Terri and Seb

Hi everyone,

Wow, it's been a long time since I've posted here! As you can see from my timeline, my British husband and I got married in 2009. In mid 2010, we temporarily moved back to the UK so I could do an 11-month masters degree in England. I'm just about finished, but for now we're still living in the UK. We made an InfoPass appointment to see if we needed a travel document and were assured that since we would be in the UK for less than a year, we'd be fine. We wanted to keep up my husband's residency, so he's made one trip back to the U.S. to make sure he enters every 6 months and is flying out tomorrow to make his second trip. He's permanently moving back to the States at the beginning of July since he has a job offer, and I'll be joining him in late August to start my new job. With any luck, we'll remove conditions this summer and apply for naturalization next year.

The trick is, taxes have been an absolute nightmare! My husband was self-employed from January 2010- May 2010 and then worked in England for the rest of the year. I was a student the whole time, but did take a very temporary part-time job in England. We declared all of our U.S. and foreign income on our federal and state returns and have taken the foreign income credit to offset the outrageous taxes we've paid to the UK. Even though we've been living in England, we filed as though we were resident in Pennsylvania as to not jeopardize anything. However, our local taxes are very confusing. I called to ask how to report our foreign income and no one knew. The form says a W2 is vital and a return without one will be discarded, and we obviously don't have a W2. I also wanted information on how to get a tax credit for the taxes we've paid to England so we're not double taxed. After speaking to about 5 different managers who didn't have a clue, I was eventually told that there's no such assistance for foreign income and we're responsible for double taxes on this income (which seems very unlikely given that state and federal offer it?). UK tax is like 20%- and paying local tax on our overseas income means we'd owe our local tax jurisdiction an additional $500 on top of that. And we haven't even been living there!

Long story short, we are considering filing our local taxes as a part-year resident even though we've filed our state and federal taxes as resident. I can't get anyone to answer my questions, the forms are incredibly confusing, we've fired one tax professional already for not knowing what they were doing, and it seems absurd to pay double tax. I know this is not tax fraud or anything since we really WERE living in England and can prove it, but there's a question on the naturalization form that asks if you've ever filed as a part-year resident and I don't know if saying 'yes' automatically throws out your application.

Could filing this way for local taxes only seriously jeopardize my husband's naturalization applications? Any help is really appreciated- I'm a mess over this!

We made an infopass appointment for today and it turns out we can keep the green card! There are a bunch of extra hoops to jump through but they'll be worth it. We didn't think a travel document would really apply to us but apparently it does so long as we're back next summer to remove conditions.

Yeah, I'll be doing a masters in the UK. It's not exactly a masters in social work, but it's a masters in social program evaluation through the social work and social policy department at Oxford. Very exciting!

Glad to hear everyone is doing well! Happy anniversary to all who have recently celebrated.

As for us, after a lot of thought we've decided to abandon the US immigration process at this time and move back to the UK. I'll be doing a Master's degree and working on my UK immigration. It just makes a lot of sense for us on many levels, plus, we can apply for the spousal visa using DCF next time which will be much better than the 9 months of separation. We'll still be checking this website and facebook often, though, so keep in touch .

Congratulations!

Congrats on the social security numbers and the card productions. As well as the little one on the way, Shannon and Nick!

We had our US reception this weekend and it went off without a hitch. I hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving. Was it as much a cultural experience for your husbands/wives as it was for us? I swear, Sebastian could not eat enough stuffing!

Thanks Koakland! For everyone who is not facebook friends with me- I got into Columbia University's Master of Social Work Program! I'm super excited, though very daunted by the price tag. I got into another program in the UK and I'm still waiting to hear from about 7 more universities, so luckily I have a while before I need to make any concrete decisions.

Good luck to Andy! How did the interview go?

And congrats on the card production, cdneh!

Hope you're all having a nice Wednesday

Congrats on the recent approvals and Jeremy's job!

I'm looking into grad programs in social work and counseling now. We'll see!

Good luck. I'd be tempted to look at advanced practice nursing. Social workers I know have to see some pretty brutal things; but I guess that depends on what kind you do.

I want to see the shocking things. I had a pretty tough upbringing and I think that's where I'll make the most difference. I guess I saw a lot of the effects of the nursing shortage this summer. 99% of the time the nurses were at their computers doing paperwork instead of in the room with their patients. They had time for a quick assessment and that was it and it wasn't because they're bad nurses- they just have such high patient loads and so much paperwork. I even shadowed at a few hospitals in the area to make sure I wasn't just having a bad experience with one hospital and found it to be the same. I didn't realize any of this until I started the internship since during clinicals you're always much more focused on your patient than what the nurse is doing. So glad I did the internship before graduation! I commend anyone who is going into the field, though. It's a really noble profession. It just wasn't a good fit for me.

Congrats on the EAD, Aubrey!

Nope, no more nursing. I did an internship this summer and everyone I worked with was absolutely miserable. The pay is good, but those poor nurses are severely overworked, underpaid and burnt out. I just couldn't see myself in that role. I guess there's a reason the burn out rate is 10 years for nursing.

I'm looking into grad programs in social work and counseling now. We'll see!

Hi everyone! It's been a long time since I've posted here. Things are going pretty well for us. Sebastian found a job in June (took him about 3 months from POE to find one). It's a software job, but there are no benefits and the pay is kind of a joke after you take into account his costs for health insurance. But at least it's in his field and he can get his foot in the door in the US job market. Seb also got his drivers permit, though I'm way too scared to ever let him drive my car. He's.....unsafe.

I changed my major and am now in the tedious process of applying to grad schools. Many of them are back in the UK, so I hope immigration doesn't give us too much hassle with that so long as we get a reentry permit and such. If we're not in the UK we'll either be in NYC or Hawai'i so regardless, life will be much more exciting than rural Pennsylvania!

We're also planning our U.S. reception for Thanksgiving weekend as well as our UK reception in February. I'm super excited because even though we're married, it doesn't really seem like we are since we didn't have the same kind of rite of passage of celebrating with our closest friends and family.

That's what's new with us! I'm glad to see all the progress here! I know it isn't going smoothly for everyone, but hang in there. Best wishes

Yeah, it was us. We just forked up the money since we didn't want to delay processing, but we're still pretty pissed about it.

Ah, I didn't realize there was a difference (but I admittedly haven't looked into it very much at this point). Thanks for the clarification!

Hi everyone,

My husband currently has a 2-year green card. We want to teach English abroad for a year in 2010-2011. I know he can leave the U.S. for 6 months and we have to apply for AP for the other 6 months. I also know this is no guarantee he will be allowed back in.

Has anyone applied for such a lengthy AP to live and work in another country temporarily? Any troubles getting back in?

Any info is much appreciated!

Glad to see there's a lot of good news in here! We've been on vacation for the past 2 weeks but in that time our card production was ordered and approval notice was sent! Well on our way .

Congrats on the wedding, Aubrey!

Looks like we're all done with immigration for another 2 years or so! We responded to our RFE for the medical, processing resumed very quickly and he got his welcome to America letter in the mail yesterday. The physical green card should be here by the end of the month.

Congratulations everyone!

Congrats on all the approvals! Sebastian redid his medical and we're mailing off our RFE today. Hopefully we'll hear something within the next month!

It doesn't delay EAD or AP, just the green card. It's extra annoying because he obviously wouldn't have been able to make it to the interview phase without having passed the medical.

They probably just lost it. That's what happened to us. We got an RFE to redo the entire medical minus the vaccination portion (we sent our DS3025 and that must have been good enough) but they lost the medical records from London. We also got an RFE because we "didn't submit our marriage certificate" when we absolutely, 100% did. Sorry to hear you're having a rough time with medical stuff too . At least they just want the vaccination stuff, our medical is going to cost nearly $400.

Thanks everyone. We live in a small town so unfortunately we have to take the $400 physical at the only civil surgeon near us since he has to go back and have the tb skin test read. London only gave us the chest x-ray, not the whole physical records, so no one will do anything less than the full exam minus the vaccination sheet. I asked if they could skip the tb test since he has his chest xray and they said no .

Congrats on the approvals though!

I tried to update the spreadsheet but it's not working...I'll leave it to you Chibby since I don't want to risk messing it up!

Congrats Chibby!

We got our RFE in the mail today. They want us to redo the entire physical, minus the vaccination portion of it (interesting, since we didn't have the results transcribed and just used DS3025). I guess they lost the medical results so now we have to pay $400 for another medical. Uggghhh.

Thanks, that's how I deciphered it too. Here goes another $400!

We just received our RFE this afternoon for our AOS application. It says:

"A review of the records indicates that you entered the United States pursuant to a valid K-1/K-2 nonimmigrant visa. All USCIS records relating to you have been reviewed. The U.S. Department of State Medical forms DS-2053, DS-3024, DS-3025 and DS-3026 are not in any of those records.

Form I-693 Please submit a properly completed and signed form I-693, Report of Medical Excamination and Vaccination Record. The medical examination must be conducted by a physician who is on the list of Civil Surgeons approved by USCIS. It is no necessary to submit evidence of a vaccination history, as there is a record of the vaccinations in the file. (Yes, it's spelled wrong in the message- "it's no necessary").

K1 Marriage Certificate: You appear to be filing as a K1 nonimmigrant. Please submit a copy of your marriage certificate indicating that you have married your United States citizen fiancee within 90 days of your admission into the United States as a K1 nonimmigrant."

I am SO confused. It says they have no record of our DS3025, but then it says in bold that there is a record of our vaccinations. How is that even possible? We sent in the DS3025 and not the transcribed I693, so the DS3025 is all they *could* have. What is it that they want from us, then? Are we one of the unlucky ones whose entire medical exam has been lost? I'm worried that's the case. Does this mean we should leave Part 2 of the I693 blank or should we have it all filled out? I don't understand how they could even need a second medical when we wouldn't have been able to even get to the interview stage without it in London- so we obviously had it.

The marriage certificate part is easy enough, but we already submitted one with our original application! Grr...

Thanks in advance for the advice!

Turns out that touch yesterday was an RFE. Probably because we didn't transcribe the vaccination stuff or include our cosponsor's 2008 tax returns. Oh well!