What to do? Looking to File K-1 Visa (Vietnamese Fiancee)

[Stephanos83 0]

A brief synopsis:

I met my Fiancée in November 2007 while traveling through South East Asia on a beach in Cambodia. She is Vietnamese, but had been living in Cambodia for about 5 years when I met her. I don't believe she was there legally. After completing my circuit through Thailand and Laos after meeting her, I returned and we ended up staying together for about 3 and a half months. I returned home to Texas when I ran out of money.

After getting a job in the Middle East, I returned to her in October of 2008 and we had a last minute wedding (not on paper, just the ceremony) in Cambodia before I had to return to work. I left my job 3 months later (which turned out to be a bad idea) to meet her in Vietnam. From there we decided to try and get a marriage license which turned out to be a very convoluted and exhausting process. I believe it was taking so long because she and her family are poor did not have the standard documentation that most well off Vietnamese families have (in fact, none of it). We were able to get her family in Cambodia back to Vietnam with a new house (book included) and a new family book. We were also able to verify her single status paperwork, get the medical, and get her a new country I.D. and passport. We were at the precipice of getting this marriage license accomplished after 7 months of trying when I had to leave again due to lacking finances. To top everything off, she is now 11 weeks pregnant with my child, a blessing and problem that we embrace. It really sucks that I may not be able to see the baby born as I have to find work in order to file the paperwork for her to come to the States. I wish there were some way to get her here before that, but I've yet to find anything that would support this.

The problem I have with filing the K-1 paperwork (besides my finances) is that she and her family are going back to Cambodia to work for a while to furnish their new house (I would've helped with that, but again, no money). Also, she lives far away from the embassy and I don't think that it is very easy to mail stuff to her. She is pretty proficient at speaking English, but lacks the literacy necessary to read and fill out the forms. If our application is ever approved when we put it in, I will probably have to fly there to take her here because she's afraid of flying and she won't know what to do in the airports with her inability to read.

I know I need to put some funds together in order to get our paperwork going, but I was just hoping there might be someone out there with similar experiences that can tell me how to go about getting the K-1 paperwork accomplished as easily and flawlessly as possible under these circumstances. With her going back and forth to Cambodia, I'm worried it will make things more difficult. I have plenty of documentation to support the bona fide relationship and we're only 4 years apart in age. I'm just afraid mistakes will be made on her part with the paperwork. Any advice is greatly appreciated. Sorry my first post is so long. -Steve-

[JimVaPhuong 4,863]

Most of the paperwork she will need to complete are PDF's that can be downloaded and filled out. Some of them were created so that the data can't be saved, but there are versions of many of them floating around that have been "unlocked" so that you can save the data. In the event you can't save the data, just print them out and scan them. You can fill out the paperwork for her, send them as email attachments, and she can print them out in any internet shop in Vietnam. All she's got to do after that is sign them.

Normally, she would need to get a police certificate from every country where she's lived for more than six months. Fortunately, these reports are not available in Cambodia, so she won't need one from there.

Sounds like you've almost finished jumping through all of the hoops to get married in Vietnam. Finish that and get married, and then file for a CR1 visa. The consular officers have a lot of discretion with K1's when it comes to finances, since the K1 is technically a non-immigrant visa. Getting married takes that discretion away from them, and they will have firm rules to follow for financial sponsorship. You can also have a co-sponsor with a CR1 - the consulate in HCM usually doesn't accept co-sponsors with K visas.

Ho Chi Minh is a tough consulate, but if she hasn't been living in Cambodia legally then she'll have to go to HCM for her interview.

Start with the Visa Journey guides (link at the top of the page). After that, spend some time in the Asia: East and Pacific subforum. There's a lot of people's experiences dealing with the consulate in HCM that you can learn from.

[Anh map 2,098]

I think Jim's advice is right on the mark.

I do want to emphasize one thing: There is no reason for her to be filling out any of the paperwork. You can do it all and get it to her for signature. This eliminates a lot of potential confusion and delays.

[decker 1]

If your child is born overseas, make sure you do a Consular Report of Birth Abroad. It will get the little one a passport, SSN and his American citizenship. It is very easy to do and if you go to the Consulate with her and the child it makes it go faster, 4 hours for us. You will be "interviewed" by the staff but it is nothing super detailed, but be able to spout off all your travellings. They were interested in all the stuff I did for the Army for some reason.

If the child is born out of legal wedlock, VN guvmint will not permit an English name nor will your name be anywhere on the birth certificate. Just get Zen with that, you can fix later.

Congratulations.

[Dai. 7]

If you don't have a job yet and you want to be with your wife when your child is born I think maybe after you get married, stay with her in Vietnam and find a Job in Vietnam for American Expats or do what some people have done and open a business there and I think you can report that income. After that you can file for Direct Consular Filing for Cr-1 or IR-1 while living in Vietnam which seems to be really easy. I believe the whole process after you file only take 3-4 months to get the visa. The requirement is that you have to stay in Vietnam for a year before you file but after you file everything seems to be a quick breeze. One person comes to mind when I think about Direct consular filing in Vietnam is on here whose screen name is konton. (do a search and read his post) He and his wife lived in Vietnam for over a year and got married in Singapore. After that he went over to the US consulate and started the paperwork for the Direct consular filing. His Visa came very quickly after that compare to other spousal visa's.

Good Luck.