Hoptastic

My wife and I were just approved a bit ago. I went with her to the interview as well. She was refused entry to the states at the Canadian/American border (beware!) once so we thought we were going to have a lot of trouble. The officer asked us each 2-3 questions and then asked about the refusal. My wife told her story (she didn't have a plane ticket out of the country) and he said he needed to read our case but we didn't need to be there for it. Long story short, we got our visa 2 days later. It was a great day. I am sure you know the feeling.

Hello,

I've been on this site for the last 6 months. My wife and I are currently living in New Zealand. We got married and started the visa process in April with a lawyer in Ohio. Our lawyer screwed us hardcore and did NOTHING for us.

Long story short, I used this site for advice and did it all myself. Everyone was great and we got our visa.

My wife was refused as the Detroit/Toronto border so we thought it was going to be difficult.

We ended up successful.

I wish everyone else out there good luck and thank everyone who has helped us on our way. The journey is not an easy one but is totally a do-able one.

-Adam

I have to send in some of our documents this week (bank statements, original birth cert, etc). Should I send a letter asking if we need this or not? I am sending full passport copy as well so I show the dates that she lived in Canada. Or should we just wait till the interview and see what they say there?

Since you're only talking about a 2 week diference I'd say if you can get it relatively easy & cheap then I'd do it just to be safe. I've never heard of someone being denied because they provided too much.

That's the problem. It's not that it's expensive, it's that it takes 4-5 months to get. We applied for it but haven't heard anything. I'd say we have another 2+ months to get it by the time our interview is scheduled. I'd hate to delay the interview if we don't need it but would also hate to go and be turned away if we don't have it.

I believe the Police Certificate requirement is any country where you lived for 6 months or more.

Not sure. It says:

"POLICE CLEARANCES: Required from every country you have resided in for ONE YEAR or more since age 16. (Canada?)"

Exactly like that. That's why it's confusing. Should we go to the interview anyway and see what they say?

Hello,

My wife and I are in the final stages of the IR-1 process. We are doing a DCF in New Zealand. We sent in all of our paperwork and got a letter back with an interview date and some more required docs.

They are asking for evidence of assets and my wife's cv/resume. How can we provide evidence of assets? Would a screen shot of my 401k be enough?

They also mentioned a Canadian Police report. It's down on the list but with a questions mark next to it. Little info on this one. My wife spent 50 weeks (under 1 year) in Canada on a working holiday. When we sent them an email and asked if she required a police report they responded:

"The regulations do state police clearances are required for residence in any country for one year or more. It is up to the interviewing officer to decide if the clearance will be required when it is so close to one year."

We have put in the paperwork to get this police report but it is still going to take another 3-4 months. Our interview is in November and we won't have it by then.

So the questions I have:

- What happens if we go to the interview and they ask for the Canadian police report and we don't have it? Will our visa be refused?

- Can they ask for it if it's under 1 year? Is is 100% up to the interviewing officer if we need it or not?

Any advice would be greatly appreciated. Thanks

Hello,

We are ready (we think) to send in our I-864(s), DS-2001, and other docs. My wife and I are trying to complete the DCF in New Zealand. Our I-130 was approved on the spot and now we are ready to move forward.

My brother is cosponsoring us so we have his birth cert, tax forms, pay stub.

We already submitted our ds-230.

So we have 2 I-864s, my wife's police cert, brother's docs, and the DS-2001. We already had the medical done and that was sent in.

I have about 6 affidavits from friends/relatives. Should I send those in as well or just the forms above?

I don't want to leave anything out but also don't want to annoy the consulate with sending too much info.

If we don't need to send that stuff now, when do we need to send it or should we just bring it to the interview?

thanks in advance

Sorry to gate crash your thread but Don't want to start a new one as it's along the same lines as yours.

I rang the UK consolate today re: DCF, the girl I was taking to had never heard of the Aug 15th deadline! Do I put this down to her lack of knowledge or is there no deadline for London DCF?

I live in Northern Ireland with my American wife. If we were to go down the DCF route I will have to fly to London (twice? one for medical and one for interview), would I be wiser just going down the normal route (Chicago lockbox) as it would save me money on flights etc?

Any help would be grately appreciated

All are welcome. From my readings on here and the US's websites, all this ends on the 15th. After the 15th, any I-130 has to be sent to Chicago.

We contacted the consulate directly by email just asking about direct consulate filing and they immediately booked us an appointment. From there, we went down and submitted a couple of forms and that's where we are now.

In the paperwork we have gotten back, we've noticed it's very personal. They know who we are and my wife's background. I'll keep you updated.

Great news! It seems like your I-130 has been approved on the spot. Usually, the request for those forms comes as part of what's called "Packet 3". Is that what you got in the mail? Packet 3 means the I-130 has been approved. Since it's only been a day- I doubt it was regular postal mail- one day seems very fast for postal mail to arrive- and I'm going to assume you were talking about an email, in which case the Consulate was just being nice and front-loading the request so you can get started. Either way, submit the DS-2001 to them they can schedule the interview. Also get going on the police certificate in the meantime.

Good luck!!

It was in the mail. I know...freaking crazy. Physical mail, 24 hours after submitting. It was a a couple forms and some information about the next steps. We need to get a Japanese police record which is going to take 2 months so should we send in the ds-2001 yet?

The other question I have is for our police records. My wife lived in Canada for 11 months and 2 weeks on a working holiday visa. Getting a Canadian police record is going to take at LEAST 150 days. We were hoping we could bypass this since the dates line up in our favor. We have her passport to prove it too. So can they still request it?

NO. It means you have that option. If your lawyer doesn't know this, you hired the wrong lawyer. Also, if you file DCF in NZ, it won't be for a K3 visa. It would be for a CR1 or IR1.

Yup, we did hire the wrong lawyer. We got rid of him and filed in NZ for CR-1 on our own. Thanks for your advice.

love this site. You guys are really helpful.

What about when we submit the DS-230? Should we send a letter explaining what happened or that it did happen? Ir should we just let them ask the questions?

Again, thank you so much.

Alright guys. Not sure what to think right now. We submitted our i-130 and g-325's yesterday.

I came home from work today and got a letter asking for DS-230, I-864, and DS-2001. What does that mean?

I know we have to do police records but does that mean they accepted our I-130?

Hello,

My wife and I just did DCF here in NZ and the lady at the counter asked my wife if she ever lived anywhere else besides Japan (where she is from) for more than a year. She said she lived in Canada for almost a year on a working holiday.

The lady said we probably should get a police record for Canada. The thing is that to get that police record for Canada, their website says it's going to take at LEAST 150 days. That's a long time!

I asked the lady what was the cut off and she said the person had to live in that country for 1 year or more. I said that my wife was there 11 months and 2 weeks. She said that we probably didn't need it and they'd have to look at the dates but we'd be splitting hairs.

Can we get by without getting one? Would that make us look like we are avoiding something? Who's call is it if we need one or not.

Thanks in advance.

Here's the story.

My current wife was living in Toronto, Canada on a working holiday in 2009 (we weren't married then). She is originally from Japan. I was living in Chicago (I'm a US citizen).

She had about 3-4 weeks left on her working holiday but decided to call it quits and come down to Chicago for 1-2 months (on visa waiver) before going back to Japan. I drove up to Toronto, packed up her stuff, and drove back.

When we got to the border everything was fine until they checked my car. They saw all of her stuff and then started asking questions. Since she was going to stay with me for 1-2 months, we didn't buy a plane ticket back to Japan for her yet. Long story short, she was denied entry and labeled "foreigner without visa with immigrant intent". We tried telling them our story but they nope, denied entry. She hasn't tried to enter again since. We know better now.

So we turned the car around and went back to Canada. She stayed there for the next 4 weeks and then went back to Japan. After about 5 months apart we got working holiday visas for New Zealand. We moved here in Dec 2010, got jobs, both have working holiday visas, got married here in April 2011, and now are a couple of days away from doing DCF for our I-130.

Is that denial on her passport going to hurt us? Is there anything else we need to do or be prepared for? On her passport, they stamped her visa initially but then just wrote "canceled" on it.

thanks in advance

Alright guys, we made some moves. We fired our lawyer. When we said we wanted to file directly in Auckland he told us that we asked too many questions and wanted to charge us more money. Anyway, that's a whole different story of how terrible of a person he was (message me for details if you live in Cleveland).

On to DCF-ing it.

I contacted Auckland's consulate and they responded very quickly. I was amazed. Here is what they said:

"There is a deadline as to when we can accept I-130 petitions of Friday, Aug. 12, and appointments are now at a premium due to this.

We have given you an appointment to file the I-130 petition on THURSDAY JULY 28 at 11 am –

Please provide the following at the interveiw:

FORM I-130 (do not sign ) - download from USCIS website: www.uscis.gov - FORMS

FORM G-325a x 1 each “ “

1 photograph each

Marriage Certificate – original and one copy

Both of your passports

FEE: NZ$540 in cash or bank cashier’s check.

While you are on the USCIS website, you may wish to download the I-864 Affidavit of Support which you will need to complete and submit at the time of your wife’s immigrant visa appointment at a later date, once we have processed her application and scheduled her appointment (within 2 months?)"

That's a couple days away. I then asked them about the evidence that we needed to bring. They said sure, if we wanted to. So that's where I am at right about now. I am freaking out because our lawyer had us get 4 affidavits from friends, one from me, one from my wife, translated copy of her birth cert, tax info, birth certs for me, 50 pictures, a hundred emails, our lease together, our travel itineraries together, plus whatever else we can mustard up. He has all that information and we won't be able to get it for another 1-2 weeks.

Do we need all this for the I-130? Any other advice would be AWESOME too. Should we try to push it back or just go and get the process started?

As I told you in the other thread, you can file at the lockbox in Chicago regardless if you live out of the country or not. If that lawyer you retained is saying otherwise, then that lawyer is wrong (and it makes me wonder just how much else they don't know).

IMO, you should DCF now while you still can; people have posted time and again that it is faster.

To qualify for DCF in NZ, I inserted this directly from the website of the US Diplomatic Mission to NZ:

Ryan H, you are awesome. Thanks for following me all over this site. We just heard about all this today so I am kind of scrambling to find information and make a decision. We've had a pretty terrible experience with our lawyer so we aren't sure what to do.

The only reason we got a lawyer in the first place was because when she was on a working holiday in Canada, I drove up from Chicago to bring her down for a month and she got rejected coming into the states. We were at the infamous Michigan border (which I have heard is one of the worst) and because she had 2 suitcases full of her stuff for the month, she hadn't been back to Japan in 9 months, and she was with her boyfriend (me), they labeled her as immigrant without visa. Our lawyer got all the paper for that case and said we could use it as evidence that we are a couple for when we got married. He said it was great evidence because it was a government record recognizing us as a couple.

Now we are happily married and living together in New Zealand. We then contacted the same lawyer and he said we could get her visa processed and do everything from NZ. That was in April. We been waiting forever for their translator to finish translating my wife's birth cert. Now that we have that, we want to file asap. He said we should wait until the 15th. As far as we know, we have all of our t's crossed and i's dotted.

He is also going on vacation from 8/8/11 through 8/18/11. He stated that at this time, for any Petitioner who lives outside of the United States, the I-130 must be filed at the American Embassy of the country in which the Petitioner is residing. If the Petition is filed now, it must be filed with the American Embassy in New Zealand. After August 15, 2011, I-130 Petitions will be filed with the appropriate USCIS Lockbox in the United States for any Petitioner whether residing inside or outside of the United States.

If we need to make a move, we need to do it soon.

thanks in advance for your advice. We want to go home as soon as we can. This looks like a window to get back sooner.

When do you want to move back to the US? The visa once issued is good for six months. Once you enter on the CR-1, you are issued the grren card which is intended for people actually living in the US. There are procedures to keep the green card valid but it generaly requires frequent trips back to the States.

Is your wife a New Zealand citizen, she should be able to enter the US on the VWP if all you want to do is visit. However, make sure you have strong evidence that you will return to New Zealand such as a letter from employer, property, etc. as you will likely be closely questioned by the border agents upon entry to the US.

She's Japanese, I'm American. We both have work visas for NZ until the end of 2012. We plan on moving to the states once she gets her visa. We don't plan on living here any longer than that.

We hired a lawyer. It's been hell doing it all out of the country.

So we are finally ready to file and then we get an email telling us it's up to us be he thinks we should wait 3 more weeks to file our I-130, g-28's, and all of the other forms. Doesn't really give a reason why except "you'll lose a month but gain more in the long run". Not sure what that even means.

He just said they are changing things on August 15th and that out of US residents can file at Chicago's Lockbox from out of the country.

My main goal is to get to the US as fast as we can so I can visit my family and bring my wife with me. Is it faster to do this through Chicago's Lockbox or having my lawyer file on our behalf in NZ?

I recently found out about DCF and how it can take less time than filing in the US (correct?)

My wife and I have currently been living in New Zealand since Decemeber 2010. We came here with working holiday visas, got jobs, and now have work visas as of the beginning of July that are good for the next 2 years.

We were married on April 1st 2011.

Our lawyer (in the US) wants us to wait until August 15th and file our I-130 in the US but wouldn't it be faster for us to file here?

As of now though, we are residing in NZ. Doesn't that mean we have to file in NZ?

My Japanese wife and I are currently living in New Zealand.

We're all ready to go to file for our I-130. We hired a lawyer (in the US), went through the looooong process of evidence gathering, translated docs, back and forth from the lawyer, and everything else.

Now that we are ready to file, our lawyer recommends that we wait 3 weeks to file in the US. He said that if we want to file this week, we would have to file in NZ but if we wait the 3 weeks when the law changes, we can file in the US.

He said what we are going to lose in 3 weeks we will gain in the long run.

Does this makes sense?