Cortr

Hi all...

Getting around to filing my wife's naturalization paperwork soon. We've been married and she's lived here for 3.5 years, so we're going the route that she can naturalize at 3 years rather than 5 due to her marriage to a US Citizen. Couple questions.

1) As proof of our ongoing marriage and my status as a US Citizen for the past 3 years (my whole life) they ask for passport or birth certificate. I have both, but I don't think the birth certificate is the style with the "raised seal" on it, just a copy from 1977. Secondly my passport is expired. Will they accept an expired passport as valid proof? (I need to get it renewed, whoops)

2) We have some certified "marriage licenses" that we got from the county courthouse. It has a signature of a judge on it stating that he did unite us in marriage on such and such a date, but I know you can also request a statement of marriage from the state capital that you have to mail in for. Any idea whether the thing we have is enough?

Thanks!

When I printed out the e-mails and chat logs for our petition, I cut out about 75% of them, because it would have resulted in so much extra bulk.... and because I didn't want some of our more risque or personal conversations floating around!

I think the main thing that you want to get across is the duration, frequency, and consistency of your interaction. I added a cover sheet to the whole packet that described the contents and made clear that this was just a portion of the communications.

The whole process was surprisingly time-consuming and was most certainly responsible for quite a few tree deaths.

If she answers no, she definitely needs to qualify it as Eric & Jin describes above. Answering simply "no" may result in them calling it a material misrepresentation, which is automatic denial.

You're going to drive in China? Braver man than I!

If you file on March 1, you'll probably not be interviewed until September-ish anyway. Do both, if you can swing it. Otherwise, I'm not sure it matters much which one you pick.

Also, I read (on here) that the Monday afternoon petitioner's hour is no more. Scroll down a bit and you can probably find the post. It wasn't that long ago.

Tax transcripts prove your past income. Letter of employment proves your current income.

You need both.

W-2 is redundant because you already already have the tax transcripts.

You can order tax transcripts for the last 3 years from the IRS. Since you just filed, I would wait until the IRS has your 2010 returns as well, because you will need to show income for 2010 anyway since your income will (in all likelihood) fall significantly past tax day.

Those transcripts are what you want and are sufficient proof for your income. You don't want H&R Block forms, W-2s, or anything like that. The transcripts are official IRS records of what you submitted as taxable income for the years in question.

1) No.

2) Yes.

3) Mostly just agencies hawking visa/travel services -- the majority of which are probably scams.

Personally, I stayed at the coffee shop on the first floor, in the back of the lobby. It's adjacent to an airline office. It's in the rear-right quadrant of the lobby if you're looking at it from the front. They have comfortable furniture and serve various libations, focusing on wine (kind of unusual), but you can also get coffee, soft drinks, juice, as well as appetizer type food. It is also relatively expensive (for China) but not ridiculously so. They also have Wi-Fi.

It doesn't open as early in the morning as the other place does, but maybe at 8 or 9. There's nothing stopping you from walking into the lobby of the building the consulate is in and looking around. You won't be able to get past the 4th floor security checkpoint (right next to the other coffee shop) without consulate business to attend to, but it's not like the whole building is on lockdown or something.

Well, everybody is different. My wife is pretty easy to please when I cook at home, but she's picky in restaurants sometimes. She especially likes steak, and (this was a surprise) fetuccini alfredo with chicken or shrimp.

She came over here with a "dislike" for anything to do with cheese, but thus far, she also really claims to love my homemade pizza. I've had the cheese in China, and it is abysmal, so that may have something to do with it.

Ours took 2 days, but she lived right in Guangzhou. Don't worry in any event, you're through the worst part! Congrats!

If you were half-Chinese, you'd play Mahjong.

I don't know why you'd get married to someone from a group you obviously have so much contempt for. Anyway, none of my concern.

Are you... on speed, or something?

I'm a USC but also a .NET developer. The job market for .NET work is better than most areas right now. I have little doubt that you can find work. Utilize headhunters/staffing firms, they have the connections to get your resume in front of a hiring manager, not rejected by some HR software beancounter program.

I showed his manifesto about how "most" Chinese women act to my wife, who thought it was offensive, but also so off-base that she thought it was funny. She then forwarded it to a couple (Chinese) friends of hers, who also had a good laugh.

But this is an internet discussion forum, so everybody is a certified expert, and fully qualified to generalize and make blanket statements about several hundred million people. Internet experts about Chinese women can dismiss opinions of actual Chinese women with a couple of sentence fragments!

What justashooter is saying also does not apply, at all, to my wife.

I don't know anything about him or his wife, but I think making vast generalizations about what "Chinese women" think, want, or how they act... is inherently flawed.

My wife is very independent, and loves my self-deprecating sense of humor. The other Chinese women that I have come to know through my wife are also nothing like what he describes above.

Perhaps it is true of an older generation or something, but mostly, I doubt it.

I guess I don't understand why you would ask this question?

You will be processed for immigration at the border. You definitely should not lie to the border agent about your reason for entering the United States, because he/she needs to process your K-1 visa properly, etc, which includes special stamps and notations on your entry card.

If you were to enter the United States and not get that, you would be unable to file for adjustment of status, as that stuff is required when you submit the application (and interview, later down the road).

I don't know where "Platsburg" is, but I'm assuming it's some airport in the United States? So you'd be flying from there to another site in the US? That would be a domestic flight, and there would be no immigration agents to deal with after you arrived at your destination.

P.S. The border agent is going to leaf through your passport when you present it (regardless of what you tell him about why you are entering) and 100% for-sure they will see your K-1 visa affixed inside.

It would probably be "bad" if you tried to act like you were entering for another reason.

As has been stated, one certificate is fine if your wife/fiancee has lived in China for her entire life. My wife lived in several different areas/provinces and just had one. There were no issues at interview time.

Michael Moore is just a propaganda artist. Don't pay attention to him. That movie is misleading in many respects, but accurate in some others.

The short story is that US Healthcare is very good quality but yes, it's also very expensive. If you don't have insurance, and something serious happens to you, you can easily be completely overwhelmed by the costs. I read a statistic recently that something like 60% of personal bankruptcies are due to sudden unforseen medical expenses.

For example, a friend of mine's girlfriend recently had an aneurism and a stroke, which required her to go into the emergency room, followed by a series of surgeries and a few weeks in the hospital.

The total bill? Over $400,000. Fortunately, she had insurance, so they will only have to pay their deductible (probably like $1000) out of their own pockets.

Insurance and socialized medicine are basically the same concept, it's just that in a completely socialized setting like Canada, you've got a safety net and the system will always catch you if you fall. In the US, you have to purchase the insurance yourself.

There's also the possibility in the US that the insurance company will try to weasel their way out of paying for some legitimate medical service. That happens sometimes, but it's rarer than Michael Moore would have you believe.

I know people who are here on H1B visas and student visas who have had car loans/leases with no problem. I don't see why you should have any difficulty. The bank will want to know that you have the income (and income history) to support the size of loan you're applying for. I've never heard of duration of residence being a factor at all. After all, if you skip town and head back to Italy, they can always repossess your car.

I was able to fly to GZ reasonably cheap on Asiana Airlines from JFK (and Chicago) round-trip. There are cheaper options but Asiana's service beats just about anybody else. The downside is you have to layover in Seoul -- but Seoul's airport is really nice so it's not a huge deal.

The only direct flight to GZ from the states that I am aware of is from LAX.

If you're willing to fly into Hong Kong, you can almost certainly get a better deal, as a lot more airlines fly into HK than GZ.

You'll get a marriage license from some government office (google it) in your county. After getting that, yes, bring it to whereever you want to get married.

You'll need someone who is able to legally sign it off like a pastor, priest, minister, rabbi, imam, whatever... and also some officials can do this as well, most notably judges. As long as you can get someone like that to sign off on it, you're done. You'll most likely have to turn it back into the government office where you got it in the first place once it's been filled out, so it's officially on the record.

The passport with I-94 and visa will suffice.

Wow, less than 4 months from application to interview. Congratulations on the approval!

Social security office is full of buffoons. Went to get my wife's name changed last week and they had all kinds of dumb ideas in their heads:

First, they claimed that we couldn't change her name on the card (she already has a SS#) because her K-1 was now used and no longer valid. Well duh. It was used and no longer valid when you issued the original number a month ago too. This was especially hilarious since it was literally the same guy who had originally done the paperwork for us last month to get the card.

After I pointed that out, he backtracked. Standing there with the certified marriage certificate in-hand (it's required to show for name changes) -- he then tried to say that we couldn't name-change now because we'd already been married. That we had to come in before getting married, in order to name change.

I then pointed out that it didn't seem too feasible to show up prior to getting married with a certified marriage certificate (which is required) for the name change.

After I shot his dumb idea down, he finally relented and we got the paperwork done.

Another fun thing about this particular social security office is the 450 pound female "security guard" who sits at the entry point. Apparently her job is to sit around, eat donuts, and look through women's purses. She will also say "push 1" or "push 2" to get your appointment number from the touch screen computer. (Which you could read yourself -- it has instructions). I was wearing a pullover, and I could have had three handguns tucked into the waistband and walked right in, but they want to look in a 65 year old woman's purse who is applying for retirement benefits.

On both occasions that we have been to the SS office, we haven't had to deal with this woman directly as we've gone at lunchtime and she's been eating lunch in the back room or someplace (probably two sticks of butter and a half dozen pork steaks). In her absence, you can just walk in, take a number yourself, and sit down to wait. Upon returning, she will plop down at the front door and insist to look in every woman's purse, but guys in hoodies and baggy clothes can walk right past her.

So in short, if you want to bring contraband to the social security office for whatever reason, put it in your pocket (or come at lunchtime). Your tax dollars at work.

...when you go through a jumbo-sized bottle of soy sauce in less than a month.