JiaYou

Hi Everyone,

My wife and I have been patiently waiting for her interview to receive her green card. She has been in the US since June of 2011 on a K1 Visa and we have been married since August 2011. On 12/15/2011 she took her biometrics test and our case has been under initial review since then. Is this normal or should we contact someone to resolve this? My wife may be pregnant and if possible we would like to begin applying for a Visa for her mom to visit during the late stages of her pregnancy and take care of her shortly after since I will be working.

AOS is going to suck but I can cope with that if I can wake up next to her every day again during the process.

I considered moving back to China too many times during this period even though I didn't particularly care for living there sometimes. Stay strong because you can always move to Albania if living in America doesn't work out but if you give up now you'll never know how your lives would have been living here together.

So it took about 3 months longer than expected but she aced the interview, got the visa and will be here Tuesday. I'm greatly in debt to the wealth of information and support from people on this website especially Darnell who is a special help to those of us with Chinese fiance's. We finished this process without hiring a lawyer which without this website would have been impossible. The process itself is expensive enough without having a middle man. I haven't seen my fiance since October and after living together for a year prior to that this was a truly painful experience. I know you all are going through the same paint right now and it feels like it will never end, I felt the same way and was probably one of the more bitter posters around here. I can tell you that after your fiance passes that interview those feelings will melt away and you will have a truly new appreciation for him or her. Going through this sucks, really really bad, but it does end. I wish for everyone here to get their visas as soon as possible and to keep strong through this hellish process.

Thank you so much, Darnell. That was extremely helpful. I was really stressing this, good to know I have some time.

I just received an email from the consulate in Guangzhou saying they received our case and are sending my fiance the papers for the p3 this week. I am currently unemployed but will probably start working for a company next month and am trying to avoid putting unemployed on my I-134. My mom is acting as our cosponsor but I still would feel much better if I could hold off on sending this form until next month when I(hopefully) will be employed and she can bring it with her to the interview.

This is what the email said:

Thank you for your inquiry.

We have received your petition on May 16, 2011 and will send you an Instruction Packet (Packet 3) this week. In the packet you are requested to fill out the DS-230 and OF-169 and prepare documents to start your visa application. We will schedule you for visa interview within 2-3 months after receiving her completed DS-230 and OF-196. Please feel free to download the forms from our website if you have not received the Packet 3.

Sincerely,

Immigrant Visa Unit

U.S. Consulate General Guangzhou

I know it sucks, and I understand what you mean about getting packages and documents inside China. But the package isn't coming from inside China, they are coming from the US.

This is what I mean though. I had plenty of packages and documents sent from the US to me or my fiance in China and they always arrived within 7 days. One would think a large package sent from some random American would take longer to clear in customs than one sent from the government.

I wrote to the consulate in Guangzhou asking if they had received our case from NVC which was mailed on the 22nd and got this infuriating response.

Thank you for your inquiry.

We have received notice that the NVC is sending the case file to the Consulate. We have not yet received the case file. Shipments of case files from the NVC can take four months or longer to arrive in China and clear Chinese customs. We have no control over how quickly case files are cleared by Chinese customs, and long delays are possible. We will send out an instruction package to your beneficiary once we receive the case file. Your patience is appreciated.

Bullsh*t. I lived in China for a lengthy amount of time and it never took more than 7 days to receive anything that was sent to me.

You call or email them with your USCIS case # and you and your fiance's name and DOB. As for the other questions I'm not really sure. I'm hoping before August myself.

We got our NOA2 on the 14th and our case was sent to Guangzhou on the 22nd. I tried asking the NVC lady when she thought they would receive it but she wouldn't even give me an estimate.

I was so paranoid of them looking for any excuse to deny us that I actually wrote out "fiance has no children". You never know with these people. People get RFE's for lots of stupid reasons including us.

Wow I didn't think they had the manpower to do something like this and that was the excuse of why this process takes forever and a day. Why don't they just do this from the beginning and save people a year of waiting? They could come to either my parents house or her parents' house and ask all the questions they want and in an hour we could be done with it all and she could have her visa. Instead of spying on people they could simply make the process more efficient.

I would just have a male friend who speaks English well make the call, although to be honest I've called them numerous times and they were never of any help. You need to have your fiance contact his congressman and keep calling them until they do something.

Same happened to us over an irrelevant typo and with our luck happened when my fiance was away visiting her family for Chinese New Year which is a month long holiday. I had to wait a month for her to send the extra evidence they wanted. It took a month exactly from the day they received our RFE response until our NOA2. Make sure you send it express because even sending it express it took a week for them to acknowledge they received it.

I already lived with her in China for a year. I would prefer us to live here but if it comes down to it I'll move there. It's easy to find a job, it's cheap and while freedom of speech is severely limited the police tend to not sweat the small things like they do here especially if you're foreign. In many ways its better to be a foreigner in China than to be a Chinese person. 中国加油！

Follow the guide on this website and you will be fine. Be extremely careful not to make any typos on your forms. I mistakenly wrote 2010 instead of 2009 somewhere on mine and it ended up costing us another 2 month wait and an RFE.

San Diego pays 80k in taxes?? I really am in the wrong line of work

I don't think I can say anything that makes you feel better Al but you seem like an articulate guy and if you keep your options open I have a feeling you will meet someone really special and this woman you were involved with will just be a distant memory.

I thought it took a week for NVC to send your case to the consulate? I noticed yours was only 3 days, should I bother checking on Monday?

It took us 8 months, Monyfer. I honestly was starting to think we would never get an NOA2 until yesterday. Keep bothering your senator's office. I would call every day and chew the girl out on the phone. I dont know if they had anything to do with it or not but it at least gave me a little piece of mind. Also call USCIS and demand to speak with an immigration officer as they are slightly more helpful than the people who first answer the phone.

JFK is probably easier than Philly. I'm a US citizen and I was questioned for 5 minutes at POE after a week long trip to Madrid and back. Then completely unrelated my bags were all searched by a security officer. I've flown into JFK from overseas a few times and they don't hassle people like that. Maybe because their too busy or just much more used to foreigners coming through. I'll never transfer in Philly ever again.

Congrats Richie. I woke my fiance from a sound sleep at about 7am her time to tell her the good news tonight. Felt really good. After 8 months we really needed this.

Congrats Richie. At about 6 30 tonight I became one of the chosen ones. Here's hoping the next part goes a lot faster.

Al's got good taste, although this one maybe slid under his crazy radar. There is something very charming about Slavic girls. Czech, Polish, Slovak, Russian it's all good.

I've experienced the other side of this as well. For a year I lived together with my fiance in China for a year. It was culture shock from the moment I stepped off the plane. It was my first time in China or any Asian country. The first week I was nervous and saw everyone was staring at me which made me more nervous. As time went by I got used to the different culture and was really enjoying life there. Good food, nice weather, nice friends it was great. Then more time passed, I started getting annoyed by all the spitting everywhere, everyone pushing and shoving to get on buses and trains, the supermarkets full of people screaming not to mention the level of corruption. That's just part of life in China and I either had to get used to it or get out. After a year we decided we would give living over here a shot.

I've been here for about 7 months now and its absolutely wonderful to be able to see my family again but when I was in China I spoke with them at least a few times a week on skype and if we do end up having to go back to China it's a sacrifice I'm willing to make. I'm hoping this doesn't happen though because my fiance comes from a traditional Chinese family where her parents constantly praise her brother since he is the only boy despite him contributing nothing to them and she is only criticized for not doing enough even after giving them half her paycheck. My family has already welcomed her into our family and I think it will be nice for her to have more support than she's used to.

I do think we would have a less stressful life here being further away from her family but she is the most important thing in the world to me and I would go back to China in a heartbeat if that's what it took to be with her. Otherwise I think we'll be happy with yearly trips back there for Chinese New Year.