Ongoing Relationship Evidence - Facebook message count

[Rudy & Keren 7]

I think from your post you are saying that you are preparing for the consulate interview the benificary will have in his/her home country?

It is possible that the consulate interview will be a short few minutes or certainly it could require showing orginal documents that were submitted in the 129 F petition.

I submitted a large amount of evidence of the ongoing relationship with the 129F petition thinking that the consulate officer would review it before or during the interview and have less to ask my fiancee in the interview.

For my evidence of ongoing relationship I submitted:

Skype phone log covering june 2012-march 2014

Phone company bills in my name showing some calls to my fiancee country each month

A few e mails from each month from july 2012-march 2014

My 129 F petition was about 500 pages in total but between each type of evidence I put a different color paper with a tab listing the evidence like

Skype phone log

phone co bills - (i highlighted the text in the bill showing the calls)

With the e mails I did put a different color paper between each month and tabed each year seperatly 2012-2013-2014.

While my petition was certainly long, the USCIS or the consulate did not nor were they expected to read though the entire 500 pages.

But with the tab system seperating the evidence types, IF anyone in the process wanted more info it was right there at their fingertips.

The couple e mails from each month was a fraction of all the e mails. I chose not to put more than a few from each month as I felt that would be too much.

The requirement is to "show an ongoing romantic relationship" and a few e mails from each month showed the ongoing part. That some e mails were 20-50 words long to say good night or little icons didn't matter in my mind because it all showed the "romantic" aspect.

As to how much documentation you take into an interview at the consulate is a personal choice.

From what I have read here at VJ and my fiancees experience, the consulate officer will ask you questions based on what he has read in the 129F petition.

So my thinking is that IF your 129F has passed muster at the USCIS and the NVC already, may be that they don't need further proof of the ongoing romantic relationship.

The questions they asked my fiancee in the consulate interiew were simple ones like what was the name of your US fiancees son whom she had met and we included a pic of us in the 129F.

I got the idea the officer just wanted to have my fiancee give some answers matching what he had read in the 129f to confirm it was really her the petition was talking about.

The night before the consulate interview I did drill my fiancee on possible questions and we went through maybe 100 questions on everything that could be asked like why are you marring an american?

Why do you love him?

I even drilled her to reply stating she did not know the answer to a question if that was the case-rather than lie!

I prepared for the worst and hoped for the best throughout the whole process. And we did just end up with the best.

Many people argue that only this or that is required and other steps are un necessary

The yardstick each couple has to measure up to can be very different depending on other elements of the petition like

-whether there is a lot of visa fraud from the benificiaries country.

-the ages of the couple and how close together.-we are 13 years apart but 42 & 53 is different than 18 & 31

-Deciding to marry in weeks or short months after meeting might make the consulate officer ask a few more questions perhaps.

So my point to all this is just be as ready as you can at each point with as much documentation on hand ready as possible in case you might need it.

Hopefully you will not but you will sleep better knowing you have what ever you need to prove to a complete stranger the elements of the requirements.

Good luck on your visa journey

Rudy

USC

[wbeem 568]

The yardstick each couple has to measure up to can be very different depending on other elements of the petition like

-whether there is a lot of visa fraud from the benificiaries country.

-the ages of the couple and how close together.-we are 13 years apart but 42 & 53 is different than 18 & 31

-Deciding to marry in weeks or short months after meeting might make the consulate officer ask a few more questions perhaps.

So my point to all this is just be as ready as you can at each point with as much documentation on hand ready as possible in case you might need it.

Rudy, your entire post is great. The above quoted snippet really sums up why this is such a broad question with no definitive answer.

We are not expecting to be asked for substantial amounts of evidence. We have plenty, but will select a random sample to cover the period since we filed. We are not in our 20's or 30's, have a lot in common, speak the same language fluently and communicate on a daily basis, with documented time spent together thrown in.

[RICARDO4EVA2 194]

In my personal opinion, no, but please bear in mind that I am very overly cautious (at least as far as this process is concerned).

The reason I don't think so is because although it displays a high number of messages, it doesn't establish the frequency of the messages over a specific time period - thus proving an ongoing, established relationship. I know it would be unfeasible to send tens of thousands of messages over a very short period of time, but it wouldn't be impossible.

I chose portions of conversation from each month of our relationship over a two year period to demonstrate the length of time we had been speaking and involved with each other.

[charlieprince 24]

Can someone answer my question please., if the some of the chat/emails is written on different language will it need to be translated or is okay and can be sent to NVC without translating.

.

I personally went thru what I was going to send and translated it with the original untouched..

ie:

2014-06-15: mahal na mahal kita

translation: i love you so much

that is what i did, line by line like i said.. thorouyghly exhausting

[wanderlust_16 7]

I sent in a screen shot with the number of messages for that date, somewhere over 60,000, circled and all seemed to go well.

[dasha&drew 1]

Is this a mobile app?

No, I did it on my laptop

[Marco&Bettina 502]

During the time I was in that phase of the process, my then-Fiancee & myself used the following mediums of communication: Skype calls, Whatsapp messaging, & Facebook messaging. What I frontloaded was edited Whatsapp messaging. It had back & forth conversation virtually everyday, showing the evolution of our relationship & love, while discluding things that were too personal or just small talk. In all, I spent a little time everyday for a about a month editing the logs, to be sent with the I-129F petition. Eventually I got caught up & edited them at the end of the week.

While we waited on NOA2, I continued doing this process. When we got NOA2, I sent my Fiancee in Germany all of what I had compiled. It was well over 200 pages total of messages on Whatsapp. I didn't include any references whatsoever to our Skype calls, logs, or anything related to Facebook.

[coniefl 28]

I was also curious about this chat logs, if the chat conversation is not in English do you have to translate or another language is fine.? the chats that I have are mixed which has some works in English and some my country language.

I know I have read numerous times that all documents submitted must be translated to English.

I think from your post you are saying that you are preparing for the consulate interview the benificary will have in his/her home country?

It is possible that the consulate interview will be a short few minutes or certainly it could require showing orginal documents that were submitted in the 129 F petition.

I submitted a large amount of evidence of the ongoing relationship with the 129F petition thinking that the consulate officer would review it before or during the interview and have less to ask my fiancee in the interview.

For my evidence of ongoing relationship I submitted:

Skype phone log covering june 2012-march 2014

Phone company bills in my name showing some calls to my fiancee country each month

A few e mails from each month from july 2012-march 2014

My 129 F petition was about 500 pages in total but between each type of evidence I put a different color paper with a tab listing the evidence like

Skype phone log

phone co bills - (i highlighted the text in the bill showing the calls)

With the e mails I did put a different color paper between each month and tabed each year seperatly 2012-2013-2014.

While my petition was certainly long, the USCIS or the consulate did not nor were they expected to read though the entire 500 pages.

But with the tab system seperating the evidence types, IF anyone in the process wanted more info it was right there at their fingertips.

The couple e mails from each month was a fraction of all the e mails. I chose not to put more than a few from each month as I felt that would be too much.

The requirement is to "show an ongoing romantic relationship" and a few e mails from each month showed the ongoing part. That some e mails were 20-50 words long to say good night or little icons didn't matter in my mind because it all showed the "romantic" aspect.

As to how much documentation you take into an interview at the consulate is a personal choice.

From what I have read here at VJ and my fiancees experience, the consulate officer will ask you questions based on what he has read in the 129F petition.

So my thinking is that IF your 129F has passed muster at the USCIS and the NVC already, may be that they don't need further proof of the ongoing romantic relationship.

The questions they asked my fiancee in the consulate interiew were simple ones like what was the name of your US fiancees son whom she had met and we included a pic of us in the 129F.

I got the idea the officer just wanted to have my fiancee give some answers matching what he had read in the 129f to confirm it was really her the petition was talking about.

The night before the consulate interview I did drill my fiancee on possible questions and we went through maybe 100 questions on everything that could be asked like why are you marring an american?

Why do you love him?

I even drilled her to reply stating she did not know the answer to a question if that was the case-rather than lie!

I prepared for the worst and hoped for the best throughout the whole process. And we did just end up with the best.

Many people argue that only this or that is required and other steps are un necessary

The yardstick each couple has to measure up to can be very different depending on other elements of the petition like

-whether there is a lot of visa fraud from the benificiaries country.

-the ages of the couple and how close together.-we are 13 years apart but 42 & 53 is different than 18 & 31

-Deciding to marry in weeks or short months after meeting might make the consulate officer ask a few more questions perhaps.

So my point to all this is just be as ready as you can at each point with as much documentation on hand ready as possible in case you might need it.

Hopefully you will not but you will sleep better knowing you have what ever you need to prove to a complete stranger the elements of the requirements.

Good luck on your visa journey

Rudy

USC

Thank you very much for your very informative response.

[coniefl 28]

Thanks again everyone..

What I was able to do so far with the Facebook messages was to take the file, strip the HTML code, strategically add quotes and commas, and save it as a CSV file, all with very little effort using search and replace. Next I will import the file into a database and run a query to select messages from the 1st, 15th, and 30th of each month. I then can export the results into a document...this will save me hours of sifting through all the messages.

[coniefl 28]

I was also curious about this chat logs, if the chat conversation is not in English do you have to translate or another language is fine.? the chats that I have are mixed which has some works in English and some my country language.

After doing a little research with Google (search terms: "K1 visa documents language") it may not be required I found here, http://travel.state.gov/content/visas/english/immigrate/types/family/fiance-k-1.html, that it says the following:

"Note: The consular officer may ask for additional information, such as photographs and other proof that the relationship with your U.S. citizen fiancé(e) is genuine. Documents in foreign languages, other than the language of the country in which the application takes place, should be translated. Applicants should take to the visa interview clear, legible photocopies of civil documents and translations, such as birth and divorce certificates. Original documents and translations will be returned."

But I've also found this on on the Barbados US Embassy Website (Why Barbados? because that is what came up in the Google search) that their requirement are as follows:

"The K visa document checklist is below.

English translations of all foreign language documents are required. Any foreign language document must be accompanied by a full English translation that the translator has certified as complete and correct. The translator must also certify that he/she is competent to translate the foreign language into English. Please have the translator sign the bottom of each document. It is not necessary to have the translation notarized." http://barbados.usembassy.gov/iv-k_1_visas.html

Therefore it is probably Embassy specific, I looked on the US Embassy site for Malaysia and could not find anything pertaining to the K1 visa and/or translations, you may wish to check with them for their specific requirements.

Edited March 27, 2015 by coniefl

[genr87 53]

After doing a little research with Google (search terms: "K1 visa documents language") it may not be required I found here, http://travel.state.gov/content/visas/english/immigrate/types/family/fiance-k-1.html, that it says the following:

"Note: The consular officer may ask for additional information, such as photographs and other proof that the relationship with your U.S. citizen fiancé(e) is genuine. Documents in foreign languages, other than the language of the country in which the application takes place, should be translated. Applicants should take to the visa interview clear, legible photocopies of civil documents and translations, such as birth and divorce certificates. Original documents and translations will be returned."

But I've also found this on on the Barbados US Embassy Website (Why Barbados? because that is what came up in the Google search) that their requirement are as follows:

"The K visa document checklist is below.

English translations of all foreign language documents are required. Any foreign language document must be accompanied by a full English translation that the translator has certified as complete and correct. The translator must also certify that he/she is competent to translate the foreign language into English. Please have the translator sign the bottom of each document. It is not necessary to have the translation notarized." http://barbados.usembassy.gov/iv-k_1_visas.html

Therefore it is probably Embassy specific, I looked on the US Embassy site for Malaysia and could not find anything pertaining to the K1 visa and/or translations, you may wish to check with them for their specific requirements.

The Bolivian embassy did not request for chat logs to be specifically in English. We presented numerous evidence only in Spanish and we were approved with no problem whatsoever.

[coa24 69]

Kind of curious, wonder how the consulate would look at letters written by the parents and friends stating that the relationship has been ongoing for such amount of time and that they can confirm you will be married in the USA once visa is approved?