rebeccajo

I'm no expert on RFE's (thankfully we've never had any) but it kinda makes sense to me that the FIRST RFE a person might receive would be called an INITIAL RFE and a SUBSEQUENT RFE would be called ADDITIONAL.
From my reading experience here I think it's safe to say that once you return ANY RFE and they are satisfied with it, it typically does not take them 90 days to issue interims. But they are going to TELL you 90 days as they are within their boundaries to do so.

That's kind of silly.
There are a lot of people who get approved at the consulate and then don't take the flight over.
And there are lots of people who come over, don't marry, and return home.
And there are lots of people who marry and then get divorced later.
Better to just worry about your own case and leave everybody else be.

That's kind of silly.
There are a lot of people who get approved at the consulate and then don't take the flight over.
And there are lots of people who come over, don't marry, and return home.
And there are lots of people who marry and then get divorced later.
Better to just worry about your own case and leave everybody else be.

Allen -
It's not a chat. It's a message board. It'll all be here tomorrow.......................

Of course it shouldn't happen.
Do all Germans eat sauerkraut? Of course they don't.

Our friend Merrillizer has been blogging about his exploits for a while now.
And as Shakespeare said - "Me thinks though doest protest too much".
I think it's all a bag of fart$, if you want my two cents worth.

$1010 is a lot of money.
Your legal bills will likely exceed that, I'm sorry to say.
Before my husband arrived in the US, I procured the money necessary to complete his adjustment. This money was set aside for that purpose and that purpose only.

Charles, "money problems" isn't really a good excuse for allowing your foreign-born spouse to be out of status. Persons legally admitted on a K1 but who have not filed for adjustment prior to the expiration of their I94 are, legally, without status. Once adjustment has been filed, they are STILL without a defined status within the code. The pending application, however, does offer them some legal protections.
Over and over again on VJ we read the standard advice that waiting to file is no big deal. This is poor advice and poor advice indeed.

Jen -
If you've left out 'certain details' that is your prerogative. I'm sure if David posted there would be more details still. This isn't a judgment, but just reinforces that there are two sides to every story.
Insofar as children go, maybe it's because I only had one that I believe so strongly in what I wrote. I see my sons growing and his passing into the adult world very clearly. I've got no other children at home to 'soothe' me into the separation that occurs when they grow and leave the nest. It's natures way for kids to grow up and go. And we, as parents, have lives left to live after they go. I tried to prepare my son for a well-rounded and fulfilled life. And I had to learn that I needed a happy, fulfilling life after he was gone. To me it's just that simple.
This isn't intended to be an argument about how to raise a child. It's just my opinion that we need to remember we are more than parents.

I agree with Kelly insofar as making peace. But....sometimes you just can't. My ex and I never have. But my bitterness isn't to do with the years we were married. It is to do with the way he handled himself towards our son during the divorce, and the way he continues to punish him.
Which brings me to something I've been wanting to say since I started reading this 'blog'. Children.
Everybody who has read me for any length of time at all knows I have one son; that he is the apple of my eye; and that I love him ferociously. I know Jen has three daughters and she has devoted herself to them as well.
Whenever I try to describe how I feel about raising children, I find I have to go back to something my Mother said to me on the day Zach was born. She was getting ready to leave my hospital bedside after my long labor. She said - "Remember, he doesn't belong to you. He belongs to himself." Some people have told me that was a cruel thing to say, but I never took it that way. I took it for the fundamental truth that it was. I had, on that day, brought new life into the world. Life that I would nurture; that I would try to shape into a good and decent human being; life that would give me great happiness and great tribulations; life that I would eventually release into the world.
Children leave us. I've struggled with that knowledge daily since my Mother spoke it to me so plainly. We do what we can and must - but we must always remember they have lives of their own which will spin off from ours.
So - while I would do nearly anything for my son - I have never put him first. Rather I have put family first and what is in the best interest of all of us. Sometimes one of us comes first; sometimes another. Last fall, I sold the family home my son was raised in. It liked to kill him. I wil never forget him standing in the driveway (on his last visit in from college before the closing which would take place while he was away) looking up into the woods he loved. I remember the arguments we had about the house - about how he loved it and how it was home to him. And I remember hugging him, and asking him if he understood why we had to do what we were doing. He looked at me through tears, and said he did. And I knew he meant it. Because he knew that together we were all stronger than we were separate.
He still comes home from school now and then. He calls home to check on me. And he is growing from the tiny infant I held in my arms 20 years ago, to the man my Mother saw in the future. And that man has three men from whom he takes his life lessons. His own father - whom he loves but despises; his step-father - a sweet man who treats his mother well and makes her happy; and his grandfather - who taught him to look in the mirror for the true measure of his self.
I hope he looks to his Mother also. Who never put him first all the time - but put him on the road to learning that being first isn't real life. That being part of the whole is where real strength is found. And where real fulfillment will begin.

I don't know where I read it (or how long ago either) but I recall learning that the average adjustment period for a person who has emigrated is seven years.
And I believe the adjustment difficulties for an english-first-language-speaker are often underestimated. Another Brit (not my husband) told me it's so utterly frustrating to not know how to do ANYTHING - not to know where to buy stamps or post a letter; not to know where to go for personal toiletries or everyday household goods; not to know how to get from Point A to Point B. Because the British accent is so charming to Americans, they are often treated like performing monkeys. My Irish husband gets comments DAILY in his job (he's on the phone all day) about his voice. It's nice to be noticed, but sometimes it annoys him.
After three years, I find Wes to still suffer at times from 'cultural hesitation'. There are still times I need to explain to him how something gets done in America; how something works; or where we need to go to get a task done. It's really quite amazing when I think about it. Those of us who have not moved to another country really have no appreciation for how MUCH an immigrant will face.
Heck, it took Wes a couple of months to realize he couldn't stuff an American toilet with toilet paper and expect it work - our toilets here are of the water-saving variety. Toilets in the UK have about a million pounds of water pressure behind them and could suck an unsuspecting American right down the hole.......

Well, this is what I get for rarely going into the upper forums anymore. And especially my even more rare readings in this one.
Jen -
I am unbelievably devastated to read your news. I honestly never thought I'd see this. I had sensed an unidentifiable melancholy in some of our last PM's but I wasn't able to put my finger on it. I had simply put it down to a bad day; to the adjustments of a new marriage - who knows.
But I'm not surprised at all to see you post your news so frankly- it was always like you to post with honesty and clarity. Your writings now, I'm certain, are cathartic for you. A release. As they should be.
As both of use are 'old-timers' to this board we can both attest to the fact that it's unpopular on VJ to speak of anything being more horrible than the separation of an LDR and the wait for the visa. During our wait for Wes' greencard (17 months) I frequently tried to express to readers how debilitating THAT waiting was also. Frequently I think I failed to get the message across.
I've also occassionally commented that one of the things you read EACH DAY on VJ is a fallacy, although an innocent one. And it's something Wes and I said too. "If we can get through this long distance relationship, we can get through anything".
Nothing could be further from the truth.
I've always said that I have the utmost respect for those who give up all they know to move around the world in the name of love. It's a courageous leap of faith. We read tales here so often of USC's who feel they've been defrauded by the foreign spouse. How often is it also that we don't read of the USC with the unrealistic expectation that their SO will land on US soil and immediately acclimate?
Jen, you write about your feelings now with such clarity, such accuracy. You see others here telling you they've felt the same; wondered about the same things; struggled - some with success, some not. You wonder if you'd spent more time physically together if you would have known more about each other. You wonder if you had not rushed the visa and spent more time apart if you would have known more about each other. You even wonder if you had your 'eyes wide shut' to pitfalls.
So here's what I think, my friend. I think you loved him, and he loved you, and it would have mattered not if you had met and married right within the same town. You would have believed that the love would have overcome all. When we fall in love, that is what we do. We believe.
There are some differences in these relationships from the 'typical' vanilla relationship. There IS the risk of being overtly blind - I believe that someone who is so blinded in an international relationship would behave the same way in a domestic one. There's the risk to the alien who gives it all up, only to realize later the adjustments are too great. And of course there is international travel and phone calls at strange hours - the struggle to get the visa -
the stuff of romance. All those things that lead to eventually...........................
Normalcy. A man and a woman. Two people who won't always agree. Two people who won't always share the burden 50/50. Two people who will wake up somedays saying "OMG what have I done". Two people - two ordinary people with a wonderful story behind them, and thousands of normal tomorrows together. Two people who have to face all the adjustments of marriage (and they are many) along with cultural adjustments; financial adjustments; language barriers; religious differences.
Not a journey for the faint of heart. Not a journey to be taken lightly. Not a journey to be entered into because one is swept off their feet. Not a journey for everyone.
Jen - you took the journey. I hope we see you here often. I'm sure as time heals you, you'll have more to share. More that can help others see clearly.
You are one of my visajourney friends - one of my peers. I'm here for you now, just like I was then. Don't look back - just look forward.
Remember - you aren't faint of heart.

Good grief man. Your wife disappears and you don't notify the authorities? You take it on faith from an e-mail that she is 'safe'?
You better hope like hell she is safe. Because if this turns criminal in any way, you are gonna be Suspect #1.

Sounds to me like you probably should have kept your hands to yourself when your wife, who probably is at least 50 pounds lighter, several inches shorter and a whole lot less stronger than you, decided to push your helpless, pathetic self against the coffee table.
Sounds like she knew you were a hot-head and it wouldn't be hard to make a domestic violence charge stick.
I've been 'pushed' before. Wah. Sorry you don't get any sympathy from me.

Well, there ya go. You've just publicly announced his position as King.
I would hazard a guess that you are gathering your data from your "Praise" button. Which is a tool that hasn't been around here forever. I nearly choked on my tea at the statement "#1 best rated member of all time". The most helpful people you ever had on this site left way before you ever had such a tool. They worked together and not against each other. Something you don't have now and something you will never have if all you count on is "data".
I used to work with a woman whom the boss kept because she was good at what she did. Made him a lot of money and knew what she was doing. But he hired another girl to do the public contact. The "knowledgeable" girl was running off clients because she had no people skills.
Anyway - this thread isn't about Push. It just happens to revolve around an incident between himself and me.
What's really going on around here is not my fault, or Push's fault, or the fault of the Mods. It's yours. My understanding is that (because of problems encountered with your first group of Moderators many years ago) you had no site moderation for a couple of years. During this time a few very active members decided Vj was an amusement park and used it as such. There was some really sly and underhanded stuff that went on and it contributed to creating an environment so hostile that you eventually felt the need to create Regional Forums people could go to where they felt "safe". I never understood this concept of segregating the membership so they could be protected from profiling, racism and sexism.
Despite the Regionals, the monkey business continued to escalate until you decided you had to have a little help. So you gave a couple of people a little bit of global authority and went about your business. It's not lost on me though that you can't keep anybody on. The Mods get worn out trying to chase down what's going on in such a huge community. And you can't expect them to do their job if they are making decisions based upon what is happening in a particular thread but you overrule them because of "data". "Data" doesn't cover up stink, you know.
Then you have the other problem that, at the present moment, you've got Moderators who make snap decisions and who clearly don't read everything in front of them. I don't know what you all focus on when you get a report. In the case of the thread which caused me to post the one we are in now, you have gone to great lengths above to "count out" who had the most offenses - Pushbrk or myself. I guess everybody missed out on the reason I even spoke to him in that thread in the first place, which was because he was scoffing at the information being posted in the thread by a third member. I just don't like that.
Anyway - it's over. As mox said a couple of weeks ago, it's chasing windmills with you. You missed the point ages ago that you should have a couple of mods for each forum and they should be limited to those forums alone. If you had used such a system, you could even have taken people like Pushbrk and myself for moderation in our different fields of "expertise" where we could help others without butting heads. You could have kept egos in check and not created "super members" who are the "most helpful". It's smoke in your eyes to think any one member can be all knowing in all areas of this process - there is just too much too know. Someone like I Quit could have been modding the "Working" forum. Someone like JWolf could have modded "Adjusting from other Visa Types". Someone like emt103c could mod waivers. It takes a village you know - not just one or two "Kings". Global mods then could have been utilized to put out real fires and not take the heat for everything going down. And it would have checked their egos also - something sorely needed at the moment, IMO.
As we say to anyone else on the forums wherein we are pretty sure they have a messed-up situation but we hope they get what they want - good luck to you! You are going to need it.