I plan on sending in my I-129F form in mid-October. I live in NYC, and my girlfriend lives in Montreal. We have both drowned ourselves in information relating to this entire process (I must say that after months of reading, this is by far the most helpful website).
At some points, it looks as if having an attorney to help the situation is a good idea, and other times it seems like this is possible to do ourselves. Reading a lot of your posts and timelines really puts me at ease with a lot of my concerns, but it is hard to see who had help and who didn't.
Does it really make the process go quicker/easier? We both are extremely competent people, and it looks like as long as you follow the yellow brick road, everything should work out.
Any advice? Thanks in advance, and thanks to everyone for your stories and thoughts that I have already read. It's a nice feeling to know there are many of us out there who just want to be with the ones we love.
I filed a I-130 after marrying my wife in China, where there is a lot more scrutiny and suspicion than a canadian applicant will receive. I used an attorney, in fact I used two! The first one simply told me to go to China and get married and then file without any advice about documenting the relationship. I then switched to a chinese-american attorney originally from HK since I thought her command of the chinese written language would be helpful since on Chinese immigration application some parts have to be completed in that language. She was a huge disappointment, and actually delayed things by not being proactive about anticipating the the next thing to do. I later discovered this site, and a specifically chinese immigration site and have had more help from the people on the sites than the lawyer ever provided. My advice is that if you have a simple case without any previous visa applications, or marital problems still with any past marriages, you are better off doing it yourself. Get the Nolo Press book "Fiance and marriage Visa's", post questions, and save yourself money. I'm sure there are some good, helpful attorney's out there, but I don't think you need them unless you run into problems. Best of luck, I'm off to China in two weeks for my wife's interview and if she passes we'll be coming home together just shy of two years after we married.
Lawyer/Attorney really needed for K-1 process?
in K-1 Fiance(e) Visa Process & Procedures
Posted
I filed a I-130 after marrying my wife in China, where there is a lot more scrutiny and suspicion than a canadian applicant will receive. I used an attorney, in fact I used two! The first one simply told me to go to China and get married and then file without any advice about documenting the relationship. I then switched to a chinese-american attorney originally from HK since I thought her command of the chinese written language would be helpful since on Chinese immigration application some parts have to be completed in that language. She was a huge disappointment, and actually delayed things by not being proactive about anticipating the the next thing to do. I later discovered this site, and a specifically chinese immigration site and have had more help from the people on the sites than the lawyer ever provided. My advice is that if you have a simple case without any previous visa applications, or marital problems still with any past marriages, you are better off doing it yourself. Get the Nolo Press book "Fiance and marriage Visa's", post questions, and save yourself money. I'm sure there are some good, helpful attorney's out there, but I don't think you need them unless you run into problems. Best of luck, I'm off to China in two weeks for my wife's interview and if she passes we'll be coming home together just shy of two years after we married.