R&AINC

Just sick of seeing the estimated date moving the wrong way again......

<--- slaps Missy..... get a grip woman... its gonna be just fine!

No fine this is going so slow that is "really" going backwardssssss!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

WE WANT NOA2 / WE WANT NOA2 / WE WANT NOA2.

Wow This week was bad in terms of approvals. I will take a brake form here.

Ciao,

I think you need to focus on your future. Depending on what field you are in, a masters in the USA may not be the best idea.

A master can cost you anywhere from 25k to 50k per year. In a 2 years program that is 50k to 100k. Plus you need to add your room and boarding cost. On the cheap side you are talking about 14k a year. (House, food, books, spending money). In a 2 years program that can take you to 78k to 128k.

Once you are on a F-1 visa you cannot work. (Well you can work in the school like teaching assistant etc, but you won;t make much). Moreover, after you are done, you still have to deal with h-1 visa etc etc.

Moreover you will leave home for more than a year. After you do that you are poisoned. YOu will not feel home anywhere. YOu will always miss something.

There are very good masters in Italy, and they are cheaper compared to the one in the USA. Unless your family is very rich, I do not recommend you go through this hassle.

Most likely you want to do the master, cause you want to show him, or maybe even because you want to get back with him. Do not do that. Let a year go by and then if you still think that a master is a good idea the go for it.

I did all of the above... and I do not recommend it to anybody. I got involved with the USA again because of my girlfriend. But I would not go back there if I had to go through f1- h1 etc.

let's give out something to the first march approval..... Like an electronic gift card signed by all 105 march people or something like that.

hey guys looks like VSC's at feb.17 now it's gettin really close thanks be to God

we're at march 02... just a few more days

Does that measure take in in consideration weekends? If yes then we are only 8 days away from the 1st march approval that makes the 29th of June.

But if we count that february has less days then I think the 25th should be it. One week from today.

the Denmark embassy is not very useful .....http://denmark.usembassy.gov/visa/immigrantvisa/fiancevisa.htm

They are alright, just a little different. They said that they would email it to us when it's time

I hope for me, for you and for everybody here, that the time comes soon.

did anybody prepare packet 3?

Packet 3 is after approval from Vermont - it is embassy specific and comes from the embassy.

Hi, I went to the embassy section, and for the embassy in Frankfurt, they have all the forms that you can download. I thought that was packet 3.

so for me would be: http://germany.usembassy.gov/visa/kv_processing.html

this is for italy: http://italy.usembassy.gov/visa/immigrant/application.asp

this is for poland: http://poland.usembassy.gov/poland/docs_ch...ist_fiance.html

the Denmark embassy is not very useful .....http://denmark.usembassy.gov/visa/immigrantvisa/fiancevisa.htm

did anybody prepare packet 3?

3 Months....

there are too many march filers... 102 and counting.

one more thing came to mind.

What about the drivers license? Do you have to take a test etc, or can you just swap it for the US one. I imagine that this has to do a lot with the state you live. any thoughts?

Also what about car insurance. When I came to Germany, I had a letter from my previous insurance company stating that I did not have any claims for the last 7 years. This helped me to be positioned in the 55% for car insurance.

What about in the States? Do they accept that or do they want to scam you by making you pay top $ cause you have a new DL?

thanks again

have a nice day

Not to mention that whenever I post something, the room gets quiet.

What a bunch of MEANIES! :rofl:

Lil' One! Slumming again? :rofl: :rofl:

getting too cranky over in February...I like the cheerful ones

Sometimes it is... but then again, I think i can understand... right at the table but you can't eat yet!!!!!

Richard or Joanna,

I have noticed you do too much bar hopping between February, january, everyvery threads .... Stay where you belong

did you people fall a sleep?? where is everyone?

Selling houses today - sold TWO today!

Hi,

congrats... Just for price comparison, What is the price per SQ FT in your area?

did you people fall a sleep?? where is everyone?

@ R&AINC: Haha so true, though American customer service isn't much better... You basically deal with an automated system (super annoying) and they lie a lot. Comcast is evil. They claimed to have sent a refund check months ago, now they admitted they didn't even work on my refund yet.... Grrrrrrrr.

Ugh and won't you miss all the bars around Giselastrasse and Muenchener Freiheit? I basically spent my time as a student there

,

Yes that's what I wanted to include by saying Leopoldstrasse....

well then i forgot to mention (i do not know if i will miss them anyway..) Kunzpark (Kultfabrik) P1...but only during a world cup and also to eat Pizza.......8 seasons (especially when drunk people want to jump from the balcony..any withness???..).....and all those little places around.

another thing I will not miss from here is steak (beef meat in general) The only chewable meat you can buy here is the roulade(i think that is how it spelled) and that is only because it is 1mm thin

I would like to thank you all for your reply. It is good to have this kind of help, because this knowledge can only be had once one goes through the situation.

The reason I would want to close the bank accounts is because here the yearly fees are too much. (and also I am not sure I will ever have the chance to come back to close the account. On the other hand it would be good to keep some euros in there....

As for the pension, I did some research, and it seems that if you are not a german citizen and have worked less than 5 years(paid contribution), then you can claim back what you paid 2 years after you leave. I still have to verify this information, but it mentioned in many expat forums. If you are a german citizen you can transfer the contributions to the US system (but that is kind of scary looking at the social security deficit.)

I will miss from germany:

Weisswurst.... Weissbier.... Biergardens.... english garden.... isar.... leopoldstrasse.... munich airport(best airport in the world i think)... driving on the autobahn at 250km and hour.... see the alps on a clear day.... the juice shop on viktualianmarket..... being able to ride a bike and not be considered a wannabe lance armstrong or someone who cannot afford a car.....snitzel un pommes for 4.50 on tuesday..... being able to buy cuban cigars.....speaking english to the lady at the bakery... passing the police on the authobahn at 250km and they do not even look at you.... priceless

what i will not miss:

Dealing with vodafone and other types of german contracts.... dealing with customer service or the none existance of it.... and I think that is all.

Hi,

Sorry if I enter in english but my german is terrible. I have lived in germany for a couple of years. I am currently applying for the K-1 visa (Frankfurt consulate)

I have a few question regarding how to leave germany.

1-when do you have to unregister(ausmeldung) from the town where you live in germany?

2-what do you do with all your 2 year contracts(TV, mobile, etc)

3-what do you do with your bank account? Credit cards etc?

4-ON a k-1 visa you have 90 days to get married and then you can apply for AOS till you receive the conditional green card. During this time you are not a US resident. Therefore do you still need to keep the residence in germany? Can you unregister from germany on a later date?

5-What happens to the money you paid for your pension (rentenversicherung)?

Any other things I should know before moving?

Thanks a lot for any help you can give.

It seems that once we start hitting 100-160 number in the Igor's VJ, We should see some approvals from march.....

I am almost 120 places away........The first March filler is #243 83 places away. at an average of 5 a day we should see the first approvals for march in around 20 days (counting weekends) Thus June 24th being the first day of good news for the Marchies......

what do you think?

Hi,

I just checked the igor list and I jumped from 305 to 285 overnight. This is after being drifting in the low 300's for quite a while.

Check yours you may be surprised.....

What happened?

Hey this is G (Beneficiary)

Well some of you know a little bit about our story and well my fiances parents already know everything about our engagement and the Fiance visa. I think her dad took it way better than her mom did, but yeah they were okay with it. My girlfriend had an interview for a better paying job and she is still looking around to get better options. We emailed the embassy to figure out if the three year taxes returns was required and apparently yes!... I asked a friend of mine who get through the process here in Venezuela and she said they had to take three year taxes return, so My fiance doesn't meet that requirement, she only has one year taxes return and it doesn't meet the 125% poverty guideline. She talked to her mom last night a bit about it and she even mentioned about needing a co-sponsor and her mom said that she should wait Three years to get those taxes returns and do it herself because if she doesn't meet the financial requirements maybe that means she is not ready!! so Anyway my Fiance thinks her dad will think the same way so it's pointless to even ask and like we thought before we can't count on them as co-sponsors.

Right now I'm down in the dumps.. My fiance is so far away from me, I'm trapped here without a visa and she is working and she already took a break from work to come last April so she can't come again !!sigh!! I have no idea what I should do. I mean in a couple of weeks it will be FOUR YEARS of being together but at the same time so far away!. I swear I could wait for her forever but when I think of that waiting period I just think it's going to be so hard .. sigh

Any of you have an advice for us? any other option we haven't seen? I dunno I'm just desperate.

Hola,

I am asking a friend of mine cause my fiancee just graduated so she does not have a 3 years tax return. So ask her if maybe one of her friends or relatives can do it.

Sino pidele a Hugo Rafael que te mande sus 3 tax returns Con eso calificas rapidito

]

thanks melanne, do you know which model and where she got it??? does it work like the italian one where you do not have to be in a wifi area?? i have seen a belkin one on skype , but you have to be in a wifi area, which most of the time , you also must pay................thier skype phone goes on a 3g network i think...so its like a moblie phone with skype built into it.........thanks for the info everyone, but i need something more than having to use internet and for FROM ameriica TO Italy cells

Get an IPhone 3G. Now you you can even have Skype on the iphone. You can get a refurb one form ATT. YOu need to get a data plan for the iphone which is 30$ a mmonth for unlimited internet over 3g. + the phone plan.

If not you can get any phone that has Window Mobile. Most of them are from a brand called HTC. HTC sells them to Att cingular etc. Popular names are diamon, diamond touch, Kaiser etc. With this phones all you need is a data plan. and you are good to go. I do this and I call from cell phone to cell phone using skype. Since i use it 2 hour a day some times that is: 120 minutes a day times 30 days = 3600minutes.

30$/ 3600 minutes is 0,0083$ a minute. Since he also needs the plan in italy then you can multiply by 2 and you get 0.016$ a minute which is not bad. The more you talk the better it is. I also use my cell phone internet connection to connect to the internet with my laptop so I do not have to pay extra internet. You can only do this with windows phones not with the Iphone.

Does anyone know if a lawyer is supposed to help speed things up?

Several friends Ihave talked to say that my lawyer is supposed to be doing more to help me, not just by sending in the application. My dad called the lawyers office(it is a friend of his) and asked and she said no.

common sense tellls me that if that were true(a lawyer doing something to speedthings up) then everyone would be doing it or getting faster approvals

I guess i would like to know if I should stay with who I'm with(lawyer) or try someone else that friends are telling me about.

uuuuggghhh, the STRESS

A lawyer cannot speed up the process. I will not advise you to keep your lawyer, change to a different one, or dump the lawyers and do it yourself.

If you feel you are getting value from a lawyer, than by all means stay with him/her.

But they will not get USCIS, or NVC, or the embassy, to process things one iota faster than if you file the paperwork yourself, assuming you are competent and can follow instructions and fill in the paperwork correctly. In fact, if anything, a lawyer will only slow it down since they need to get the information and documentation from you and then assemble and file it. All you've done is add an (expensive) step to the process.

Now, the above is NOT true for unusual or complex cases. If you need to file a waiver for example, a lawyer may be helpful. For a standard visa application they don't add much if any value.

As to timelines, some on this thread are wondering how long things will take... I can only tell you that there are people who are in the 6+ month club, meaning they have waited more than half a year from NOA1 to NOA2. There is even a 1 year club

And keep in mind that even you get your NOA2 you are not done by any means. You have to get through NVC and your consulate processing.

Our NOA1-NOA2 took 4.5 months (Sep 5- Jan14). But we have now been out of NOA2 for the same length of time, and still don't have our interview scheduled! We are a routine case. Nothing bizarre. No waivers, no RFEs. We simply got stuck in random administrative processing AP at NVC for 7 weeks. And now the embassy (Bangkok, in our case) is sitting on files for weeks on end without scheduling interviews. So here we are 9 months since we filed our I-129F and no end in sight yet.

Patience, everyone. You will need lots of it to survive to the end.

Good luck all!

Hi, I saw somewhere that you can request the embassy to open a provisional file after the NOA2 is received. Would this speed the process at all? Did you try this?

Hi,

I am not sure about the immigration part, but the US is not the best place to be if you are sick and you do not have insurance. It will also be difficult to get insurance having pre-existing conditions. I can imagine that you have looked into this already, but if not make sure you do. Insurance can run you up 5-600$ a month in some cases.

best wishes.

My igor list is going backwards. I guess since the VSC is busy with other things, VJ should stop new members from entering time lines

Man. I am having it. How can you go 8 months(for some people even more) living in a limbo? You can have skype, you can talk as much as you want, nevertheless you your life is put on hold.

We also need to find jobs when we get there.(At least I need too), but I cannot look for one now, cause I do not know when I will be there.

The way is paved

nowhere it leads,

an end it has

for a new beginning is.

The wait is long

while the brain plays

the puzzled game

and it asks how long?

The center moves

fast and slow

East or West

I cannot take rest

But the day will come

when the half 'll be all

brain and heart

will finally rest: and I will come