Moving

[SENKA 0]

I am moving on June 30th and I've decided to sell my furniture and just take personal things. Does anyone know if I can mail some of my stuff prior to moving date and put on the declaration form that I will be moving on K-1 visa? I don't want them to charge my fiance custom fees when he receives the packages.

Thanks

Senka

[selfie 0]

I don't know myself but I thought asking at the customs when I first enter, so I get the right thing to put on that paper.

[Cassie 8]

I sent huge boxes full of small things (kitchen stuff, clothing, etc) down to Jerry (sent some to his mom too!) all during the summer while we were waiting for the visa. On the customs slips, I would write "used clothing" "used kitchen utensils" etc etc and check off the "gift" box on the customs form. There were no problems.

Customs doesn't really care about your used personal items. However, they really care if whatever you are shipping is new or something that has been in your possession for less than a year -- that's where the duty fees come in. If you mark on the box that you are moving to the US on a K-1 visa, they'll send it back to you, since technically your personal belongings can't enter the US before you do.

[Cygnet 0]

I don't think this post will answer your question directly but I thought I'd share my experience.

I started mailing my stuff in boxes to my husband last year. We, of course, at that time didn't know that all this immigration processing was going to take this long. Anyway, I sent something like 18 boxes via Canada Post... over a period of 6 weeks. And he was never asked to pay customs fees.

Basically, I just said it was personal effects. A lot of it were books, lots of paper stuff like photographs/memorabilia, some home-related stuff. I even had a box of just Christmas decorations/ornaments (only the ones I wanted to keep). When filling out the form, I just basically said they were not worth much. That was actually very true because I remember one of my boxes containing binders of class plans and school stuff. When I was asked what the commercial value was, I said, "Well, to me it's priceless, to others nothing."

Maybe sending things out the way we did is not the way to go, but it worked for us. I chose to ship it the cheapest way. It would take a long time to get there (Ontario to SoCal) but they all got delivered within 3 weeks. The other thing was that the boxes weren't particulary huge especially the heavy ones.

[girl 37 7]

If you live near the border you might want to consider mailing your things through USPS. I took a couple of trips across the border to mail 8 or 10 boxes of books & papers using their Media Mail rate (it's a special rate for books & other media). Each box cost around $12, which was a real bargain! haha, I was there when they arrived and our postman wasn't too impressed! When they asked at the border what the purpose of my trip was I told them it was to go to the post office to mail some books & papers & other things and to go to the bank. I didn't have any problems either time.

Edited June 3, 2006 by girl 37