a transcript from Skype or Yahoo Messenger. Both are just pieces of paper printed on a computer. In the end, the CO is either going to believe the evidence or they're not. If they're going to believe the AT&T transcript before they'd believe a transcript for a calling card or Skype or Yahoo, then they're also going to believe that the petitioner is a bonehead that doesn't know how to manage his/her money since they prefer to spend $5 a minute on a phone call rather than calling for free using VoIP, or heavily discounted using a calling card. If anything, I would think the latter would smell more like a sham relationship since it might look like the petitioner is making irrational financial decisions in order to manufacture evidence.

The bottom line is that ANY evidence you provide to them can be faked, whether it's photos or call logs, or chat sessions, or emails, or even letters and postcards. Before they would automatically assume that the beneficiary is submitting a pile of fake evidence, I think there would need to be some other alarm bells going off in the CO's mind.

OK, I guess I was not that clear when I went back and read my post. You had to read both of my posts and put them together to understand what I meant. Here is the overview:

Get a calling card that tracks every call you make and shows the number you called from and to and the duration. use this as your trackable evidence. Then, using a cell phone or land line that you get billed with (to show your name and number), make your calls to VN through the calling card at 3-10 cents per minute. This will give you a bill that shows you calling the calling card access number and also a call log that shows that your number was used to call the VN number, along with the date and the duration. Now you have two sets of matchable documents that show your voice communication and you will not spend a lot of money. This is what I did and then I explained that in my timeline and referenced where in my evidence package this material could be found. i also had my Skype Call Export logs along with 20 or so screenshots of our webcam sessions to go with it.

However, as Jim pointed out, this is only one element of your evidence. And the need for this evidence will likely be driven by other aspects of your case. You have to look at your entire case and put together a package that would convince the average person that you have a bona fide relationship.

Hello all! My name is Long and I, like many of you, have fallen for a special lady that resides in VN. Her name is Diem and I can't wait to spend the rest of my life with her! I was preparing to submit the I-129F for the K-1 Fiance Visa, but after finding this forum and realizing that many cases are often delayed, I'm considering visiting VN at least one more time before filing the K-1. Any thoughts, comments or suggestions will be greatly appreciated!

I was introduced to Diem by her sister Thi and we began talking over the phone in Nov 2008.

TET 2009 - I decided to go to VN to meet Diem..Thi and her boyfriend John joined me in VN. I am Vietnamese and speak English and Vietnamese fluently..Diem has been studying English, but we currently communicate exclusively in Vietnamese. I proposed to Diem while in VN and we ended up having a small (50 people) engagement party before I returned to US.

July 2009 - Spent 7 weeks with Diem traveling Vietnam and introduced her to a few of my family members still living in Vietnam.

Weaknesses

- Calling card used from Nov 2008 to TET did not have retrievable call records

- Did not retain any hotel receipts while on first trip

- Currently unemployed, but have some promising prospects and should be employed very soon

- Had engagement party on first visit to Vietnam

- Was introduced by her sister

Strengths

- Income is stable over past few years despite current unemployment

- Have call records on Skype, SavingCall Calling Card and Yahoo Messenger

- took many pictures while in VN

- Have all hotel receipts for 2nd trip in July 2009

My questions are:

Do any weaknesses stand out and are a cause for concern?

Are my 2 visits to VN sufficient for K-1 Visa?

Are there any other steps that should be taken prior to filing for K-1 Visa?

I'm very anxious to get the paperwork submitted, but I just hope to be able to avoid the dreaded Additional Processing.

Thank you in advance for reading my story!

Long

You arranged the weakness on the wrong order, I re-arrange according to important level:

1- Was introduced by her sister.

2- Had engagement party on first visit to Vietnam

3- Currently unemployed, but have some promising prospects and should be employed very soon

Those three issues are enough for you to get blue or white sheet on the first time of interview. Your evidence will not be believed due to those reasons.

You should ask for help from lawyer for your case from beginning.

Disagree. The first two are things that neither he nor a lawyer can change. The third one HAS to be changed or he cannot get a visa approved. The key is in preparing this case from the beginning, starting with the filing of the petition. If his case is well-prepared and credible and he addresses those two red flags properly, he may get blue-slipped or AP'd but he will prevail.

He can change the first and the second a little bit. If he has advice from lawyer, he would have idea how to do. That's why I said he should ask for help from lawyer, may be he just needs one to two hours to have general ideas to make his case better. He can ask the lowyer how to change the first and the second ones.

The third, he can change completly.

Well, the problem is that he has now posted his name, his fiancee's name and his case history on a public forum. Not sure how you can change the FACTS that he has presented here. I think he has to address them, not change them. A lawyer could offer advice on how to address them but I would not recommend that he try to change them now.

This is for things we've seen in our travels,

In storefronts,

On billboards,

At train stations,

In restrooms,

In newspaper ads or headlines,

On product packaging,

On TV or any other media,

in other words, practically anywhere public.

So far I've been exposed to Jap-lish and Thai-lish,

but there are many more -lishes out there to be

heard from.

Extra points for a pic of the actual sign.

It can be a creatively misspelled word or a word

spelled correctly but misuesd in a sentence or phrase,

or something entirely new and creative, literally

translated from the home country language.

I'll start things off with something I've seen more than once in Bangkok:

Romance Serviced Apartments

Here's one from China. This would actually keep a lot of people off the planes...

toddandhien...

cellular or land line call log can also be faked..no different than skype or yahoo. It's depend on the interviewer.

I am not talking about a call log. I am talking about a bill that comes in the mail.

Trang and I barely talked over the phone. In fact most of our communication is through Yahoo chats. We also use the Yahoo Messenger Phone Call feature which is kinda like Skype. We use this alot as well. So basically we make phone calls to each other over the internet. I made screen shots on the webcam of both of us wearing our headseats as well as the call durations for our conversations on the headsets. Will the CO think this is strange or will they want copies of actual phone bills instead?

-Travis & Trang

The CO will not look at them, I even said in our time line that is what we did, Binh also had screen shots as well with us both in the picture. They should, but what you will have to do is MAKE them take them, they will not do it on their own. I suggest doing what you are doing, and keep taking screen shots, and just stress to your fiancée that she try to give them to the CO at the interview over and over and over again, and to stress to them that you use Yahoo and Skype, not the phone. If this does not work, and they give you a blue slip, when you get what they want turn in all of those as well. At this point they will have them no matter what, and I do not know if it is possible to do this or not, but ask for some sort of paper that shows you submitted "blank number of pages" this way if the CO lies as they did in our case you can say "Hey where did all those papers go? DID you file them in the trash receptacle??" but as I said I am not sure they will give you any type of receipt, but if you turn it in they have to accept it. Good luck Jerome and Binh

The issue at hand is not what we all feel that we want to do or what SHOULD be acceptable. The issue is that you have to convince a third party (the CO) who is highly skeptical at best. Think about it. Every day, they see fraudulent cases and people trying to rip them off with scams that are elaborate. How hard do you think it is to create a speadsheet that looks like the Skype Call Exporter? I used it, too, but only as one tiny piece of a mountain of evidence. The best proof is something that is irrefutable. You can fake chat call logs. You can fake the screenshots because you could change clothes 50 times on one session. With a green card at stake, these are small prices to pay.

Consider this. We all know that cell phones in VN are pay as you go. Don't have the VN person do the calling. US petitioner, you make the calls. Call from a land line that gets a monthly bill or a cell phone that gets a monthly bill. Don't use pre-paid cell phones, unlimited services or calling cards as your PRIMARY call evidence because you will not have documentation. As I mentioned before, call with some verifiable method once or twice a week for 20-30 minutes. Now, you have irrefutable evidence because the bill you get from Verizon or ATT has your calls from YOUR number to the VN number (just be sure that the number you are calling in VN is the same number that the applicant will use on the DS-156 and other submitted forms).

After you have established this PRIMARY evidence, build your SECONDARY evidence with chat logs, screenshots, etc, etc.

For K visa applicants, there is no need to translate documents in Vietnamese into English for the HCM Consulate, so don't waste your money. However, you will eventually need her birth certificate in English when you file for AOS, so my advice is that you get that translated in VN where there are a lot of people who can do it for small money.