Forum	Title	Content	Member	Sex	Country	Date/Time
K-1 Fiance(e) Visa Process & Procedures	Immigration Attorneys	I chose to forgo an attorney because our case is simple and unproblematic: a) Neither of us have ever been married. B) Neither of us have a criminal record. c) Neither of us have ever attempted to enter the U.S. on a K-1 before d) My fiancé has never run afoul of immigration (no overstays, no bans) e) My fiancé is not from a country with a history of visa fraud. That was my logic at least; with any of a-d) I probably would have considered finding an attorney, but my case didn't seem to require specialized legal advice, just filling out paperwork.	Caladan	Male	Canada	2006-09-09 13:17:00
K-1 Fiance(e) Visa Process & Procedures	I gotta ask...	Technically speaking, everyone has to comply with IMBRA; it's that 'complying' in many cases means 'check 'no' on question 19.' Otherwise, as people said, in most cases it means a short delay due to cleaning up backlog; in other cases I'm not quite sure what it means, delay-wise, but the U.S.C. will have to provide police records if they've commited certain crimes. The instructions come with the forms.	Caladan	Male	Canada	2006-09-10 08:53:00
K-1 Fiance(e) Visa Process & Procedures	End of the road	To the OP: I'm sorry for your recent troubles but I commend you both for being honest enough with each other rather than just plunging ahead, rushing a wedding, and enduring misery. It shows maturity. Best of luck however it turns out, and ignore the wee trolls. (How lame do you have to be to troll a board with such a narrow purpose?) To Sabrina: If you're not ready to be married, don't get married. It's normal to be nervous and scared, but if you honestly feel you're not ready yet, rushing into a K-1 (with a move, a new country,etc) is a gigantic step. It's a marriage-based visa, not an I-miss-you one.	Caladan	Male	Canada	2006-09-09 22:08:00
K-1 Fiance(e) Visa Process & Procedures	Internet Printouts	There are plenty of reasons one might not have a boarding pass: -The ink on NWA's passes degrades over time. I have one from March of 05 that's barely legible. -The flight attendant may take one's boarding pass in order to ask the pilot to try to find one's luggage and fail to return it (this may just be me & my adventures with AC Jazz, though.) -Hard as it may be to believe, not everyone meets their future spouse with the idea 'This will be my spouse, therefore I must document everything.' (Especially between the U.S. and Canada where multiple meetings are easy.) My fiancé and I have been together since early 2004 (meetings) and for the first year I have no primary evidence at all. Partially because he is Canadian and neither of us had a passport at first, and partially because we didn't think to save boarding passes because we weren't yet trying to prove to anyone we were dating. By 2005 I had started to research some of the process, and so I just made a file folder for receipts & info. I've also found that between the U.S. & Canada at least, both sides are sort of lax about stamping passports. I have U.S. return stamp without a corresponding Canadian entry stamp (it was 1am in Edmonton, and 5 overdue planes had just landed and there were two customs guys). I have a Canadian entry stamp and a U.S. return stamp that was marked on my boarding pass. Anyhow, to the OP: I sent in a one-page itinerary for one of the meetings to back up a barely legible set of boarding passes. I don't think an itinerary could stand on its own, but it can certainly help paint a picture with passport stamps.	Caladan	Male	Canada	2006-09-11 08:24:00
K-1 Fiance(e) Visa Process & Procedures	checked after Wolf just now...AND ME TOO!!!!	O frabjous day! Calloo! Callay!! Congrats!	Caladan	Male	Canada	2006-09-11 22:48:00
K-1 Fiance(e) Visa Process & Procedures	K-VISA-WAT IF BOTH MET IN 2 YRS BUT NT ENGAGED	I'm not quite certain what you're asking. For the I-129F, the requirements are a) both parties being free to marry and intending to marry and B) having proof of having met once in the past two years. Having a formal engagement ceremony is neither here nor there. You're not proving that you're engaged by the rules of your culture or anything, just that you intend to marry once in the U.S. Now, being able to say that there was a big formal engagement party back in India would help paint a picture of an ongoing relationship. But if you and she meet in India and your parents aren't there, that's not going to make any difference to USCIS.	Caladan	Male	Canada	2006-09-12 09:33:00
K-1 Fiance(e) Visa Process & Procedures	Do grown men cry?	Congratulations!	Caladan	Male	Canada	2006-09-11 22:47:00
K-1 Fiance(e) Visa Process & Procedures	Question about Declaration of How We Met	For Q18 I was reasonably detailed. I first included a short paragraph stating how and when we first met online, then in person, and then continued the relationship through and including the present. Then I included an outline of all the evidence that would follow, in chronological order, briefly describing (Fiancé's trip to Caladantown) what each event was and what evidence was included in support. So a sample would look like: August 17, 2006-September 5, 2006: Caladan visits Fiancé in Fiancé'sTown. [Boarding passes; passport stamps; photograph #4.] All in all, it was one page, signed and dated. Nothing too detailed, just precise.	Caladan	Male	Canada	2006-09-12 19:21:00
K-1 Fiance(e) Visa Process & Procedures	Its here....My approval!!!! YEAH	Congats!	Caladan	Male	Canada	2006-09-11 22:52:00
K-1 Fiance(e) Visa Process & Procedures	Dated pictures	I wrote our names, the month/year, and the number I had assigned in the petition (e.g. 'Photograph #2') on the back. Too early to tell if it would result in an RFE, but I'm sort of doubting it.	Caladan	Male	Canada	2006-09-14 11:18:00
K-1 Fiance(e) Visa Process & Procedures	before applying for K1	It depends on what you mean by 'officially engaged.' You don't have to have purchased a ring or thrown a party, but the application does require that you both write letters of intent to marry. The I-129F asks for proof that the two of you have met once in person in the past two years. Proof includes third-party verified items (primary evidence) like passport stamps, boarding passes, rental receipts; something that some other organization did and left a paper trail. Photos, letters, e-mails, and the like are secondary evidence that can't stand on its own, but can help create a picture in the adjudicators' mind that yes, this is a real couple with good intentions. Most people send a combination of primary and secondary evidence. The K-1 guide makes some suggestions on how much to send.	Caladan	Male	Canada	2006-09-14 11:12:00
K-1 Fiance(e) Visa Process & Procedures	Evidence of meeting - too much, not enough, decisions decisions!	I included primary evidence from five meetings: passport stamps and boarding passes, ticket receipts and one bank statement. I also sent along four photographs & the engagement ring documentation. The technical part of Q18 is to prove that you've met once in the previous two years. You need to prove an ongoing relationship only at the interview. That said, remember part of what you are trying to do is create a picture of the relationship in the interviewer's mind: is this couple for real? So keep it mainly focused on the purpose of the question, but with the broader aim in mind. (For example, my fiancé lives outside of Edmonton, and depending on the flight plan, I either cross customs in Edmonton, Toronto, or Ottawa. A passport stamp in Toronto on its own shows I entered the country, but not necessarily that I made it to Edmonton after that. Thus the boarding passes.) DO NOT LIE. It's okay that you met online. It's easy with the Internet these days and I'd say quite a lot of the people here did meet online without having any intention to meet someone overseas. But that said, meeting online doesn't help prove you met in person: I have two years of chat logs and they're not included in this petition as they don't help show that I ever went to Canada or that he came here.	Caladan	Male	Canada	2006-09-16 16:05:00
K-1 Fiance(e) Visa Process & Procedures	Setting a Date?	No advice but just some support! Going through the same thing myself trying to plan a wedding in the Catholic Church without being able to say when the groom will be available. Bang. head. against. wall.	Caladan	Male	Canada	2006-09-17 21:12:00
K-1 Fiance(e) Visa Process & Procedures	I am a total idiot and am too stupid to live....	Thanks for the support. Naught to do but overnight it on Monday. Blehhhhh.	Caladan	Male	Canada	2006-09-16 22:17:00
K-1 Fiance(e) Visa Process & Procedures	I am a total idiot and am too stupid to live....	Three days, if you count that it got there on the 11th plus travel time to return the whole ####### to me. The letter did tell me I goofed. The rest of the packet's been gone through, and it seems okay. (Looks like they nearly missed the date, too.) I'll return the letter with it with a note ('Oops, sorry.') and maybe I should note it on the envelope, but I can't figure out what to write. It's not an RFE. It's 'TOTAL F*CKING IDIOT RECALL.'	Caladan	Male	Canada	2006-09-16 17:55:00
K-1 Fiance(e) Visa Process & Procedures	I am a total idiot and am too stupid to live....	My fiancé laughed at me. I will find it funny later but now I'm really pissed off at myself. But my roommate says this is my one allotted messup which had to happen. F*ckity ####.	Caladan	Male	Canada	2006-09-16 17:36:00
K-1 Fiance(e) Visa Process & Procedures	I am a total idiot and am too stupid to live....	Oh, hell, I dunno. Probably what happens when you file while jetlagged on three hours' sleep. F*ckity #### f*ck ####. Hey, at least the I-129F and the G-325A checked out. And they organized my package all nice and pretty.	Caladan	Male	Canada	2006-09-16 17:35:00
K-1 Fiance(e) Visa Process & Procedures	I am a total idiot and am too stupid to live....	In case any of you were wondering: The year is not 2008. If you write 9/8/08 on a check to Homeland Security, your package gets returned. Off to slit my wrists now as I am obviously too stupid to live.	Caladan	Male	Canada	2006-09-16 17:27:00
K-1 Fiance(e) Visa Process & Procedures	Checklist before sending I-129F and some final Questions	Don't date the check for 9/8/08. It totally doesn't help.	Caladan	Male	Canada	2006-09-16 17:33:00
K-1 Fiance(e) Visa Process & Procedures	Approved...NOA2	Wow, Satori, take a good stiff drink and relax a bit. It's not all that uncommon for people who have been together a long time in a real relationship to want to plan an actual wedding. We're used to being apart and treat it just as a process going on in the background. And filing in June and leaving a year to plan is extremely sensible, especially given the delays we've seen recently. The OP is under no obligation to rush planning his/her wedding in a futile attempt to keep your panties from getting knotted. Nor is it bad for someone to wait till they're financially secure to move to the U.S. Anyhow. To the OP: I know people on this board have had to move interview dates due to work obligations in the past, so one thing to do might be to check with your consulate and see if it would be possible to move (say) a December interview to January. Probably depends on the consulate & their timetable, but it's probably worth a shot. Regardless, remember that you have six months to use the visa and 90 days once entering to marry. While no one wants to get married near the end of the 90 days, 6-7 months should give you plenty of wiggle room. You could also just do a quick civil ceremony and plan the religious celebration/massive party for June.	Caladan	Male	Canada	2006-09-17 19:53:00
K-1 Fiance(e) Visa Process & Procedures	DHL LOST PAPERWORK FROM NVC DESTINED FOR RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL	7-10 days *is* just an estimate, and you might want to include business days in there, in which case you're just getting to the tenth day today. Good luck with your inquiries, but I wouldn't be at all surprised if it turned up today or the next few. In any case, they have their own 10-12 day timeline to follow, which means by the end of this week, they'll be more responsive to your complaints.	Caladan	Male	Canada	2006-09-19 09:47:00
K-1 Fiance(e) Visa Process & Procedures	Possibly the stupidest question ever...	You can sign up on the USCIS site without the NOA1. Of course, you can't do anything interesting without it, but you can fill in the forms with your name and make an account. You just can't enter a case status to pursue. We'll be interviewing in Vancouver, I expect, as he's from Alberta. When you get engaged, you find out your mother, whom you had estimated as a sane and reasonable woman based on 27 years of her being a sane and reasonable force, suddenly has opinions on everything from the length of the train to the tiers on the veil to whether the neighbor thinks 'can't you just get married and automatically have him be a citizen?'	Caladan	Male	Canada	2006-09-21 13:24:00
K-1 Fiance(e) Visa Process & Procedures	Possibly the stupidest question ever...	Yup, all signed up, just need the NOA1. Was just curious as there's a space for an e-mail address on the I-129F. And really just bouncing off the walls because my mother is driving me crazy about wedding stuff.	Caladan	Male	Canada	2006-09-21 11:11:00
K-1 Fiance(e) Visa Process & Procedures	Possibly the stupidest question ever...	How does one sign up for that? I thought you needed the case number to sign up for the notification. Yeah, that's just package tracking. Had enough problems with the mailman deciding to kill my post lately that that counted as a big deal. ETA: Okay. So no need to refresh the e-mail box. Sorry. Slightly OCD day here. Edited by Caladan, 21 September 2006 - 10:56 AM.	Caladan	Male	Canada	2006-09-21 10:52:00
K-1 Fiance(e) Visa Process & Procedures	Possibly the stupidest question ever...	The NOA1 notification does not arrive via e-mail, but by regular post, correct? So I can stop checking my e-mail compulsively and go work on my dissertation?	Caladan	Male	Canada	2006-09-21 10:41:00
K-1 Fiance(e) Visa Process & Procedures	K1 Expedite Request	Good luck, both with the expedite request and in Iraq!	Caladan	Male	Canada	2006-09-21 21:53:00
K-1 Fiance(e) Visa Process & Procedures	What level of postal service did you use...	I sent the packet the first time Certified mail; it arrived the second day after I sent it. It cost $2.40 plus the weight of the package to send. The second time I sent it Express and it was $14 and change plus the weight, but that's just 'cause I was annoyed with myself. I am in Connecticut so it's not that far of a trip. As long as you can track the package online and confirm receipt I don't think it matters.	Caladan	Male	Canada	2006-09-21 21:58:00
K-1 Fiance(e) Visa Process & Procedures	OMG APPROVED	Congratulations! Glad to hear the expedite worked! Stay safe in Iraq! As my fiancé's little cousin would say 'Shoot the bad guys!'	Caladan	Male	Canada	2006-09-22 20:12:00
K-1 Fiance(e) Visa Process & Procedures	How long did k-1 take you?	I had Rite-Aid print 3 photos. 29c each. Then I wrote our names on the back with the dates. Figured it was worth it; much better clarity than black & white.	Caladan	Male	Canada	2006-09-23 16:05:00
K-1 Fiance(e) Visa Process & Procedures	How long did k-1 take you?	Probably about two-three days, all told. Since we'd been talking about getting engaged for a while, I had kept all of the boarding pass stubs and the like in a drawer. His bank statements & receipts were also all in one place. We filled out the G-325A's and supplements over about two hours including printing and signing. Letters of Intent took me about fifteen minutes. Waiting at Wal-Mart for the damn passport photos took about two hours. When I returned to the U.S., I spent about 8-9 hours organizing the evidence and answering Q18 on a supplementary sheet. Took about an hour to print the photos I needed. I didn't have to order anything as I already had my birth certificate. I would do any items that require his signature/face while he's here: G-325A Letter of Intent Passport photos Copy of his passport It sounds like the address format is different. Check with the other UK people, but I'd attach a separate sheet with the full address (and sign it) and include it as an attachment rather than trying to fit it in the little box.	Caladan	Male	Canada	2006-09-23 11:01:00
K-1 Fiance(e) Visa Process & Procedures	I-129F Criminal section	I left it blank. There's no space for no -- it's just a check box.	Caladan	Male	Canada	2006-09-24 09:22:00
K-1 Fiance(e) Visa Process & Procedures	VSC -- does it send NOA1 via FedEx?	Let me clarify: I suspect she's getting a care package from her boyfriend via FedEx, and my NOA1 should show up this week via normal post. In any case, I hope they're not rejecting what I sent, but it's hardly something they'd overnight (and 'FedEx' != 'overnight.' I used USPS.) We were just curious as neither of us were expecting anything via Fed Ex.	Caladan	Male	Canada	2006-09-25 07:04:00
K-1 Fiance(e) Visa Process & Procedures	VSC -- does it send NOA1 via FedEx?	That's what I thought. My roommate and I couldn't figure out what the FedEx slip was for, and she thought maybe visa stuff. So I guess now we're getting a package and an NOA1 this week.	Caladan	Male	Canada	2006-09-24 19:39:00
K-1 Fiance(e) Visa Process & Procedures	VSC -- does it send NOA1 via FedEx?	Figured they'd use USPS. But a note left at my apartment Friday was for a package for my address that required a signature, & I'm not expecting anything. Does VSC ever use FedEx instead of the normal post?	Caladan	Male	Canada	2006-09-24 17:46:00
K-1 Fiance(e) Visa Process & Procedures	Q18 Review please :)	Agree with what aussiewench says. I'd also leave out the confusing stuff about the divorce saga & the chemo. It's not really relevant, and it's sort of distracting. Also, the letter doesn't go chronologically, and it has to be from Pamela (if she's the USC), since the I-129F is her petition. I'd slim it down a lot: who cares if her ex is a drunk? 'I, Pamela [Lastname], first met Rey [last name] through an online game, Everquest, in early 2002. After eighteen months of chatting via the Internet and daily [or whatever] phonecalls, Rey visited me in my hometown of Pamelatown from August 1-8, 2003. We continued our relationship for the next three years over the Internet and telephone, culminating in Rey's visit August 17-26, 2006, where he met my three children and we became engaged. We hope to wed in [blah blah when we get the visa hody hum.] The evidence documenting our visits follows this petition chronologically. [Evidence list.] Sincerely, Pamela Date.	Caladan	Male	Canada	2006-09-23 15:53:00
K-1 Fiance(e) Visa Process & Procedures	trying to decide to go k-1 or k-3	Have you met your fiancé in person yet? (It's hard to tell from your posts how compressed this timeline is.) It might be good -- and this is advice I'd give an American-American couple -- to give yourself some time if it hasn't been long. It's very easy to rebound and make the other person into the one that saves you from the old relationship. (Worst case I know personally, they were engaged after six weeks, married a year later, she attempted suicide after their honeymoon and they've spent the past five years making each other miserable.) And while commitment to God can see you through many rough spots, it won't help if you're just incompatible.	Caladan	Male	Canada	2006-09-25 09:02:00
K-1 Fiance(e) Visa Process & Procedures	trying to decide to go k-1 or k-3	What is this, a return policy on brides? How... icky. If it's figuring into your decision, according to the instructions on the I-129F, you'll be noted for filing a second petition for a K-1 or a K-3, so it's going to flag either way. Then USCIS will notify both you and your 'upgrade' that you've filed before. Beyond that, you still have to prove an ongoing relationship either way, and you have to be free to marry your fiancé, which means you're going to have to let the ink dry on the divorce certificate.	Caladan	Male	Canada	2006-09-25 07:53:00
K-1 Fiance(e) Visa Process & Procedures	Sent I-129f little worried	I freaked out for a week, and as it turns out I freaked out over all the wrong things. In any case, re: photos, the only things specified on the I-129F form are passport-style (not specific dimensions) and an inch from chin to the top of the head, and you and your fiancé having your own separate pictures.	Caladan	Male	Canada	2006-09-24 09:32:00
K-1 Fiance(e) Visa Process & Procedures	Explaination of Meeting	I think it looks good. Detailed, but not overly so.	Caladan	Male	Canada	2006-09-25 19:19:00
K-1 Fiance(e) Visa Process & Procedures	K-1 rejected, for a stupid reason!	It's not a K-1 rejection though, exactly. It's a I-129F rejection, and they're not the same thing (K-1's the whole process).	Caladan	Male	Canada	2006-09-25 22:21:00