klester

I got the same RFE. I decided just to go re-do the medical because I knew it would be a lot quicker and would definitely fix the problem.

Although I agree, the wording is WAY TOO VAGUE.

Also, if they ask for something like "The W-2s from past tax returns as support for the Affidavit of Support", I just need to send the W-2s, right? I don't need to redo the whole form?

It happens a lot that they lose the medical somewhere, have you tried calling the border patrol at her point of entry? or calling the medical place that she got her original and see if they will send you another copy of it?

Even if I do this, they want the form I-693, which needs to be completed by a civil surgeon here, right? So even if they get the copy of the medical, I still need to go to a civil surgeon and re-do what I already did... I don't get it.

Here is exactly what the letter says...

*Submit a properly completed and signed Form I-693, Report of Medical Examination and Vaccination Record, (Rev. 06/05/08 or later) for the applicant on Form I-485. The medical examination must be conducted by a civil surgeon who has been designated by USCIS. The medical must be issued less than one year prior to the filing date of Form I-485.

To obtain names and telephone numbers of the designated civil surgeons is your area, go online to http://www.uscis.gov/ or call USCIS’ National Customer Service Center at 1-800-375-5283. You may need to provide your zip code. Have a pen or pencil ready to write down the list of civil surgeons in your area.

The civil surgeon must conduct the exam as directed in the instructions to Form I-693 and the Centers for Disease Control’s Technical Instructions for the Medical Examination of Aliens in the United States. Both the medical examination and the vaccination record must be completed when required.

My wife came over on K-1 and did the whole medical check in Japan. We did what we were told we could do (even in the instructions) and just filled out certain sections of the medical form and had a public surgeon notarize the immunizations, seal it in an envelope, and send all of that in.

Today in the mail we got an RFE saying that we didn't include a full medical exam.

I am not in the mood to spend hundreds of dollars more just to do it again.

Has anyone had this happen? What should I do?

I would recommend going back to the office. When we applied for my wife's SSN, the (obviously not-incredibly-smart) worker told us he couldn't verify her in the system (even though we went 2 weeks after she had arrived) and it had to get sent to national processing. 1 month later (and a couple of fruitless phonecalls - seriously, I wouldn't even bother calling) we just decided to go back to the SSN center. We got a much smarter, sharper guy, who said that he verified my wife in the system, deleted the national processing (which was still pending and hadn't moved at all) and that we would get a card in the mail in about 2 weeks. Sure enough, 15 days later, we got her card in the mail.

Hello All,

I was under the impression that once a person got permanent residency in the USA and received a green card, they could go out of the USA on trips (less than one year?) and return to their permanent residency.

If that is the case, what exactly is the purpose of I-131 "Re-Entry Permit"? I know the form is also used for advanced parole but I am specifically talking about a re-entry permit for a permanent resident green-card holder. What is the purpose of it? What will it let a permanent resident do?

Thanks in advance.

Same for EAD?

Does anything during the I-864 process apply her for a SSN if she hasn't already done that or writes NONE? Or is that completely separate? If somehow the I-864 process applies for a SSN for her, and we already have a pending application, I thought it might create a mess.

And also, will not yet having a SSN interfere with the EAD application, or is EAD and SSN not linked like that?

Hey guys,

I'm not totally sure what to do so I thought I would post here. My wife came here on a K-1 on September 3rd. We filed for Social Security number on September 18th, 15 days after. When we filed for SSN, they told us they couldn't verify her info and it had to go into additional processing, taking 4-5 weeks.

We were married on October 10th. We still have not heard anything back at all from Social Security. We are going to file her complete I-864 packet next week, but there are multiple areas asking for a Social Security number. Not only have we not gotten it, but if we receive it now, we need to inform them of the name change.

So I am worried about leaving the SSN# area blank on the I-864 etc while we have an open and still unresolved application pending for one.

Should we go to the SSN office and explain everything, and see what they say? I tried to call them but it just rings forever. It's been about 5 weeks now and I'm really annoyed with how long something so easy and normal has taken.

If we go back, would we be able to re-apply or something with the new last name? The last time we went, the man spelled her name incorrectly, and then fixed it, and said it still needed advanced processing. He then gave us a letter which explained we needed to wait 4-5 weeks, and her name was misspelled again on there...

What should we do? We definitely want to send out the I-864 filing as soon as we can...

Thanks.

Well, at the advice of another thread, I contacted the Deferred Inspection Office at my airport, and talked to a woman who told me that I can go see her today and see about whether or not her name was misspelled at POE. I will let you know how that goes, but it was nice to finally find an actual local person I can go talk to, instead of sorting through the robotic menus of SSN and USCIS's phone numbers!

Hey guys,

When we recently went to apply for a SSN, the man showed us the sheet with our information. My fiancee's name was misspelled as "Chiaka" instead of "Chiaki". I informed him of this and he was saying there was some kind of problem. He changed it to the proper spelling, ran it again, and informed us that it would need to be double-checked on the national level and that we would have to wait for additional processing time. He then gave us a letter stating this information.

Just last night, I noticed that the letter he had given us had also had her first name misspelled as "Chiaka". The more I think about it the more I worry that he isn't the one who misspelled it and that it was misspelled at POE.

How do I go about finding out if it was misspelled at POE? I've tried calling the 1800 number for SSN, and they weren't any help at all. I know some of you have had similar problems with the misspelling of names at POE, so what should I do? Is scheduling an INFOPASS all I can do, even if I don't know for sure that the name was misspelled?

Thanks.

By the way, I really hope they didn't screw up her name at POE...

How would I go about finding out if they spelled it wrong at POE, or if it was just the guy today who spelled it wrong?

If it is wrong, how do I even go about fixing it?

I had no experience on something like this, but my guess is that the immigration officer who entered her name on the immigration system made a mistake and therefore the SSA representative wasn't able to verify her name.

I am more curious how they got your number...

I wrote it on the application

My fiancee's passport isn't actually stamped with a work authorization, but from reading the memo and the long thing linked from VisaJourney on the SSN site, it sounds like K-1 visa holders should mark "Allowed to work" regardless.

Went to apply for my K-1 fiancee's Social Security Card today. She has been in the USA for 15 days now. Here is what happened:

When we went up, the guy was really kind and asked for the documents he needed and started processing her application in front of us. After a little while he looked a little perplexed, printed something out and came back with it and was looking it over for a while. I could tell something was the matter so I started looking at the white sheet too as I could see it clearly through the glass, and immediately noticed that my fiancee's first name was spelled "CHIAKA" on there when it is really spelled "CHIAKI". I pointed this out to the man, who smiled and said that must have been the problem, and that "it was giving me an error saying it didn't match with our databases information, but that must have been the problem". He said he was going to retry it with the correct spelling.

A minute later he printed a new sheet, brought it out to us, handed it to me and said "please confirm that all of this information is correct". It was basically a printed version of the SSN Application, with her name, address, birthday, etc. I looked it over and it was correct this time, so I told him all the information was correct. He then took it back, and handed me another sheet, and explained it to me, saying "This doesn't mean you can't get a Social Security Card. K-1's are permitted to get a SSN. Just for some reason this information is giving me some kind of problem with the database, so we have to send it to our national center to double-check all the information. This usually takes 2-3 days, and then it should take another few days to process the card. If all goes well, you can expect it in a couple weeks. We will inform you by mail."

A little confused that there was some kind of mis-match problem in the database, we took the letter he handed us (which just says the same thing he verbally told us, that it needs to get checked at the national center) and left.

Now the stranger part: Because we were in the Social Security center, I had my phone on silent. I forgot about it for an hour or so. About an hour later, I remembered it and noticed I had 2 calls back to back from a local number about 5 minutes after we left the Social Security center, with no voicemail. I called it back and someone picked up and said "Social Security", and I explained to them that I was there about an hour previous and someone had called me. He was really gruff, and said "how did you get this number!?" and I told him it was on my caller ID. He then asked me which SSN office I went to, and I told him, and he said "Oh, I see. Well, we can't direct you to that office because I wouldn't know who to direct you to. You will just have to wait and see what has happened." I replied "Should I call back the real local number on the website for the Social Security office?" and he said "No, they won't be able to tell you anything, you will just need to wait."

That was the end of the call. So now I am left wondering why they called me and why our application had a problem.

I am wondering if maybe he called right away to say that he made a mistake and that our application will be processed normally without a problem?

The only thing about the SSN Application that might have been wrong was we checked the box "Legal Alien: Allowed to Work". I checked this because the guides on this website and the notices and on the forums I have read make it sound like K-1 falls under this category, not the "Not Allowed to Work" category. But I don't know if checking the wrong box here would have given us that problem anyway, as that seems like something he would have caught, because he seemed like he knew very well about K-1's being able to get SSNs.

Anyone who can piece this together at all? Nothing to do but wait and see.

Hello everyone! I just returned from Japan this morning after spending nearly two wonderful weeks with Yumi. Congratulations to everyone who got their visas on the 22nd! Our interview went well, but we also got those strange "Where will you live, and what do you plan to do there?" questions. That was it. Now, we just have to plan moving her things to Seattle.

A question to Akiko and Klester: You guys are planning your entries pretty soon, right? Yumi won't be coming until late September/early October. What shipping companies are you using to move your things?

Thanks again to everyone for your help and support!

lauraandfrogger, glad to hear that you got your NOA2! Hopefully the rest will go smoothly for you.

Hey guys

Chiaki is planning on coming around September 1st, so still a couple months off. We will probably use Yamato to send some of her extra things over, because I work at Yamato in Salt Lake City and all of her stuff will just come straight to my office To be honest, I haven't checked out pricing at all though.

Good luck with everything!!

So... if you send them a request for an interview as soon as possible, they'll schedule you a month away?

About like that, maybe a little more than a month.

22nd interviews, how was it? Chiaki had hers and said it was really easy. She said some of the others were being asked a lot of questions, but they just asked her when she was planning on going to America and if I had a job and let her know that she was approved and to expect her visa in a week

Woo, finally the process is over

Hope the rest of you had the same amount of success!

For my Dad's cosponsor I-134, I'm wondering if I should list his house under "Own real estate valued at..." area. He makes plenty of money a year to get approved, and only actually owns about 60k of the 460k house, so should I even bother listing it? I just want to make sure nothing bad is going to happen if I leave it off.

Thanks~

Perfect, thanks guys

Hey guys,

I am including my father as a co-sponsor for I-134. I asked for his tax return information for 2008, and he gave it to me; it is about 40 pages long

I looked through it and saw he has a lot of attachments because he receives income from various properties as well as his job. Should I just include the entire 40 page return with all the attachments when I send it with the I-134?

I don't wanna send too much and confuse somebody, but I definitely don't wanna not send something I should have, so I'm thinking I should send the whole return. Just want to make sure

Well, I woke up to some good news! As I said in my previous post, the embassy said they hadn't received our DS-230 and couldn't schedule our interview. So on Monday, I had Chiaki mail the DS230 and the attachments to the embassy, and was planning to try next Monday (giving them some buffer time) to re-schedule the interview for July.

But, yesterday, two days after sending the DS-230 to Tokyo, Chiaki got an e-mail basically saying "Thanks for your DS-230 and attachments, we have gone ahead and scheduled your interview for June 22nd". So they had some knowledge of the goings-on with our case and followed up by giving us our original scheduled day! Hurray!

Now I just have to hurry and send Chiaki all the forms she needs from my side!

Hey guys! Well, we got our reply yesterday!

..except, they replied "We cannot schedule your interview for June 22nd because we have not received your DS-230 yet."

Chiaki forgot to write our TKY# on the fax cover sheet, so I guess that sent it straight to the garbage can!

Oh well, she is going to send it by mail this week, and then re-schedule our interview next week (probably for the 2nd week of July or so).

I'm glad we all got our cases somewhat resolved though!

Best of luck to those that are interviewing on the 22nd. I wish we were!

Hey Johnny and Yumi,

Chiaki returned her packet 3 a while ago, like around the beginning of April. We never got anything back and haven't heard anything since then. She finished up her police, medical, koseki etc. and now we wanna schedule the interview

I really hope it is okay(>_<)

Hey guys,

In my message from Johnny and Yumi, they let me know that when Yumi faxed in her Packet 3 (DS-230), she got an e-mail response saying that it was received. Did other K-1 filers get this? I was under the impression that we didn't get any response normally after faxing it in (I think I came to that conclusion by reading past posts in this forum). Did the rest of you K-1 filers get any kind of response to your DS230 fax?

Also, just so you guys know, I called the paid line today. I inquired about whether or not they got our DS230, and if they got our interview submission. They said they will e-mail back to me within 3 days, so I will let you guys know what they say.

Thanks for the support