amysaid

Bah, can't find the old AOS post, so this will do. We filed for AOS a month ago and haven't heard anything about biometrics yet. I am hoping it's just delayed due to the holidays, but a tiny part of me is trying to freak out, since my husband's K3 visa expires in six months. I know you can file an extension on it if you are in the middle of AOS, and you can renew the EAD and everything, but ugh... I just want to be done with it already!

Andrea,

Funny to see all the men from Egypt wanting German Shepards

that is funny! my husband wants a german shephard, too. i wonder what it is about them that is so appealing to Egyptian men? I told him i don't see the point in having a dog when it has to spend all its life outside, though, since he wouldn't allow it to come indoors.

not sure what to say except

Not sure what adhering to your prescribed religious tenets has to do with being "radicalized." I guess the JW's must be hardcore radicalized!

with all these people going to egy soon, anyone wanna bring me back some halawa? the cosmetic kind, not the kind you eat

Hard to believe it's December, the fall and summer flew by for me. We just filed our AOS papers today, and our second anniversary is in a couple weeks. we're praying that the process goes smoothly with no RFEs for our financial stuff. It's been rough in our neck of the woods lately, being Muslims and living in a state where a supposed Muslim was plotting an attack on a public event... and then the mosque I go to was firebombed (a retaliation for the previous mentioned plotting, I guess) and now it's to the point where I can't go shopping without worrying about whether I need to be keeping an eye on everyone around me, after being harassed with my kids while shopping today.

I was just sharing information that I was given from a reputable source. This particular sheikh lived in NYC for some time and had some experience with the mark-up of halal foods. Of course your mileage may vary, but for us, the price difference (and gas costs to get to a store that sells halal meat) is a considerable one, so we just shop at the grocery store.

damn, i thought it was the 26th and we were going to slip in just under the deadline, since we were going to mail ours next-day delivery tomorrow. guess i better write a new check for the higher amount.

My husband and I are both Muslim, and before he came to the US, we went to al-Azhar in Cairo and saw a sheikh there who brought up the issue of halal meats. He told us that in a country like the US where halal meats are not easy to come by, that there was no harm or fault in eating non-halal slaughtered meats. He said halal meat tends to be far more expensive than regular meat, and that vendors jack up the price more than it needs to be to make a buck, and that that act in itself made the meat haram. So we just buy our meat from the grocery store. Of course, we still don't eat pork, drink alcohol, or partake in any other haram foods.

Yes, the same rules apply to the co-sponsor as the sponsor.

Sorry, I don't know much about taxes as the sponsor because I'm a student and haven't filed them in years. So we would have to have him send off his taxes, then wait for them to be processed and to hear back from the IRS? We can't send off copies of the 1040s he submitted prior to them being accepted? Sorry if this is a silly question...

One of our potential co-sponsors for the I-864 makes enough money, but hasn't filed his taxes in about four years. He just got his W-2s to file his taxes and was going to do that so we could submit our AOS paperwork, but my question is: Do we have to wait to file those copies of his tax paperwork until after they are accepted and processed by the IRS?

is that a no?

looove biryani. wish i had the skills to make it!

thanks

Okay, so, marriage certificates... in the AOS guides it states to submit a "certified copy" of your marriage certificate... how did you go about getting a certified copy of your marriage certificate if you got married outside the US? I have one certified, translated copy of our marriage certificate that we got done while in Egypt and had translated and certified in the Embassy, but I'm not about to send that to USCIS. I am not sure if it would suffice to have a notary make a copy of the certified English translation and attest that it is a true copy? what did you guys do?

Marriage is stressful, long distance relationships are stressful, intercultural relationships are stressful... so it happens. It didn't happen in our case, but I have seen it happen in others. It takes a lot of patience, commitment and flexibility. But be careful, some people have withdrawn the petition and then changed their minds, which you can't really do very easily with USCIS.

Thanks... they do have all of the paperwork and have read them, but have been advised by their father (who is uninvolved in the process) that it could cause issues. Maybe I need to go about it by looking up requirements for being a dependent for tax purposes...

A family friend is co-sponsoring my husband for AOS, she is married and her husband is concerned about their tax liability for sponsorship. He was told that if he sponsored my husband, they would have to claim him as a dependent for tax purposes, and he would count as a dependent if they file for a home loan, etc. My husband is employed and pays his own taxes, is not dependent on anyone but himself, and I tried explaining that there is no tax liability, but I can't find any proof of this anywhere. Any suggestions?

Thanks!

Hey guys, I know that some of you have started/finished with AOS recently, so I was hoping someone could chime in and help me out. Ahmed's medical exam from Egypt expired before we could file for AOS, so he has to get a new one in the US. We don't have any of his vaccination records (the doctor in Egypt didn't give him a copy and sealed everything before he could get a copy) so we're trying to figure out if he is going to need to get all of the vaccinations over again. If any of you went through the medical here in the US, can you tell me which (if any) of the vaccines you had to repeat? Also, how did they deal with the TB test issue? Since he's been vaccinated for TB, his Mantoux test will come back positive, which means he has to have a chest x-ray... we'd like to skip the Mantoux if possible and just go straight to the chest x-ray and save time (and money!)

Thanks!

Oooh, VJ baby board, can I join in? I've got a three month old named Dahlia

Congrats on the pregnancies! I'm so happy for you guys! And is it possible to have baby fever again when you only gave birth 3 months ago? Because I kinda miss being pregnant...

I flew to Egypt in 2009 in December (the first time) and IIRC my ticket ended up being about 1200. But if I had purchased sooner, I could've gotten one for about 900. I used Orbitz and Cheapflights.com the first time, later I booked directly through the airlines websites. Just play around with dates, if you have that option, and also clear the cookies from your computer and try searching again. Sometimes those websites log your searches and the more you search, the higher the prices go.

I'm sure it is all very confusing for them & a very hard adjustment...especially the older they are. I have been lucky, because my daughter is 4 & her biological father has never been involved, so she was OVERJOYED to have a man she can one day call "Daddy". If anything I was having more difficulty with "sharing" her with someone else. She had been just mine for the last 4 yrs I hope everything works out for you guys, and I think communication is the BIGGEST thing, and not pushing anything on them. Letting them work up to accepting him as part of the family, and MAYBE one day a father. But if they are older, it may be more of a friendship. Thats how it was with my step mom. And best of luck to everyone still waiting or still trying to adjust...the never ending process of being with those we love.

Monica

off topic... monica, i think i saw pics of your daughter on FB through sarah's FB and just wanted to say, she is beauuuutiful

if your husband drives in egypt and has a license, i would check with your state to see if they allow foreign drivers to drive with their foreign license... where we live, my husband had a year from the date of his arrival that he could drive with his Egyptian license (and a translation of it into english), which was helpful for us because it took a while to get his social security card, ID card, and all that. he still doesn't have a US driver's license (but will when he passes the drive test on Thursday, inshaAllah) but he's able to drive to and from work with his Egyptian one.

The hardest things for us were as other people have mentioned... a job (took 8 months), driving, friends (he's made a couple, but really wishes we lived closer to a mosque) and being so far away from his family. he uses skype and yahoo messenger a lot to communicate with his family back home, though.

I saw this article today, thought it might be relevant

http://www.alarabiya.net/articles/2010/08/16/116806.html

Bethlehem Christians fast Ramadan with Muslims

Bethlehem, WEST BANK (Al Arabiya)

Christians in the West Bank city of Bethlehem, the birthplace of Jesus Christ, join the city's Muslim residents in fasting Ramadan in continuation of a centuries-old tradition of interfaith solidarity.

Mike Kanawati, a Christian resident of Bethlehem, who manages a souvenir and jewelry shop, fasts the days of Ramadan with his Muslim neighbors.

"My grandmother used to fast, both Christian and Muslim fasting, and we were raised this way to show respect for and solidarity with other religions," Kanawati said.

"Fasting, either the Christian or the Muslim way, makes one feel the suffering of those who do not have food." he added.

Kanawati said he was proud "like many other Christians" of fasting the Muslim month of Ramadan and stressed that doing so in no way diminished his Christian faith.

He revealed that some of his Muslim friends in turn perform the Christian fasting, such as abstaining from eating cheese, meat and milk, in demonstration of solidarity the Christians.

The tradition, Kanawati stressed, was preserved over generations of Muslims and Christians who coexisted in Bethlehem for hundreds of years.

Bethlehem has a Muslim majority, but is also home to one of the largest Palestinian Christian communities.

In survey of Bethlehem's Christians conducted in 2006 by the Palestinian Center for Research and Cultural Dialogue, 90 percent were reported of having Muslim friends, 73.3 percent said that the Palestinian Authority respects Christian heritage in the city, and 78 percent reported the emigration of Christians from Bethlehem was due to the Israeli travel restriction in the area.

*(Written by Mustapha Ajbaili)