FormerConOff

The US State Department, USCIS and HCMC Consulate all know the law about Visas. Your Senator, Congressmen, etc are unable to do much at all about changing or finding out really what is going on. The law makes the decisions by the Consulate free from "meddling" by Congress and the President. You have more power by using the Freedom of Imformation Act to find out what is really going on. I think your Senator gave you an answer to make you "give up" and not call them anymore. Marc Ellis can do more for you than they can, so listen to him not your Senator.

Peter and Thi

I-129F Sent : 2007-05-26

I-129F NOA1 : 2007-06-11

I-129F RFE(s) :

RFE Reply(s) :

I-129F NOA2 : 2007-10-26

Touched: 2007-11-02

NVC Recieved: 2007-11-16

Consulate recieved ??????

Packet 3 sent 2007-12-11

Packet 3 received 2007-12-24

Packet 3 returned 2007-12-28

Packet 4 sent 2008-1-14

Email Reply with Interview Date 2008-1-23

Interview Date 2008-2-27

Passed Interview 2008-02-27

Visa Pick Up Date 2008-3-05

Received Visa 2008-2-29 (called to pick up earlier)

POE 2008-3-05 Los Angeles

Wedding 2008-4-26

Agreed. That is the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard. The Vietnamese government has so much more to worry about than this. Even if they did care, there is no way they can influence visa adjudications at the U.S. Consulate. I can't believe a U.S. senator would say this. I have heard of members of congress saying some pretty ridiculous stuff to constituents in order to get them to stop bothering them about visa stuff, but this takes the cake. Don't believe a word of it.

You sure this was a senator, and not just a overworked staffer?

And yes, it's true: contacting your member of congress or senator usually does very little. Why? The Consulate gets dozens of boilerplate "inquiries" every day from members of congress, most of them making clear, explicitly or implicitly, that they have no personal knowledge of petitioner or applicant. The only time I ever saw a letter from a senator or member of congress that changed my mind about a case in any way was when the member of congress personally knew the petitioner as a friend and vouched for the validity of the relationship -- because he had known the petitioner for 20 years. Absent that sort of letter, you're probably off saving your effort. It's nice to think that your member of congress can get your fiancee a visa, but he/she cannot. They can only ask for status updates, same as you. They have no power that you yourself do not possess.

1. How do you know I didn't review your submitted evidence before your fiance's arrival? I wondered about this too. I agree with Peter in his belief that all of the evidence should be submitted with the I-129f or I-130. That way you know they have it. There have been way too many people on here saying that they had already submitted a timeline and were asked for it again.

2. I already made up my mind to further investigate your case, the evidence your fiance brought with her means very little to me for I have very little time (say... 5 mins or 10 mins) to conduct a Face-To-Face interview with her. It's her job to make ME, the one who holds her future, to feel warm and fuzzy about approving or reversing my decision. She failed to do that! Possible.

3. Her English wasn't good enough for me to understand her. However, my Vietnamese is VERY GOOD, it's scary! Trust me, State Dept. didn't send someone who doesn't know the local or the language to work in this Division. My Vietnamese is VERY GOOD! That's why I "forced" her to speak vietnamese to me... wait... the interpreter. Of course, you and her didn't know I know Vietnamese like that! Even in her native language, she wasn't comfortable to answer the questions, what else do you expect me to believe if this case isn't right! This is where I'd like to hear from the former C/O. How many of them actually speak Vietnamese fluently?

4. NO we do not look at every case as if it's a fraud. Every case is unique in its own way, no matter what people tell you. And YES, we did review your evidence and it didn't make us "feel" 100% comfortable to approve! I think they probably do go in with the assumption that it is a fraud. Guilty until you prove yourself innocent. I'm a cynic by nature though

Cases aren't decided before the interview. Consular Officers don't even review the file until the moment of the interview -- at least that's how it worked when I was there. There just wasn't time. ChuckandKim is right -- if the applicant leaves the officer wanting to issue a pink sheet, she'll probably get a pink sheet. If she sounds identical to everyone else (rehearsed answer, displaying only surface-level knowledge of fiance), then more investigation is probably required.

As for VN language -- all consular officers get quite a bit of Vietnamese language training and can understand quite a bit. I never needed a translator to translate from VN to English -- but I would keep one next to me in case I needed clarification on something or if the person was from an area with an unusual accent. I always had a translator translate FROM English to Vietnamese, because as you all know, white girls and guys get strange looks from Vietnamese people when they speak Vietnamse unexpectedly, and we are usually asked to repeat ourselves, often multiple times. Multiply that by 25 interviews in a day, and it wastes a LOT of time.

The whole "should I use a translator" thing seems like a false issue. When I was an interviewer, I knew that many of the applicants spoke English to some degree, but I was far more interested in the applicant's knowledge of her fiance, and that is best demonstrated in one's native language. It's very hard to get nuanced information out of someone who is (a) nervous and (B) has only a limited grasp of English. I would never assume that the level of English displayed at the interview is the same as what applicant and fiance exchange in private. Applicants are asked to speak Vietnamese only as a time saver. If an applicant absolutely insists on speaking English during the interview, she does it at his/her peril, because she will be limited to speaking about her fiance or husband only in those terms for which she has already learned the English vocabulary. If that means she can only say, "My fiance is a nice person because he is nice," then the officer may have a problem.

My two cents.

I honestly have no idea what that means, but the fact that they told her the reason indicates that it's a harmless reason. Pink sheets are only taken back in the worst circumstances...like when the consulate finds out that you're actually brother and sister after approving the visa!

Do not worry. At worst, you should just be annoyed at the inconvenience.

ChuckandKim has made a somewhat apt analogy to the job interview. While not exactly the same, there are clearly some parallels.

I have read many entries here regarding how the applicants have "answered questions correctly and submitted all the required documents," but still didn't get a visa. If that were only enough.

Too many visa applicants follow the BAD advice of visa "consultants" (or some websites) and come into interviews with scripted answers. During my days as an interviewer, I wasn't so much interested in the "correctness" of your answer, but rather how much it demonstrated your actual personal knowledge of your spouses/fiance(e)s. For example, I used to throw in some unexpected questions. Instead of asking how they met (come on...what fraudulent visa applicant can't make up something that works with *that* question), I'd say, "tell me about your husband's relationship with his parents....do they get along?" If that didn't get me anywhere, I'd give her the benefit of the doubt and ask another question, such as, "what does your husband like to do with his kids?" If I asked 3 or 4 of these questions, and got nothing but "I don't know," I wasn't impressed, EVEN if the applicant could recite his fiancee's mailing address down to the 9-digit ZIP code. Some things you can't fake.

Too much coaching for a visa interview can be a bad thing. One thing all the fraudsters have in common is that they've memorized what they are going to say at the interview. If you join their club, you only make it more difficult to tell you apart from them. At that point, all the "evidence" in the world doesn't really amount to much. Because if you display zero knowledge of your spouse, it really makes a consular officer wonder what those 3 years of phone bills are really all about. Don't coach, don't memorize. And one of the WORST pieces of advice I've seen on this board is "don't every say anything more than the most succinct answer to the question asked." Uh uh. If you've got 5 minutes of a consular officer's time, show him or her how much you know, not how little you can talk. Most consular officers do not enjoy their jobs; making them pull info out of people, hour after hour, day after day, is not a good way to distinguish yourself.

Again, please don't flame me for my observations -- they are not meant to excuse rude or unprofessional behavior among consulate and embassy staff around the world. I am just trying to give some constructive advice to those of you who care to take it. If you disagree with me or disagree with the system (as most of us do), please do not take it out on me.

Hey...

I used to work at congen HCMC. If they gave you a pink slip you've got nothing to worry about. There are a hundred reasons for these delays, but none of them have to do with the applicant's eligibility for the visa (for example, the state dept only lets the consulate issue a certain type of any visa class each month, so if they accidentally issue one extra during any given month due to a scheduling error, they have to call the applicant back in and tell them to wait until next month or else POE will jam her up). Stupid bureaucratic stuff, but nothing to worry about.

A lot of people who have gone the K1/CR1 route (not just in Vietnam) are pretty fed up with the system. And speaking as the person on the other side of the window, I agree that it's a pretty blunt tool to be using to determine the fate of married couples.

One thing I almost never see on this site, however, is real-life suggestions on how to make a better process. Can anyone make any suggestions to improve/overhaul the system that would actually continue to weed out fraud but not be so antagonistic to those of you engaged in real relationships?

I've already posted a couple places in this section. I am a former HCMC consular officer (long enough ago that I no longer know anyone who works there, so please don't ask about that). Although I generally prefer not to comment on individual cases I see here on VJ, I feel compelled to say something here, because it speaks to an issue I have with "evidence" in general.

The posts I've seen by ChuckAndKim tend to be the most spot-on when it comes to advice -- one would almost think this poster is a former consular officer as well. Maybe just a realist. But anyway...

I wouldn't bother editing anything...no consular officer whose been there more than 3 days is going to care what is written in there. If I were interviewing your fiance, I would be far more interested in the fact that you have learned to speak Vietnamese than any chat logs you may have. That shows a level of commitment that goes SO FAR beyond that of what the vast majority of fraudsters would ever do. Consular officers know how difficult it is to learn to speak VN. This would be far more persuasive to me than 2 suitcases full of chats and e-mails. If I were you I would make sure your fiance mentions it to the officer during the interview. Never be afraid to speak up about something that might show a special level of commitment by your spouse or fiance (and I'm not saying shoving 300 one-line e-mails under the window).

Don't get bogged down in the "how much evidence should I have" rut. The fraudulent cases all have far more evidence than you ever will -- they're paying upwards of $50,000 for a service provided by the visa fixers, and they damn well are going to get their money's worth. This means that officers must discount the importance of such "evidence" to a certain degree. That being said, if I see 3 heartfelt letters over the course of 2 years, that means more than a letter sent every day that says nothing but "Hi, how are you, talk to you next time."

Nothing -- no amount of paperwork, photos, etc -- will EVER take the place of your fiance or spouse being able to talk authoritatively about you. I was always suspicious of applicants who had reams of "evidence" but couldn't tell me the first thing about their fiances' lives in the U.S. To me it indicated that they never actually exchanged information about their lives -- just paperwork.

If this guy is who he says he is then he needs to understand that he is off the wall in what he is saying. Too many times people are denied for no reason at all and then the delays can last not only months, but over a year and in some cases, even two. That is inhumane treatment. It's a disgrace.

I guess I can't speak to your personal experience. It is obvious from the posts on this site that there are good cases that get handled poorly in HCMC. Nobody disputes that. What I was talking about is the many posts in the Vietnam section of Visa Journey where applicants and petitioners talk about how many blue sheets versus pink sheets they saw on any given interview day while sitting in the waiting room and then trying to draw conclusions about who is a "good" consular officer and who is a "tough" officer, and whether HCMC has "cracked down" that particular month on K1s. All I'm trying to say is that it doesn't help anyone on this site to post comments about your "experiences" based only on how many pinks versus blues you saw in a waiting room on any given day. I think these sorts of posts just excite and agitate other members unnecessarily, especially those who haven't yet interviewed.

One of the issues with which I have unique experience is the staggering amount of marriage fraud at the HCMC consulate. From reading visa journey posts you'd think that consular officers are just paranoid. This is mostly because visa journey members are (as far as I can tell) involved in real relationships, so when talking amongst yourselves, it's hard not to come to the conclusion that HCMC consists of just a bunch of bitter, idiotic officers who think they see fraud in every spousal relationship. But remember, the fraudulent cases do not generally post on Visa Journey. And the fraudulent cases make up a larger percentage of the K1 and CR1 interviews each day than the good cases. And it can make a consular officer's job a difficult one to do. And that means, unfortunately, that sometimes good cases get jammed up because they "look like" fraudulent ones, evey though they aren't.

I think the only way this is going to change (in addition to getting more officers to that consulate, because it is woefully understaffed...that's why everything takes so long) is if the US Attorney offices in the US gets serious about prosecuting visa fraud cases. The main reason why so many Vietnamese people looking to get to the US quickly use the fraudulent K1 and CR1 route is because there is virtually no penalty for doing so. Sure, a few local US Attorney offices have prosecuted "major" fraud rings involving cases that passed through the HCMC consulate, but by and large, most of them go unnoticed and unpunished. Even when the consulate has alerted the DOJ to cases that are obviously fraudulent, the DOJ has pretty much said, "that's small potatoes, we don't care."

All of this is not an excuse for poor treatment of applicants and petitioners by the consulate staff. There is no excuse for that. But it is an explanation. Everyone here knows that fraud is rampant in HCMC, but I really don't think anyone on this board knows how prevalent it really is. The amount of cousins marrying each other, the number of spouses in the US getting divorced and then directly turning around and marrying two VN citizens who are also related to each other (though of course meeting "by chance on the beach at Vung Tau"), is just staggering, and it happens every day in HCMC. Until these people actually pay a price for what they are doing, life is not going to get any easier for anyone going through HCMC. And that's just sad.

I am a former HCMC consular officer and I have just stumbled on this site, and I am amazed at the obsession with "blue/green" and "pink" slips that I see here. Just because someone gets a blue or green slip does not mean his/her visa was denied; it means it was delayed. While yes, it is true that a certain portion of those cases will eventually be returned to USCIS, in my experience that number is relatively small. For example, a substantial percentage of applicants who interview for immigrant visas in HCMC have not had their medical exams completed at the time of the interview (often because Cho Ray Hospital is backlogged) -- that's an automatic blue/green sheet (or whatever color they use nowadays). So if you're sitting in the waiting room taking a tally of pinks versus blues, you're going to draw some erroneous conclusions about visa issuance rates at the consulate because the majority of people with blue/green slips will get their visas after submitting routine documentation.

The last figures I saw was from 2004 from the Embassy and Consulate performance report that someone get thru the Freedom of Information Act. It didn't brake them into categories, just said it was a high fraud Consulate with a denial rate of 55% for Non Immigrantion Visas with 7480 K1 visas being processed in that year.

Unless someone can get the figures from the State department, I think anyone else is just making up numbers. I watched about twenty women come out of the HCMC Consulate with blue slips and one with a green slip. There was about 5 pinks slips I saw but there were many other women who I didn't see any slips so I don't know any exact numbers for the day of Thi's interview.

Peter and Thi

I-129F Sent : 2007-05-26

I-129F NOA1 : 2007-06-11

I-129F RFE(s) :

RFE Reply(s) :

I-129F NOA2 : 2007-10-26

Touched: 2007-11-02

NVC Recieved: 2007-11-16

Consulate recieved ??????

Packet 3 sent 2007-12-11

Packet 3 received 2007-12-24

Packet 3 returned 2007-12-28

Packet 4 sent 2008-1-14

Email Reply with Interview Date 2008-1-23

Interview Date 2008-2-27

Passed Interview 2008-02-27

Visa Pick Up Date 2008-3-05

Received Visa 2008-2-29 (called to pick up earlier)

POE 2008-3-05 Los Angeles

Wedding 2008-4-26

I don't see how your lawyer would have access to that information. It must be referring to only the cases that he/she is working on. The Consulate does not release overall approval/refusal numbers to the public or to attorneys.