Interview Questions - Can you request it in Chinese?

[fpc95 0]

At the interview in Guangzhou are you able to ask to have the interview in Chinese or does it have to be in English? Where can i find a list of common interview questions? is there a forum here that is dedicated to peoples interview experiences?

Thanks

Chris

[Otto 83]

While I'm sure many IO's speak (to some degree) the native language of the country they are in - it may vary by Embassy/Consulate as to how they handle non-English speaking interviewees.

You can read people's experiences with individual Embassies/Consulates HERE (found near the top of the page "Reviews: Embassy/USCIS/POE)

**Topic is interview related; moving thread to "US Embassy and Consulate Discussion"

[Lancelotte25 1]

If they will allow you to bring an enterpreter, bring one.

[garfield529 47]

My fiancee has not been through GUZ yet, but from what I have read from those who have been, she is allowed to ask for the interview to be conducted in Chinese. However, this may raise a red flag with the VO in terms of how the two of you communicate and how legitimate the relationship is. How is your fiancee's English fluency? Is she just nervous or does she speak little English? Welcome to VJ by the way.

[Hell0W0rld 10]

yes, interview can be in Chinese, if you are going, make sure to goto American Citizen Hour and let the VO know that she is not comfortable with English and wants the interview in Chinese...

[SWA2 1]

Yes, you can request that the interview be in Chinese. My wife says that when she had her interview the man began conducting the interview in English. She requested that the interview be conducted in Chinese. The interviewer then switched to Chinese, but my wife said his Chinese was no better than her English. She then requested that someone else be brought in to assist with the interview and a woman who was a native Chinese speaker came in to help.

[rogerj 0]

Hui and I are in Guangzhou now, and I attended the "citizens hour" today. I had several questions and corrections to note for our petition. One specific area of concern was when I requested she be interviewed in Chinese. The lady there said "they all are interviewed in Chinese, this is China (duh)...". Then she continued to explain to me that if Hui could not speak English (and my Chinese is limited), that this would (note the word "would", not could) be a big problem during the interview. I tried to explain modern technology (online translation, hand held devices) but was "dismissed" saying these were not available at all times...

Now I have a question on this subject, and I never want to assume... Why is differing languages "questioned"? Is it because they question the legitimacy of the relationship?

Roger & Hui

[garfield529 47]

Hui and I are in Guangzhou now, and I attended the "citizens hour" today. I had several questions and corrections to note for our petition. One specific area of concern was when I requested she be interviewed in Chinese. The lady there said "they all are interviewed in Chinese, this is China (duh)...". Then she continued to explain to me that if Hui could not speak English (and my Chinese is limited), that this would (note the word "would", not could) be a big problem during the interview. I tried to explain modern technology (online translation, hand held devices) but was "dismissed" saying these were not available at all times...

Now I have a question on this subject, and I never want to assume... Why is differing languages "questioned"? Is it because they question the legitimacy of the relationship?

Roger & Hui

Based on what I have read from other's posts, it can be seen as an issue to the relationship. In their mind if you are not able to communicate in a common language, how can you have a legitimate relationship(?). I think the issue is that the interviewer is looking for any red flag that could indicate fraud or other issues. I am sure that your relationship is real, but you are being examined by someone who has had limited exposure to your file and then must make an objective decision. My fiancee speaks great English, but I still worry about the interviewer asking a question in an odd way that would even be confusing to a native speaker. I hate that a person that I have never met is charged with deciding if my relationship is real and whether my fiancee should come to the US. Good luck, please fill us in on the details of your experience..I am very interested in hearing.

[Darnell 8,479]

Now I have a question on this subject, and I never want to assume... Why is differing languages "questioned"? Is it because they question the legitimacy of the relationship?

Yup. Sorry.

Language is a big thing this year at GUZ - white slips issued because of it.

Several years back - was a blue slip, instead, with the 'overcome evidence' to be a video of the USC speaking chinese - either WITH your lass, or solo.

Video not asked for this year (sorry ).

[rogerj 0]

I moved to Changsha in May, and have lived with Hui for 6 of the past 7 months (returned to the states two times, for two weeks each time). Will this be considered as a relationship, even if we are not fluent in each others native language?

[MMarc 0]

I moved to Changsha in May, and have lived with Hui for 6 of the past 7 months (returned to the states two times, for two weeks each time). Will this be considered as a relationship, even if we are not fluent in each others native language?

Roger,

We just had our interview on Oct 27, 2009 here are the questions they ask:

1) He first asked for the letter of circumstances that we met.

2) Did he come to China this year?

3) He then kept the flight tickets and looked through the pictures and kept two of them.

4) What is his job?

5) What job does he want?

6) What kind of car does he have?

7) Has he been Married?

8) He is older than you why didn’t he get married before?

9) What did he study in college?

10) What his master degree in?

11) Where did he go to school?

12) Which University?

13) Are you CCP?

14) He really is much older than you.

15) Why do you love him?

I also lived in China from August 2008 to March of 2009, just living there was not enough evidence. I had many, many pictures and a SKYPE video history chat 160 pages almost every night since I came back to the U.S. At the interview we got a BLUE SLIP with a request for more information. One of the items marked on the BLUE SLIP was "CORRESPONDENCE" which stated:

Provide as much evidence of correspondence that you can that demonstrates the development of the relationship. From initial stages until the current date. Examples include letters, remittance slips, e-mails, and chat sessions.

If I was you I would not rely on the fact that you lived there because I did not work for us. I would make as much a paper trail as possible e-mail, chat history, phone calls, etc. Hope this helps.

[MMarc 0]

I moved to Changsha in May, and have lived with Hui for 6 of the past 7 months (returned to the states two times, for two weeks each time). Will this be considered as a relationship, even if we are not fluent in each others native language?

We just had our interview on Oct 27, 2009 here are the questions they ask:

1) He first asked for the letter of circumstances that we met.

2) Did he come to China this year?

3) He then kept the flight tickets and looked through the pictures and kept two of them.

4) What is his job?

5) What job does he want?

6) What kind of car does he have?

7) Has he been Married?

8) He is older than you why didn’t he get married before?

9) What did he study in college?

10) What his master degree in?

11) Where did he go to school?

12) Which University?

13) Are you CCP?

14) He really is much older than you.

15) Why do you love him?

I also lived in China from August 2008 to March of 2009, just living there was not enough evidence to prove we had a relationship. I had many, many pictures and a SKYPE video history chat 160 pages almost every night since I came back to the U.S. At the interview we got a BLUE SLIP with a request for more information. One of the items marked on the BLUE SLIP was "CORRESPONDENCE" which stated:

Provide as much evidence of correspondence that you can that demonstrates the development of the relationship. From initial stages until the current date. Examples include letters, remittance slips, e-mails, and chat sessions.

If I was you, I would make as much a paper trail as possible e-mail, chat history, phone calls, etc. Hope this helps.

[rogerj 0]

I moved to Changsha in May, and have lived with Hui for 6 of the past 7 months (returned to the states two times, for two weeks each time). Will this be considered as a relationship, even if we are not fluent in each others native language?

We just had our interview on Oct 27, 2009 here are the questions they ask:

1) He first asked for the letter of circumstances that we met.

2) Did he come to China this year?

3) He then kept the flight tickets and looked through the pictures and kept two of them.

4) What is his job?

5) What job does he want?

6) What kind of car does he have?

7) Has he been Married?

8) He is older than you why didn’t he get married before?

9) What did he study in college?

10) What his master degree in?

11) Where did he go to school?

12) Which University?

13) Are you CCP?

14) He really is much older than you.

15) Why do you love him?

I also lived in China from August 2008 to March of 2009, just living there was not enough evidence to prove we had a relationship. I had many, many pictures and a SKYPE video history chat 160 pages almost every night since I came back to the U.S. At the interview we got a BLUE SLIP with a request for more information. One of the items marked on the BLUE SLIP was "CORRESPONDENCE" which stated:

Provide as much evidence of correspondence that you can that demonstrates the development of the relationship. From initial stages until the current date. Examples include letters, remittance slips, e-mails, and chat sessions.

If I was you, I would make as much a paper trail as possible e-mail, chat history, phone calls, etc. Hope this helps.

Thanks MMarc,

This information helps, but is not good news. We have considerable Jajah text records from just after we met in 08. Then we began to use MSN and have 125 pages or so from about 6 weeks, again very old information. Once I moved here, all we have is photos. Pleanty of photos (I assume). Literally thousands, but of course, not all printed. What I did do though, was to print 50 or so, and then combined many others into a couple of dozen 8 x 12 collages. One of these is nothing but us kissing (about 30 photos), another is a mosasic of about 225 of the photos of us together. I was hoping that the collage approach would demonstrate considerable photo history on one page...

Now for the paper trail... I have my most recent two documents from my police registration each trip. These both show my registered address in China as Hui's address, since July (Hui disposed of the prior sheet from May to June). I have some of my boarding passes (again, she was helping me clean up, so several have disappeared...) I have a few remittance slips (again, she helped clean up).

I do have one occurance that is in my official record at GUZ (I know because I was asked about it yesterday at citizens hour). A few weeks ago, we submitted an e-mail request to GUZ, to have Hui's e-mail address changed in their records. She received a phone call one morning to verify this request. The lady on the phone talked with Hui for a minute, then Hui handed me the phone, and we talked for a minute. This call is noted in our record, and that she spoke to me... Maybe this helps? (she also asked Hui why I was there, and if we were already married???)

Again, to everyone, my apologies. This process has extended far past any logical explanation already (almost one year), and now I am extremely nervous and concerned.

[garfield529 47]

Roger,

I really, really hope that you two are able to get over this hurdle..all of us are pulling for you.

This part is more of my personal soap-box and maybe useful advice for the other current chinese petitioners:

I do think that this issue brings up a good point about evidence of the actual relationship. What I have found with Yi and I is that during the first several month when our relationship changed from friends to "together" we wrote at least a couple real letters each month along with the chat/email records. As we migrated to communicating more on skype, I realized that we were starting to turn our paper trail into a trickle. So, I insisted that we make it our job to sit down and write emails and physical letters/cards to each other. We would pick topics and write meaningful emails about our lives, our plans, our hopes and dreasms. I take the letters I receive from Yi along with envelope and scan them into PDFs and email them back to her...this way she has my originals and her copies that she sent to me. It is so easy to become comfortable and forget to do these things. But this process is costly, emotionally and financially, and has to be carefully planned. I think for someone like Roger it would even be useful to write letters while in China. What is wrong with writing to your love even if they live with you? Nothing in my mind. I hope that this provides some perspective and maybe helps out some of you. Pictures are great, but they are secondary evidence...seems odd, but the correspondence and communication is the big hurdle right now at GUZ. Good luck all.

[Darnell 8,479]

Roger - you gots a current 'evolution of relationship' letter ?

IIWY, I'd include that 'living with her' info (dates, places, condition ) ... as part of the last paragraphs..

Good Luck !