W199

Do you mean a B-2 visa for emergency medical? She would not be eligible for that now that she has a US fiance (or even a US BF). The Philiippines is extremely strict.

This is just my guess, so take it with a grain of salt. But I think It would be very unlikely since it doesn't help the USC petitioner, and its not a urgent, sudden, and grave situation. Even so many USC petioners with cancer get denied. You would need to show that your medical situation suddenly changed for the worse and you are in grave danger and the only solution is medical treatement in the USA. Just needing better medical care won't be enough. Medical "emergencies"' are a common excuse and most get denied. The USCIS website says a reason for expediting for humantiarian reasons would be "sudden grave illness that requires you to be in the U.S." I wonder if in your case a CR-1 combined with a K-3 visa, then some well planned medical letters to expedite might be a better choice. It might help reduce the risk of being denied a K-1, and might have some medical insurance benefits depending on his medical plan. But if so, both of you need to be able to emotionally handle being married and then being seperated for a long time until you get the CR-1.

Yeah, that is what I was thinking too, which is why its probably prudent to do the CFO "amendent" online once we get the K-1 visa,. Our ceritifcate right now is just registered for a tourst visa to Canada.

We just did the online GCP. The only way to get the free emailed "temporary" certificate was to pay $8 fee for them to mail us a hardcopy. The hardcopy is useless since they are backlogged and it takes 3-12 months to actually receive it. The CFO said they know this and is doing away with the hardcopy version soon. But since the seminar and couseling was totally free, this seems quite reasonable. Most of this is the courier fee.

Does BI verify the certificate ID to make sure it is not fake? Given the excellent forgers there and that it would be so trivial to just edit the name, I wonder how BI caught the ones with the fake certificate?

The certificate has a digital QR code, and no expiration date Don't they scan the QR code to validate the GCP and her destination?

That's not what the CFO told us. My fiancee just got her CFO GCP to visit me in Canada while waiting for her K-1 VISA. The CFO said that after getting the K-1 VISA she must go back into cfo website and do a "update registration" or something like that, with a copy of her K-1 visa in. But no need to redo the CFO GCP. session. For this Canadian tourst gcp, e CFO counselor said all they needed for this was a scanned copy of our passports and tourist visa because they know the embassy is already going to validate all the other documents like cenomar and divorce certificate, so no need for them to 2nd guess them. It was very easy.

LOL! My fiancée has lost count of the constant stream of people who keep asking her and her siblings about when will she go to the USA, why hasn't she gone yet, etc... She just tells them now "I will go when I go" ...

The budget for the CFO is 181 Million php. see the link below for the actual budget https://dbm.gov.ph/wp-content/uploads/GAA/GAA2023/VolumeI/OEO/D.pdf I assume they don’t charge for the CFO services because they want to encourage them to attend and be educated about abuse and getting help, etc etc rather than sneaking out or trying to bribe an IO or a fixer and so forth Though one Filipina was offloaded due to having a fake certificate for which she paid 10,000 php for even though she waa eligible allegedly for the free one

One guy, I think it was on here, posted that his fiancee did not pass the CFO, and claimed it because she was "too shy." But as we know there is always more to the story.

Exactly. In fact, try getting a National (all States) Cenomar in the USA, you can't even do that. But in the Philippines, you can easily order one quickly online, It is is delivered right to your door in less than a week for only $8 including the courier fee. I was quite impressed, =

There is a well stated rule that if it is your first time traveling, then you are sent to secondary, That also happened to me and Filipina gf at the time when I took her on a vacation to Vietnam. They didn't ask for her cenomar, or any other documents. The very first thing they asked her is what my full name was The fact is, very often they do not know the guys full name. So what you said having your ID and being there does not mean anything in regards to human trafficing. They gave a good example, a girl left with her bf on a vacation recently, and the embassy had to rescue her because they got into a fight, he beat her and left her abandoned in the foreign country. So now they wanted to see was proof that she really knew me and that we have traveled and been together for a long enough time, and ultimately proof that it was safe to travel with me. Many guys just meet the girl for the first time and take them oversees for a "vacation". Unfortunately, all the abuse makes it difficult for us who are sincere. You just need to be tolerant and empathetic. As you probably have seen in the news, there has been a lot of abuse of this at secondary, asking a lot of irrevalent questions like '"are your parents married".. and causing people to miss their flights, and lose out on their non-refundable tickets. People have started filing cases against those immigration officers, and they are being re-asssigned. This has been a big issue, that is true. And this needs to be cleaned up, which they recently started to do due to all the public shaming. For first time travelers, they should have a better process in place so you will not be offloaded at the airport and have your travel plans and ticked ruined. But they do have such a process if she is your fiancee, then you can get a CFO GCP certificate to solve that risk. Then when you get the k-1 visa, you just update the registration of the GCP certificate without needed to retake the the cfo class. Its tricky since they can not implement any rules that would look like they are restricting their right to travel. Though its very concerning that 10's of thousands that get offload, but only a few hundred are for human trafficking, minors, or illegal working. They do need a better system.

First, we didn't have to buy any documents. As I said they only needed a scanned copy of our passports, and VISA. We did have to pay $8 for the courier fee to received the permanent copy .. But CFO said they are already putting plans in place to abandon that and keep only the digital copy. Oh, so you are saying because there is prostitution inside the country, they should let them them also be human trafficked and abused outside the country as well? Its not about control, the CFO was put in place due to the extensive abuse which is very real and widespread.

Usually, but admittedly not always, there is more to the story than this. My fiancée just did the online CFO. It was excellent, and very easy. They didn't need any paperwork except the scanned visa and the passports - She signed up for the online class in the morning. - They sent her a bunch of questions to answer such as my details, when we met, where/when have we ever traveled together before, etc. She just replied to them on WhatsApp to them. - The next day she had the online video class and the phone interview - Then the same day received the digital CFO certificate. She said the seminar was very eye opening due to all the domestic abuse that so many end up having. They want them to be safe and know the laws and emergency contacts. In fact, during the online video seminar, the CFO got a message from a Filipino who said she wanted to come back due to the abuse from her husband, which included abuse in public. Her phone interview with the CFO was about 30 seconds to just confirm her details, and said the paperwork is all in order. They said if they suspect anything then the call will be as long as it takes. The ONLY paper work they needed was a scanned copy of her passport, my passport, and her visa. But to be on the safe side, we also sent our relationship photos. They did NOT even ask for her cenomar, my divorce certificate, etc.. She said there is no need for other paperwork because they know we are doing the K-1 process and the embassy is already very thorough with all the K-1 paperwork. They only need to ask for things like the cenomar, criminal record, etc during special cases such as when they have never even met before (there was one or two in my fiancee's class that were going to meet their fiance for the very first time, I think on a tourist visa) or when they report some kinds of abuse, or so many other unique circumstances. There really are so many cases of domestic abuse and human trafficing, fake paperwork, etc.. that they are on the lookout. There were even cases where their agent did the CFO and interview for them. So now they need to show their passport or do something to prove its really them in the seminar. Many of the Filipinos are just not wise enough to prevent being tricked or just so desperate enough they will do anything to help their families. So I can't really blame the CFO for sometimes going crazy with paperwork and other checking when they see a risk of this happening.

You will just need to pay tax on any interest, dividend. or capital gains that is earned on the money in the USA. But if you buy a Treasury bill/note, then the interest is only taxable at the Federal level, not the State.

What do you mean? AFAIK, USCIS is by and large a self-funded agency from the service fees you pay, not from our tax money. And what do you mean, they require us to communicate between the CIA, NSA, and FBI for them? I never heard of such a thing. They are the ones that have full access to our in-depth sealed, expunged, and other records. Not us. They are certainly not going to accept any FBI records or data from us or ask us to communicated between the CIA and FBI!. They have their own means of efficient access and a full in-depth fraud team when they suspect fraud too. which is rather often, crimes against kids, etc... As crazy cat said, the process is much more complicated than what you seem to be implying. That said, sure the whole system could be reforned and improved. Years ago it only took 3 months and a few pages to get a K-1. But our new Presidents have made it much more complicated and trippled the size of the I-129F petition to help reduce all the severe abuse to the immigrants and fraud. That said, no one disagrees, including USCIS, that huge improvements in efficieny, technology, and so forth is needed. And that great harm is happening to people in the meantime. Personally, I don't see why they don't just have in-house DOS access to issue a NVC case number and e-file it directly with the embassy.

I'm glad my info was useful to you. HSBC also gives free premier status to any of your international bank accounts as long as just one of them is premier. In addition, anyone in your household gets free premier status. Various other nice perks too.

LOL ... There is too much rhetortic out there. They are still in USA, they are just focusing on their international customers and premier customers which is what HSBC specializes in. Not the nickel and dime money losing ones. Their UK branch is far more than some offices. In fact their UK division just bought and bailed out the UK arm of the failed SVB bank. For comparison, Bank of America paid a 22 Billion file, much more than the 1.2 Billion file of HSBC, and its still one of the most popular banks in USA. I used HSBC quite a bit, and I can persionally confirm it has the strictest compliance and security measures I've seen, admittedly due to all the cleanup that is being done for their past compliance failures. But that is gone now.

Thanks for confirming!

This is because they have decided to largely exit the US banking market except for their Premier and brokerage customers. This is actually a very good sign that they are cleaning up their non-profitable business units. With my personal banker, secure email,, fedex, I have only needed to go into a local branch one time when I wanted them to open up my foreign non-resident bank account,. Some of the biggest and most famous US banks and investment companies have had some of the biggest scandals ever too. In anycase, just make sure, for any bank, that you keep any cash assets under the max government insurance limits. In some countries, that is surprisingly a small amount,

Those other banks you listed won't do it because they are not international banks. The HSBC link you posted is the wrong link. That is for the HSBC USA for a resident bank account. You need to use HSBC international department. They are the ones that will open a non-resident USA bank account. I have talk to the latter on the phone, my personal banker, and I have used them myself to open foreign non-resident bank accounts. I am not just guessing based on a link I found. And this was the link I had posted. Did you even check it? https://www.us.hsbc.com/international-banking/moving-to-america/ But to clarify. the international cross-border banking rules are very restrictive. I am not saying that you can do this from the UK. But I know someone from the Philippines is able to open up a non-resident USA bank account while they are still in the Philippines. Their website seems to imply this might not apply for the European Union.

The FBI background check that you get is useless because specifically states that it can not be used for purposes like this. Furthermore the USCIS has full access to multiple different FBI database including sealed and expunged records, This is the first thing they check. Why would they want your limited personal identity record? lol However, checking your own FBI record is always a good idea. It only takes a day or two if you use an agency for about $50. Item #1 above is critical and should be adequate especially with #2 Item #2. They key for this is to be sure to include the disposition of your case, for example, "Found Guilty, Paid the citation of $1K" or whatever really happened. They want to make sure the case is closed. Or consult a lawyer for real legal advice

I am not sure if this is really correct. I am in USA and opened a HSBC premier account in the USA. They then opened me a HSBC bank account in the Philippines for free while I was in the USA. This allows me to transfer money back and forth to the Philippines literally instantly and for free as well get a personal banker in the Philippines. I can then easily transfer money from the Philippines to my fiancee's local bank account for free and quickly with a better foreign currency exchange rate then xoom, remity, etc... This is a nice luxury when I do travel there too. They also have multi-currency accounts.. They then also said my Fiancee in the Philippines can open a non-resident USA bank account while she is still in the Philippines. They said she can can do it with zoom, without even leaving her house in the Philippines if she uses the hsbc international office. Another method would be to have the local HSBC bank do it for her but that takes longer. I'm pretty sure they know what they were talking about since it was there international banking division' experts. Check this link, https://www.us.hsbc.com/international-banking/moving-to-america/ They specialize in getting you set up in USA before you arrive. Or even if you didn't set up your HSBC account in the USA before you left home, you can just do it when you arrive with an ITIN or SSN. Then you can link it to your global HSBC and do instant transfers back and forth for free. Only thing to note, they made a recent change is that you must be premier member to do this now. And that requires a total of $75K in assets, But most people just open an HSBC brokerage account to keep that money, so the cash doesn't sit in the account. If you don't have that much, year there are many easier ways to deal with it. Note, if you do carry cash over $10K, you not only have to declare it but need prove the source such as your bank statements where you withdrew it.

Then most likely a $15-$50 USD fee that the bank will charge your wife upon receiving an international wire transfer. But this will be waived if she has a premium account at some bank.s

I totally agree with you. My fiancée is from the Philippines. There is literally zero chance they would give her a B1/B2 visa to visit me while the K-1 in pending. Before we were engaged, they would not even let her come on a student visa to get her Master's degree because she had a bf in the USA. They didn't want to see any proof of employment or ties. Therefore, some time later, after we got engaged, she got a Canadian tourist visa. Rented a airbnb in Montreal for the summer, and I'll just visit her in Montreal, since its just a 5 hour drive.