fbibob

When my Marina had her visa interview (in Moscow) before she even went in a consular officer came out and read a list of names and said they should not even bother coming in.

While she was inside waiting to be interviewed, she heard one person saying that "no, she had not actually met her fiance, but they had talked a lot on the internet...."

another talked about how "he does not have a job right now, but......"

So apparently it is more than possible to show up for a visa interview with no prospect of getting a visa approval.

I'm not a legal expert (or even amateur) but what about paying for a credit check on her social security number? It is likely to come up with the history of her credit card use, and you will know from this where she lives. At least this might be a start to discovering where she (maybe) got re-married if she did.

Reading between the lines, my guess is you do not want to have to talk to her and would like to do this without communicating with her. You also probably do not want to talk to her mother; but she may be the only path you have to finding the daughter if she does not turn up in some other way.

Also, don't ignore the possibility that she is no longer alive. Do what you can with the SSN and it may direct you to the obits; this will obviously clear you with immigration.

As a last option, submit the papers with both marriages listed, and no divorce decree papers from the first one. Then wait to see if they send you an RFE and give them an honest answer if they do.

I used an attorney ($595) and it made me feel slightly more warm and fuzzy. The biggest thing he did for me was to screw up sending in my paperwork; the IMBRA went into effect and I was able to forward the additional papers to him to all go in at once so there was no RFE.

He also made mistakes in the paperwork that I caught and corrected.

My advice; do not bother with a lawyer if your case is not very complicated.

My additional advice; wherever any documentation (proof of meetings, your ability to support your fiancee') is required, overdo it. If your application is extremely strong and paperwork heavy in one catagory, they may not notice a catagory where it is weak. Bureaucrats are impressed with thick files.

My Russian fiancee' has a 10 year old daughter who will come with her to the United States. The normal process requires that the applicant have proof that she has sole custody of the child, or the permission of the father for the child to emmigrate to the US. But the father of the girl is Vietnamese, and is currently living in Hanoi. At no time did he ever provide any support or have any influence on the child's life.

We are not even sure we can locate him.

So my question is has anybody been in a similar situation? I need to know if the embassy will accept the little girl's obvious asian parentage and believe that the father is not a Russian national and cannot be located to provide permission.