Stopped the Interview

[Peace be still 6]

It is not as simple as starting over. There are people here on VJ who were denied the K visa, went ahead and married there fiance only to be denied again because they ignored the first denial. Now there are some who never received a notice from USICS. Instead USCIS let their cases expire and these people either filed a new application or married their fiance.

If you move this to MENA many of these people will jump in to guide you. There is a lawyer also named Marc Ellis who also tries to assist those who have had petitions returned or denied.

Are you in Casa? Did you seek information from the Consulate? What did they say? Last week another VJer was denied in Casa but was able to secure a second interview for the very next week. But again she was denied. Second interviews are hard to come by but can happen. In the meantime try to dissect the Q &A from the CO's perspective. What "red flags" were raised? How may visits have you had? Is there a huge age difference? His father not knowing about any previous marriages may seem insignificant but in MENA land they know the family structure is very important and all details are expected to be known by the in-laws. IMO I find it a bit strange they called his father. This makes me assume they had already reached a point in the Q &A where they were less then pleased with your fiance.

This is not a correct fact. I married my fiance 2 weeks after my K1 was sent back to the USCIS, and he was here 4mos later. If you pay attention to lawyers your husband will be in Morocco for a very long time. PM me and I will be more then happy to talk with you. Don't let any lawyer capitalize off of your heart ache. A lawyer don't have the power to get your fiance here. Why pay Marc Ellis $200 an hour for something you can yourself? I will be more then happy to give you the names of 3 other people besides myself that was denied around the sametime as I was and we all went and got married. All of our spouses got their visa's the next day after the interview.

[Peace be still 6]

"Consulates apply the "reasonable person" standard when judging whether a relationship is a sham for immigration purposes. In high fraud countries, the "reasonable person" standard is the sledgehammer in their anti-fraud toolbox. If they can show evidence that the relationship deviates from the stereotypical traditional relationship in the beneficiary's country and/or culture in even the slightest way, they can use that as an excuse to deny the visa.

In many cultures, knowledge and consent of the family is considered to be critically important. In some cultures it would be unthinkable for someone to marry without the consent and active participation of their family. When presented with a relationship where there were several possible motives for a person wanting to marry, a "reasonable person" in such a culture would have a hard time believing that someone wanted to marry for traditional reasons if the relationship itself did not conform to tradition.

Something about your case made the CO very suspicious. In order to confirm his suspicions, he pulled out his "sledgehammer" and he used it. Apparently, marrying a divorcee is a big deal in Morocco, and the father of the groom would be expected to know whether his future daughter-in-law had ever been married. He didn't, so the CO concluded that the beneficiary's family doesn't consider this relationship to be serious. If that's enough to set off the "reasonable person" alarms in Morocco, then it's enough to deny the visa"

I agree 100%

This is either Marc Ellis or someone that is getting a cut from him trying to couch you into contacting him so he can get your money.

[TBoneTX 45,064]

This is not a correct fact.

To the contrary: It is completely established and KNOWN that perceived deficiencies need to be corrected if MOST visa applications that are initially denied are ever to be approved, in their current "fiancee" form or as a marriage visa.

3 other people besides myself that was denied around the sametime as I was and we all went and got married. All of our spouses got their visa's the next day after the interview.

This is an EXTREME exception.

This is either Marc Ellis or someone that is getting a cut from him trying to couch you into contacting him so he can get your money.

This not only smacks of idiocy or worse, but it is also arguably a violation of the VJ Terms of Service. Reported. Edited February 10, 2010 by TBoneTX

[Boiler 45,361]

There seem to be flags everywhere.

If I have it right he was married before but you have the children and were not.

[sachinky 465]

Were you or were you not married before?

[mistyblkrose33 0]

You know what this is flipping ridiculous. Red flags!!!!!!!!! Some of the people that have responded to me have been very helpful and I do appreciate it. I cannot tell you how you have help me through this time when I am unsteady and unsure of my footing. At this point I am unwilling to give any more in depth information about my fiance's past through a public forum. I have given the facts of this case and have stated as plainly as I know how. If I were to meet a man on the street who was married, whose wife had left him, and he was looking for someone to date everything would be cool. And NO I was not married before, it was a trick question through into a series questions to confuse my father-in-law to be!!!!!! If you are not going through the same thing that I am going through or have risen about the odds against you then please keep you thoughts and opinion decent. There has been nothing but less than encourage words from some of you and I find it very hard to believe that you have an answer for each and every type of visa that has ever been filed. I am not an angry black woman and I am not trying to take of the world. I am old enough to know when I am being played and when I am not. There has not been a single avenue in my fiance's life that has not been open to me. I can call, visit, and host anyone in his family at my own will if that is what I choose to do. I simply asked if there was anyone in my shoes that could give me guidance. Unless you work in the Dept of Homeland Security you don't really know what red flags are. This man was crushed and defeated after being spoken to like a peace of #######. I am a US citizen and I have rights and I plan on use them. I will fight for my man to the death because he would do it for me. He did nothing but take care of me in every way possible during my trip there and back. I don't need a Dr. Phil. I need a guide through this process. I cannot believe that my topic has made it to the hottest topic. I just wanted to share my experience, get some pointers, and help someone else if I can. I did not ask for a Lifetime movie critic. I am a writer of short stories and poems so the cute anecdotes I don't need. I am sorry if I seem a little upset but I am not stupid, nor am I easily lead. I am at a state of shock still so please excuse my outburst I don't mean any disrespect to anyone. Its just hard to invest going on over three years in a relationship. Figure out your guy is the right guy in the wrong country, and be pushed aside like paperwork because someone is having a bad day. My fiance is aware that I am a not placid down homey kinda gal, who submits to what ever and he loves me for it. We had flown over tradition and that's way we work well together. He is teaching me Arabic and French so that i am not left out of anything. I have read several post where some women can't get that much out of their fiances. :angry: :angry: :wacko: :wacko: :crying: :crying:

[Gary and Alla 3,694]

I was not at the interview. From what my fiance is saying they did not ask him for anything else. The man just told him that he was lying and that was it. He did mention the man asking him if he spoke English, which he does. He asked him a question in English and the man told him, "Hey you speak perfect English." So it sounds like they were not even willing to listen to him.

I have read here of this happening in MENA countries fairly often, There is at least one other case I know of where this same thing has happened recently, only the father did not know his son was marrying an American woman. In countries where it is cutomary to receive parents permission to marry, especially where a previous marriage is somehow "taboo" or not so socvially acceptabel, it is seen simply as a sign that the man is not sincere and the relationship is not legitimate, and that is all they need to deny. You can ask for another interview or for them to tkeep the case there, but I doubt it.

Spemnding time and money to appeal it is silly. It will be cheaper and faster to submit another petition and try again, this time be prepared for one of the most difficult consulates in the world.

[JamilahAM 0]

This is either Marc Ellis or someone that is getting a cut from him trying to couch you into contacting him so he can get your money.

Not receiving a cut from Marc Ellis or from anyone else. I live in Morocco after getting the 221(g your were EXTREMELY lucky ..thats all. I gave her facts as I saw them. If you are unsure about me ask before you ASSUME. Thank you.

It makes no sense to tell her it is all rosy when we al know she is in for a long and tough road.

[JamilahAM 0]

You know what this is flipping ridiculous. Red flags!!!!!!!!! Some of the people that have responded to me have been very helpful and I do appreciate it. I cannot tell you how you have help me through this time when I am unsteady and unsure of my footing. At this point I am unwilling to give any more in depth information about my fiance's past through a public forum. I have given the facts of this case and have stated as plainly as I know how. If I were to meet a man on the street who was married, whose wife had left him, and he was looking for someone to date everything would be cool. And NO I was not married before, it was a trick question through into a series questions to confuse my father-in-law to be!!!!!! If you are not going through the same thing that I am going through or have risen about the odds against you then please keep you thoughts and opinion decent. There has been nothing but less than encourage words from some of you and I find it very hard to believe that you have an answer for each and every type of visa that has ever been filed. I am not an angry black woman and I am not trying to take of the world. I am old enough to know when I am being played and when I am not. There has not been a single avenue in my fiance's life that has not been open to me. I can call, visit, and host anyone in his family at my own will if that is what I choose to do. I simply asked if there was anyone in my shoes that could give me guidance. Unless you work in the Dept of Homeland Security you don't really know what red flags are. This man was crushed and defeated after being spoken to like a peace of #######. I am a US citizen and I have rights and I plan on use them. I will fight for my man to the death because he would do it for me. He did nothing but take care of me in every way possible during my trip there and back. I don't need a Dr. Phil. I need a guide through this process. I cannot believe that my topic has made it to the hottest topic. I just wanted to share my experience, get some pointers, and help someone else if I can. I did not ask for a Lifetime movie critic. I am a writer of short stories and poems so the cute anecdotes I don't need. I am sorry if I seem a little upset but I am not stupid, nor am I easily lead. I am at a state of shock still so please excuse my outburst I don't mean any disrespect to anyone. Its just hard to invest going on over three years in a relationship. Figure out your guy is the right guy in the wrong country, and be pushed aside like paperwork because someone is having a bad day. My fiance is aware that I am a not placid down homey kinda gal, who submits to what ever and he loves me for it. We had flown over tradition and that's way we work well together. He is teaching me Arabic and French so that i am not left out of anything. I have read several post where some women can't get that much out of their fiances. :angry: :angry: :wacko: :wacko: :crying: :crying:

Sorry if I came off wrong but I have been in your shoes and advised you as best I could. I only asked you red flags questions so that you can be better prepared the next go around. You WILL have to address these reasons again. They will not disappear. I wish you and your fiance the best but I do not feel the need to placate you only to have to into the 221(g) rebuttal unprepared. Truth is there are women who have been successful getting their fiances/husbands here and some who have not. Advising you to marry today is not wise because you MAY get a response from USCIS about the K-1 visa asking for information. Each step you take should be well thought out.

[JamilahAM 0]

This is not a correct fact. I married my fiance 2 weeks after my K1 was sent back to the USCIS, and he was here 4mos later. If you pay attention to lawyers your husband will be in Morocco for a very long time. PM me and I will be more then happy to talk with you. Don't let any lawyer capitalize off of your heart ache. A lawyer don't have the power to get your fiance here. Why pay Marc Ellis $200 an hour for something you can yourself? I will be more then happy to give you the names of 3 other people besides myself that was denied around the sametime as I was and we all went and got married. All of our spouses got their visa's the next day after the interview.

Please reread...I did not ask her to pay Marc Ellis a dime. I simply said he could advise her...He is a member of VJ so unless he charges for PM or emails I dont think I told her to pay him one red cent.

Your case is rare you should be wise enough to know that. I told her this. I told her she may be him here on the original K-1 visa BUT lets be real here she may not. Rushing to marry him while the K-1 has not reached USCIS is not wise either. I am sure you did what was best for you and your husband but you are not everyone and you should know by now that Casa is the hardest Consulate to pass through and she MAY very well need to prepare a rebuttal for the original K-1. Simply ignoring it.....

[morocco4ever 63]

As for the K-1 visa, and going to marry your fiance. Some have successfully gone to Morocco and married then got the visa, some have had a second denial. If the petition expires you are free to marry again, but if the USCIS decides to review it rather than expire it, and you have gotten married in the meantime, is when the problems occur.

CO's won't deny an applicant because the petitioner is overweight, but rather it could give him more reason to review the case closer. His answer that he went there to practice his English wasn't very impressive to the CO obviously. He could go to just about any chat room for that. He would have been better off IMO if he would have said that he likes large women. But I do believe that his father's response that he didn't know if you were married before was the nail in the coffin. It isn't normal there that a woman has children outside of marriage, and it would be reasonable if his father had questioned about a previous marriage since you do have children at the time that your fiance told him about you. So it appears to me that this was the line of thinking for the CO.

Have you had any luck contacting your congressman for assistance? I would certainly get your future father in law to write a letter explaining why he didn't know about it, and why it doesn't make a difference to him, and that he supports your relationship. But don't stop there and assume that this is the reason for the denial. I do believe it is a culmination of the evidence rather than one specific thing in most denials.

[mistyblkrose33 0]

As for the K-1 visa, and going to marry your fiance. Some have successfully gone to Morocco and married then got the visa, some have had a second denial. If the petition expires you are free to marry again, but if the USCIS decides to review it rather than expire it, and you have gotten married in the meantime, is when the problems occur.

CO's won't deny an applicant because the petitioner is overweight, but rather it could give him more reason to review the case closer. His answer that he went there to practice his English wasn't very impressive to the CO obviously. He could go to just about any chat room for that. He would have been better off IMO if he would have said that he likes large women. But I do believe that his father's response that he didn't know if you were married before was the nail in the coffin. It isn't normal there that a woman has children outside of marriage, and it would be reasonable if his father had questioned about a previous marriage since you do have children at the time that your fiance told him about you. So it appears to me that this was the line of thinking for the CO.

Have you had any luck contacting your congressman for assistance? I would certainly get your future father in law to write a letter explaining why he didn't know about it, and why it doesn't make a difference to him, and that he supports your relationship. But don't stop there and assume that this is the reason for the denial. I do believe it is a culmination of the evidence rather than one specific thing in most denials.

You are very right traditionally, his country is against children outside of marriage. They were also against having a relationship at all outside of marriage. And at one point they were able to marry multiple wife, with the permission of the first wife and as long as they had the money to support a family. Marriages where arranged by you parents with cousins even, which is what happened to my man and why his is no longer married. Everything that you have said is true at one point. Its no longer the case with some Moroccan families. In some places the woman no longer wrap themselves from head to toe unless they want to do it. This whole situation makes me want to change my major from medicine to human rights, I tell you the truth!

When I met my fiance his father worked in, and resided in another town for most of the month. It what you do to support your family. His mother is the one who knows the details of the relationship. His father gave his blessing and told the interview so, he was just happy his son found happiness after they previous attempt to find his a wife. I said that I would not write anymore but this is for anyone marrying someone in Morocco.

Do not be discouraged. Do not let anything anyone posted turn you around. If you believe your man is sincere fight for him because there are some that get caught up in the madness. Pray and God will guide you through. PM me if you want someone to talk to I am here to help.

BTW to clarify he said he went to Yahoo chat room to practice English not to the room we met in........

[tany1157 161]

We were denied on jan 5 for the k-1 also. They treated my SO badly as well and asked him that many questions as well. After searching and looking at all the options we have decided to get married in march. I do have both my senators and congresswoman involved. However I am getting a little worried as I read this thread. I hope we are not making a mistake. What if the USCIS decides to review our K-1? Do we then tell them we got married? I heard it is bad to actually cancel the petition ourselves. I am confused now. BTW the interviewer told my SO if USCIS reapproved our petition that they would then issue the visa. We figured out by going over everything pretty much why we were denied. Anyways to the OP, make sure you two make a sound and educated decision. The first week, we were in shock so we could not decide much. After the shock was over then we researched our options. I know our hearts are breaking but we need to make sure we make these decisions with our heads. Good luck to you and you may PM me anytime for support or a buddy!

[Peace be still 6]

Me and the 3 other ladies didn't wait for our K1 petition to expire before we went and got married. What law tells you that you have to wait to get married before your K1 expires. Her petition is sent back. Play the waiting game for what. I would love to know who got denied the K1 visa and then got married and was denied the second time? If they were denied the second time it wasn't because they went and got married perhaps it was due to them being able to prove a contract marriage. Clearly this woman is in pain, and both my husband and I know her pain. Just by reading your post mistyblkrose33 I know your relationship is 100% real, and don't let nobody slow you and your husband up on this process. My husband would be more then happy to speak with your fiance. Just IM me. Hang in there Sis I promise you will get through this.

[morocco4ever 63]

You are very right traditionally, his country is against children outside of marriage. They were also against having a relationship at all outside of marriage. And at one point they were able to marry multiple wife, with the permission of the first wife and as long as they had the money to support a family. Marriages where arranged by you parents with cousins even, which is what happened to my man and why his is no longer married. Everything that you have said is true at one point. Its no longer the case with some Moroccan families. In some places the woman no longer wrap themselves from head to toe unless they want to do it. This whole situation makes me want to change my major from medicine to human rights, I tell you the truth!

When I met my fiance his father worked in, and resided in another town for most of the month. It what you do to support your family. His mother is the one who knows the details of the relationship. His father gave his blessing and told the interview so, he was just happy his son found happiness after they previous attempt to find his a wife. I said that I would not write anymore but this is for anyone marrying someone in Morocco.

Do not be discouraged. Do not let anything anyone posted turn you around. If you believe your man is sincere fight for him because there are some that get caught up in the madness. Pray and God will guide you through. PM me if you want someone to talk to I am here to help.

BTW to clarify he said he went to Yahoo chat room to practice English not to the room we met in........

The main thing I was trying to get at is that just because it isn't fair, and it doesn't apply to all families in Morocco, the CO is looking for the fraud and is using the normal customs of that country to base his decisions. You can't take it personally, and you can't take what is said by us here personally. We are all just trying to assist you with with ideas of what went wrong.

Also you don't need to explain to us the reasons for his responses to the CO's questions. It doesn't matter what we think, what matters is what the CO thinks. For some reason he thinks it is fraud and you have to be able to place yourself out of your situation and look at it from a third party perspective. And what I have said time and time again is to realize that the CO's job is to prove that your case is fraud not that it is legitimate. It won't help your case at all to be defensive with anyone here. Just soak in what is being said here. If someone here sees something as strange that could be the very thing that the CO is seeing as well. I have a pretty significant age gap with my husband and of course this was a huge red flag for them. I can tell you that if I was a CO and I saw that big of an age gap I would certainly have had plenty of doubts about it myself. I knew our relationships was real, but just because I knew it didn't mean that the CO had an obligation to dig deep enough in our relationship to see what we see in each other. He sees fraud.....lots of fraud. If he spent enough time delving deeply in each of these relationships to find out the truth it would take way to much time. This is why it is our responsibility to prepare ourselves to the best of our ability to have all of the answers for him in advance. Some times things happen that are not predictable however. In our case what set it over the edge was that the CO asked him if he had family in the US. He said yes, I have a sister and an ex brother in law. That is where ours went wrong. He assumed that the sister and ex were the ones that were married, and from there assumed that she had used him for immigration purposes, and then it branched off to him believing that she paid me to marry him. None of this was the actual truth, but that is what happened in our case. If we had known enough we could have stopped it from being returned and provided them with proof that the ex was from a different sister that had never even been to the US. But through all of my research here on VJ I could not find anything on this topic.

I am not sure if the bolded statement above was for me however. we have already won our denial. He has been here for over 3 years now. When this happened to us there wasn't any posts that I could find that addressed this situation. Thanks to a group of women that went through a denial through Casa at the same time we did we were able to pull together all sorts of information to assist others that are now going through this. I don't want anyone to feel as lost as we felt when it happened to us. That is why that link in the MENA forum is there. Kiyah, who had a denial shortly after us was able to get that pinned, and it has been a great source of information for many members since then.