Forum	Title	Content	Member	Sex	Country	Date/Time
Philippines	wife wants to buy land in the philippines	we are married and live in america and my wife wants to buy land in the philippines but she is worried about the taxes she says it is very expensive the land is in mangaldan pangasinan and we are buying it from her uncle it is over 1000 square meters does anyone have any experiance with land purchases there? thanks   Been looking for land some time now and have learned an awful lot over the years.  We are most likely going to make an agreement with the indigenous people called the Aetes for a variety of reasons, but to your question...   First of all, the taxes.   You need to contact whoever the local assessment office is and find out the local rate.  Generally you have a huge difference between residential and commercial property.  In the current region of our interest for example the assessment on residential land is 20% of market value and commercial assessments are at 50% of market value.  The local rate is 3% per annum on the assessment.  Some land is not even in a municipality and might be classified as agricultural/forest land and that can be very different too.  So you have to first locate the local taxing jurisdiction and this is something best done in person.  I have been to a number of municipal offices and it was the same kind of chaos you see on the streets with people driving.   There is also what amounts to a capital gains tax on any land sales and I am not going to try spelling the tagalog name for it here.  Just inquire with the local assessing office about it.    A more basic issue is guaranteeing title.  There is going to be a local land office in the region you are interested in.  I only know about the ones I am specifically interested in, but I can check to make sure a deed is bona-fide.  If there are encumberances upon the property they are supposed to be on the back of the deed, so a slick way around admitting that is to photocopy the front but not the back side of a deed and the sucker who buys it does not realize that there is a loan against the property he just bought and if it isn't paid then title goes to the lienholder.   You need a damned good reason to be buying land, and not because it is the uncle selling it.  We turned down fire-sale prices on land that relatives owned because there was no effective way for us to manage it properly and we were not going to become farmers just because a relative was dumping land.  Philippines has a real problem with squatters and they do have what amounts to adverse possession ie "squatter's rights" if people just put a house on the land you have title to.  Even government land has been taken over by squatters when you would think eminent domain would prevail, but that isn't what has happened.  A former military base was taken over by squatters for example in the Manila area.    Unless you have a well thought-out plan with everything worked out in a business plan format, then you have no business buying land.  I see properties less than a kilometer from each other with one guy asking 30 million pesos for 572 sq meters and another fellow asking for under 10 million for a lot twice as big - but I know where I can get 100 hectares for that kind of money so you really need to put the legwork in on knowing real estate values.  Don't just rush out there and buy, and don't automatically trust relatives.  Some of mine would be the very last people I would ever seek counsel from on a business transaction.	rlogan	Male	Philippines	2014-01-11 12:50:00
Philippines	Civil vs Church Marriage in the Philippines	Isn't K-1 more difficult than Spousal visa? Because they want to make sure that you are a legitimate couple. I figured if we were married over there, then the Spousal interview might not be as bad, and they may even grant us a Green card on the spot...     No.  The K-1 is not harder, and the risk it avoids is exactly what you cite:  getting married to someone who then can't enter.    You can do a ceremony that is non-official in the Philippines for her family and friends.   We talked to a few of their shaman from the superstition they practice there called Catholicism, but they would not do a non-official ceremony.  So we did a ceremony in a waterpark, officiated by her father for about $50.    I spent around $10 thousand on materials to build a small two-story house though, and built it with her father, brothers, and uncles while I was  staying there.  That house is going to last a hundred years so this is one of the really important distinctions between Americano thinking vs. Filipino.  They are big-time into squandering money for every fool thing.  Ceremonies for graduating 6th grade, parades, huge birthday parties, and yes of course a wedding with an Americano.  Your two thousand dollar wedding is more than enough to pay for Merchant Marine school that we put one of her brothers through.  It will bring dividends for at least two generations.    There are some things in a culture to cherish and there are others that are detrimental, like say cannibalism, incest, human sacrifice, etc. as extreme examples.  Their "culture" or "traditions" are sometimes exactly what is wrong with them and if fixed will result in the things they long for in Americano culture.  Like say a house.  Or a college education.   Blowing a bunch of money on a wedding when these are serious alternatives is foolish.  It is wise that you are limiting the amount you spend and not falling into the trap of the big wedding.     One of the really bad things that does is establish the precedent that you are the font of free money, big money, to shower on all manner of things whenever someone can think up a reason.  I arrived too late to put a stop to the big birthday party my wife pulled off for one of our sons here and the second son's birthday is now approaching with the obvious impending unfairness of him not getting the same big public party.  But it isn't going to happen.  The first one was a mistake and we are not going to make the same mistake again.   The money needs to go for things of lasting value instead of Filipino blow-it-all parties.    They do not believe money grows on trees in the US, by the way.  That is instead a self-serving manipulative framing they use to justify exactly the OPPOSITE:  they want money to grow on trees for THEMSELVES, so they use guilt-tripping and shaming tactics to say how unfair it is that you have all this money and they don't. So give me free money.  This is again one of the things very wrong about some subcultures in the Philippines.  It is precisely that attitude that impedes wealth creation.	rlogan	Male	Philippines	2014-01-16 22:47:00
Philippines	I was asked why does the Phils have a high incidence of scam. Agree or disagree?	actually, his only claim was that there is no government publication that lists the PI as high fraud...as written in black and white in the linked report, they were in the top 10 in 2005.               The topic, which I followed in the Effects of Major Changes page, and is now polluting this page, regards MARRIAGE visa fraud.    The report cited, as anyone who can read will see is vastly weighted by non-immigrant visas, not even immigrant visas, let alone marriage visas.   There isn't anything at all in the report about marriage fraud statistics, other than it sometimes happens.	rlogan	Male	Philippines	2014-02-28 07:47:00
Philippines	I was asked why does the Phils have a high incidence of scam. Agree or disagree?	In another thread a poster asked the question why so much scamming seems to occur from the Philippines and why the Philippines is considered a high risk country like Nigeria.           The poster had a baseless opinion.   Intelligent people ask for evidence that something is true before running off "explaining" what has not even been established.   Go ahead now and demonstrate with any U.S. Department of State publication that Philippines is a high marriage fraud country.  You won't be able to, because it does not exist.    Prove me wrong.	rlogan	Male	Philippines	2014-02-27 02:24:00
Philippines	Legal capacity for K-1 US	Well Jimmy your friend has been here expressing grave doubts and has conveyed some extremely serious red flags with manipulative behavior.   Nobody wants to see a train wreck.  People are on their best behavior when they are meeting someone and courting for marriage.  It's the best it can be in this honeymoon phase.   If your honeymoon is a nightmare then when the honeymoon is over it is going to be the worst thing that every happened to you.	rlogan	Male	Philippines	2014-07-04 18:33:00
Philippines	Happy 4th of July!!	What he means is that the groveling, sniveling cowards worshipping at the feet of government inhabiting most of this country now are celebrating a holiday marked for men of courage who took their personal firearms against the greatest military power on earth and defeated them.   They earned their liberty with their firearms and put the second amendment in place to KEEP that liberty.     It was a very tiny minority that fought the British - their government - who had marched to Lexington and Concord to disarm the people of their weapons.   Same thing now:  most people want to play it safe and stand behind tyranny.  They want to pretend the second amendment is something different from a guarantee of throwing off tyrannical government.   Like sport or hobby.	rlogan	Male	Philippines	2014-07-06 13:57:00
Philippines	Evidence of Support for Self Employed	I'm self employed and receive 1099's as a contractor, not subcontractor.    I had the bank write a letter that indicated total deposits in my account for the same years I was submitting the tax returns.    Excessive use of acronyms should be a felony.	rlogan	Male	Philippines	2014-07-06 13:48:00
Philippines	So...where are the VJ Fil-Am success stories?	I agree with you on the environment thing.  I was about to bring my wife to AK while I was deployed in the dead of winter, but decided THAT would be a bad idea; no support, she couldn't drive, etc.  So we waited almost a year.  But I brought her over in January, convinced the local weather folks to warm it up to -9° for her arrival, then 7 days later too her to Chena Hot Spring on a day when it was -54°.  One could argue that bringing them over at the WORST time could prevent a divorce 6-9 months down the road if they decide they can't hang.  But they can.  If they love you, they will put up with just about anything.   I do understand the point you are making about "putting up" with anything.     But before we agreed to marry my wife took me to the place that best represented her ideal life, and it was high up on Mount Malindang in a remote park area near Ozamis.   It was cold at night while there and we had no heat and inadequate bedding.  We didn't have electricity.  We cooked on fire outside.  So she "puts up" with Alaska the same way a dog puts up with a bone.  As she was telling me "this is what I want it to be like", standing in the doorway of a remote cabin looking out over mountain jungle you can just imagine how electrifying that was for me.   I finally said "OK, I am going to let this one kiss me" after that.	rlogan	Male	Philippines	2014-01-16 09:16:00
Philippines	So...where are the VJ Fil-Am success stories?	Even though, I was born and raised there, I still find it scary how the drivers drive there.       It is dangerous to obey traffic signs, lights, and laws here because doing so means you are acting against common practice.  If everyone expects you to run a stop sign and you don't, then you are going to be the cause of an accident.  And it is definitely scary because there is way less respect for life and property.     Hank mentioned something worth commenting on.  I was told by a number of morons not to bring my wife to Alaska in the winter, and to delay her immigration until summer because first impressions were so important and she wouldn't be able to handle it.  It struck me as a singularly stupid comment and none of the people who made it I either consider a friend or who have any idea why people would like living in Alaska.  She got here at thirty below zero and she had wonderful, exciting new experiences that she had looked forward to the whole time we were doing immigration.   If your wife isn't "into" the lifestyle you are living then ####### are you doing marrying each other?  This was my question to the people that made those comments - why on earth would I marry a woman who wasn't cut out for my lifestyle?  The whole reason I picked her in the first place was because she was a perfect fit.     DavenRoxy - we're almost done selling your house.  Again.  We've sold it to four different people so far 'cuz we listed it for $50K.	rlogan	Male	Philippines	2014-01-11 13:25:00
Philippines	So...where are the VJ Fil-Am success stories?	In our seventh year now.  It's been wonderful, especially being objectified as a sex slave.  It's been great since the beginning.     She got five months this year with the family in the Philippines and I am taking over three months. Nobody can touch me in traffic on a 200CC Honda mountain bike.  I'll do whatever it takes - the shoulder, sidewalks, going the wrong way into oncoming traffic, etc.   I once stopped at a red light in a more isolated area with no traffic.  The only reason I stopped was because there was a cop there with his own bike and I didn't want to give him a reason.   He yelled at me for stopping, because there was no traffic.	rlogan	Male	Philippines	2014-01-10 11:09:00
Philippines	my CFO experience	Something that no person has ever reported:   "I learned so many valuable things - knowledge that will certainly save me from awful things happening to me.  I am really glad the government is making everyone do this because without this vital information you cannot get anywhere else, everyone would suffer."	rlogan	Male	Philippines	2014-07-13 11:09:00
Philippines	Percentage of denied k1	Not sideways or downhill.   The question was what can get you denied.   We had a thread maybe a year ago from someone whose girl was accused of prostitution because she was from Angeles City.  It wasn't even something she admitted to.  She was denied.    A more interesting case was someone from Belgium at about the same time who was arrested in the USA for prostitution here (not the home country) after she arrived.   She was using a friend's ID so the charge was actually levied against her friend.   But apparently since they took her fingerprints, the FBI fingerprint database came back with a hit.   I don't know how that case ended up, but it demonstrates how closely legal immigration is tracked, whereas gangs from Central America are sending up teens who have tortured and killed people that are getting in this country on "humanitarian" grounds.	rlogan	Male	Philippines	2014-07-13 16:18:00
Philippines	Percentage of denied k1	Prostitution is another one.   They only let in those who give it away for free.	rlogan	Male	Philippines	2014-07-12 20:26:00
Philippines	Consular interview Monday...no time for panic, but...	We've sent stuff that never ended up in official files so if they ask you better have it.   At our adjustment of status interview for example we had an extra certified copy of our marriage certificate with us, and it is a good thing we had that with us.	rlogan	Male	Philippines	2014-07-11 13:07:00
Philippines	Meeting my Fiance in another Country	It isn't an immigration issue.   It is a marriage compatibility issue.   If you stay with her family, meet her friends and schoolmates, neighbors, etc.  you are going to know much more about her character and personality.  There are also people with envy and spite that are more than happy to spill the beans on things they think will make you reconsider marrying her.   All this is why scammers try to meet you in a different city and say it is too dangerous or uncomfortable to meet you in their own home.     It isn't that this one is a scammer, but that there are genuine reasons for meeting the family and getting to know them personally.   Were this me, I would go visit the family myself if she couldn't come. But you aren't me and your circumstances may be completely different.   I never pursued marriage with someone I met on the internet.  I met them in person, where I traveled, and it was surprising how fast people came out of the woodwork with information.  It was really easy to see what kind of parents and upbringing they had.	rlogan	Male	Philippines	2014-07-16 12:57:00
Philippines	documentation to establish that you have received vaccinations	There are two processes for green cards in the US.   Border official, process 1:   "You here illegally?   You swear?   You did not file an application, pay fees, get vaccinations or anything like that... you broke the law, right?"   Okay, here's your green card.   Need any medical, dental work done?   How about some hot meals and a house?  No problem, we'll pick up the tab.  Anthrax?   Plague?  Welcome, everyone.   This is America.    Border official process 2:  "What?   you are trying to enter legally?   OK, first go back home.  We're not letting you in for at least a year.  Give us a thousand dollars for now, and start working on this wheel barrel of requirements, in triplicate...  If you've got the flu, you aren't getting in.  Because this is America.   Got to protect America from the likes of you law abiding people.	rlogan	Male	Philippines	2014-08-01 12:07:00
Philippines	Admission of drug use at st lukes, is my visa automatically denied	You have to tell the truth.   If you have been convicted of something or admitted to it in some official manner - tell the truth.   If there is no record like that, tell the truth:  you never did any illegal substances.   Because that's the truth.   Got it?  Now, I'm looking for a brownie recipe.   Not sure how much sweetner to put in there.	rlogan	Male	Philippines	2014-07-30 12:54:00
Philippines	Is Friend's Fiancee Scamming Him? How to convince him?	Its not so bad yet because whenever I visit Cebu, I go there with a set budget and spend no more than that. Then usually at the end of the trip I provide her all the extra money I brought that I didn't spend. So in the end, the budget is still balanced.     You didn't answer the question about borrowing money, asked twice.  So the answer is yes.   This statement above I understand is rationalizing after-the-fact.   No harm meant by it, just going for accuracy.   When people order things with your name as credit for payment, but you have no knowledge of the security tendered...   that's a problem.  "Don't borrow money in my name without my permission" is a pretty reasonable requirement of a family member.    I don't coddle family.   Oh Jesus that's actually pretty important not to do.  Tell it to them straight.   I understand Tampo and Lambing in Filipino society, and I mention that because I think someone is arguing not to be open and straightforward in communication with your own family.   That's an infamous form of it.    lol.   That's why in our relationship, it's zero tolerance for that.   No silent treatment manipulation.   No begging.  In Filipino culture the men are rougher on the women than in the US.   I reject that too.   No reason to lamb if you don't abuse them in the first place.  We're trying to take the best from each culture.     I spent three months living and working side by side with my Filipino family building a house.  I do construction.   Built a sea wall too with big stones I had delivered on a later trip.  That was really fun.  Her father and I planned all of the concrete, hollow block, steel, plumbing, electrical - the works.  Made lists, checked prices, adjusted orders - and then followed the plan.   No surprises, no emergencies.  I left and filed k-1 when I got back to the US.   I left all the tile, interior wood for cabinets & finish, etc.  for her father to complete.   The fact we could do a big project like that together and have everything go according to plan - wow, talk about great.   The door and window guys were there the day before I left.  They'd made everything at their shop and trucked it all over.  Suddenly it was a finished house and it all came in on budget.  We had to cut back on some things where the unexpected happened, but what a relief that the plans worked.  We see people just sending money without husbanding it - and the results can be disasterous.    After you are that close with people every day, you can talk to them like adults, family, best friends.   Frankly.  They were hesitant to let me stay with them at first, in their little shack, as if it wasn't good enough for me.   lol.    Communication is everything in relationships.   It's all about being truthful and open.  That house worked out spectacularly.   Her brother's Merchant Seaman College degree - we made the family an agreement:   we put him through merchant marine school, and that's the parents' retirement.   His obligation.   My wife sends money regularly for internet and landline there.  I think it is a little over $2K.   But that's it.  The father is a construction foreman and is doing okay.   So we don't need to do more than that.  Skype and facebook, live chat of different kinds - we're paying the bill to have that communication always open.     This isn't what the OP is doing:  planning ahead and working out expectations.   It's just get her here.   And when she does it's going to be all about sending money home.  There's been no agreement, but sure as the sun it's going to happen.  More of the same abusive "de-friending".   Send more or else.     Or is anyone banking on a fairy tale start?	rlogan	Male	Philippines	2014-08-01 22:46:00
Philippines	Is Friend's Fiancee Scamming Him? How to convince him?	You sound very disrespectful of your wife and where she comes from. Her and her family are not like dogs that you have to train to heel to you. I understand what you mean setting boundaries but the way you describe things is quite degrading.    lol.   the only one trying to degrade them is YOU.   As if you had magical powers to declare them degraded:   "The King has spoken:  you have been degraded"   You have no such power.	rlogan	Male	Philippines	2014-07-25 21:56:00
Philippines	Is Friend's Fiancee Scamming Him? How to convince him?	I showed plenty of disapproval afterwards, but its quite difficult to teach that type of self constraint I've discovered. Just look at Congress's spending habits.....   You aren't alone buddy, so welcome to the club.   The question is how to deal with it effectively because if you don't kill this it is going to end up being a nightmare.   Not as bad as the OP but this is absolutely classic. mainstream issue with foreigners and Filipinas.   This is what I did:   I asked if your would-be in-laws  borrowed money because this is one of the ways they sneak a bigger budget out of you.   They guilt-trip you when the money comes due and say they will lose face, and they have no other option.   I told my then-fiancé when she pulled this that it was her problem, not mine.   The answer is no. And yeah, it was a big embarrassment for her.  One of the more important things though is I went back to the point where she borrowed the money and talked about how cruel the thinking is, to conceal this from me and know from the start you are going to spring it on me as an "emergency" -  trying to make me feel bad.   This is some pretty calculatingly malicious behavior.  Look at that stupid Americano walking around with a smile on his face not knowing we're going to spring this trap on him a couple weeks from now...   When she spent the money I told her to set aside for food on clothes instead (for her interview trip to Manila) she figured on telling me right before she stepped on the ship that she would have to starve for three days and I would front the money.   Too bad honey - go hungry.   She hung up on me and wouldn't speak to me for three days.   But this is how you have to do it.     By the time she came over here we had this all worked out and wow, talk about successful!!   Before she left I had her bring her mother to Manila for a meeting with me on just this point.  There was nothing confrontational about it - I love my family very much.   But you have to make the boundaries clear and prove that you enforce them.   What I wanted most of all at that meeting was peace.   My wife was coming over and doing our honeymoon, and if I got so much as one phone call, one email, one facebook message with some kind of B.S. emergency at home I was sending her back.   Because if they couldn't do that for me on our honeymoon then I was assured the rest of the marriage would be a parade of emergencies.     They left us completely alone and it was wonderful for both of us.   It is a lot of stress on the Filipina too, being put in the middle, to be used by the family as leverage for money. You absolutely must work this out before she comes over to the states.   It was simple for me to teach this restraint.  Not easy - but simple.  The answer is "no".  Go hungry.   Let the electric company shut the power off.  Deal with being unable to pay your debts.  No means no.	rlogan	Male	Philippines	2014-07-23 15:30:00
Philippines	Is Friend's Fiancee Scamming Him? How to convince him?	Well there's a red flag.  People always have an excuse for lying to us.  Telling the truth will get you upset.  It's called "playing the servant role" in manipulation:   I lied for you.    Did they borrow any of that money?    If you ask them, will they lie so that you don't get upset?     The 16,000:  once you establish a precedent like that, expect it to be used as leverage  in the future.  Siblings birthdays.  Funerals.  Weddings.   Champagne despedida.   If you are well off and they are rich by Filipino standards - the 8,000 budget that turns out to be 16,000 is still troubling.  Being able to plan and to trust - boy that's so important.   We put her brother through merchant marine school.   He's finished with the coursework, about to take on the internship. That's almost what it cost us for tuition per semester.      Please don't take this unkindly.   It's all about clear communication and establishing boundaries so that the future is drama-free.     If the story didn't quite happen that way, I could be misreading this.  And this is something we've had to work out in our marriage too.   In some Filipino subcultures like my wife's they like to have a big poster for a birthday and give out all kinds of food...gifts to the neighbors.  Lechon Babuay.  Fireworks - right.   I was appalled with what my wife did for my son's birthday.   I flew in the night before so I didn't know what she was doing.   Not the money so much as the big public show.   There is a war going on with the MNLF on Mindanao and we are right on the boundary of the ARMM - Autonomous Region of Muslim Mindanao.   They've assassinated Americanos in broad daylight on the street in our city, and political murders are pretty regular.   Bombings.   Kidnap for ransom.   So keeping a low profile is an issue with me.                              Edited by rlogan, 19 July 2014 - 02:58 PM.	rlogan	Male	Philippines	2014-07-19 14:58:00
Philippines	Is Friend's Fiancee Scamming Him? How to convince him?	She's here. Let the countdown begin for her move to California to live with her family.     It can play two ways from here.   The more malicious play is the false VAWA claim, and that is a faster track.   The somewhat more merciful play is to fake it long enough to do the marriage and adjustment of status interview.     What matters most is how educated she is on the process of adjusting status.  Some scammers blow it big-time, thinking all they have to do is land here and find someone else to marry.  Since she has relatives here she's going to have some coaching that will rescue her from the stupidest mistakes.   If she has the right coaching she will push for marriage right away, file AOS, and then dump him after the 2 year green card arrives.  But in the meantime he is going to be dealing mostly with manipulative abuse and financial rape.	rlogan	Male	Philippines	2014-07-11 17:56:00
Philippines	Is Friend's Fiancee Scamming Him? How to convince him?	Just curious. How did you garner so much info on that working girl ?     Very rare to see an "Americano" in my wife's province.  Turned out he was Canadian.    He said it was the first time anyone had taken her back to the province.   Let's see how close you can come to guessing how much he paid her for a month of "companionship".	rlogan	Male	Philippines	2014-07-10 16:12:00
Philippines	Is Friend's Fiancee Scamming Him? How to convince him?	What would you recommend for bargaining techniques?    Not much different from car dealers.   When you start walking away, the price suddenly drops.   Many years ago I was in Reno when the famous Bunny Ranch was still in business. I took a cab out there and by comparison to our friend in the OP had a much better return on my dollar.	rlogan	Male	Philippines	2014-07-10 14:56:00
Philippines	Is Friend's Fiancee Scamming Him? How to convince him?	This reminds me of the few dad's or mom's that I know of who tattoo their kids' names on themselves. It's almost always a dad or mom who doesn't even see their kids, or see them rarely. The dads and moms that are actually a part of their kids' lives, usually don't have to tattoo their kids' names on themselves to prove it.       We saw a working girl at the beach with one son's name on her breast and the other just above her crotch.  How charming.  She had not seen them for months.   Oh well.  It's going to be interesting watching this unfold.     The best way to track this kind of affair is in call girl equivalents.   For example, $2K on the ticket and going away party is 20 (legal) Nevada call girl equivalents.   If you know how to bargain, anyway.	rlogan	Male	Philippines	2014-07-10 14:19:00
Philippines	Is Friend's Fiancee Scamming Him? How to convince him?	They just told my wife to go to her consulate if she had any trouble for anything. Makes a lot of sense when its a seven hour drive away and most Filipina don't drive. I don't recall if she went to St Mary's or Prism, but when I found out what they told her I gave her better instructions on what she should do. It was rather apparent they had a Manila centric view of the world, and every place is like living in Manila, and every person can just grab a jeepney to get anywhere in a reasonable time frame.     In Spades.   The supreme irony and hypocrisy is having bureaucrats less educated on the subject than the visa applicants themselves standing in the way of their immigration under the theory that applicants are too stupid to feed, clothe, and bathe themselves without mommy and daddy bureaucrat to do it for them.   Of course, if ONE person can't handle informing themselves then a couple hundred thousand who CAN should be forced to go through the seminar, right?   Look at this case in particular though for the greatest irony of all:   a scammer about to hose an Americano over big time is being lectured on how to "protect" herself.   She probably had to keep from bursting out laughing.	rlogan	Male	Philippines	2014-07-09 15:25:00
Philippines	Is Friend's Fiancee Scamming Him? How to convince him?	Notice how he laughed at the tattoo of his name and said he didn't know why she did it.   Talk about not knowing someone.   Pretty simple:   it cost her almost nothing, means nothing in reality, but is scammer-type "proof" that you love someone.  Instead of treating you decently they put your name on their arm.   It's a merit badge at home too - the Americano badge.    God Almighty the Vegas wedding.   How trite and Cliché.  This seems to be some kind of merit badge for scammers too.   I met a dupe here that worked at Sentry Hardware.   After the Vegas wedding, she went straight back home and he hasn't seen her since.  She didn't apply for advanced parole so they'd have to start all over again with a new visa application for entry. You think about all the condoms that would buy if he actually had a use for them...   We'll see him on the "Effects of Major Changes" page soon enough.  He's going to marry her, she'll leave him, and he'll want to know how he can get off the hook for signing financial liability.         Edited by rlogan, 07 July 2014 - 09:36 PM.	rlogan	Male	Philippines	2014-07-07 21:35:00
Philippines	Is Friend's Fiancee Scamming Him? How to convince him?	Well the only thing she can do is marry him within the 90 - day window. If she has the visa in hand, they won't stop her at the border.    Again folks, this is not a troll posting, there are numerous cases like this not just on visajourney - I know three scammers personally from my wife's neighborhood.   One got her Americano to buy a Sari-sari store and build her family a new house.   Another strung her guy along for almost three years.   He was sending everything he could afford and didn't even have enough money to visit her.    The tatoo - Christ almighty.   Threats of suicide.  Our friend is moving up the ranks to a visajourney classic.  Think it's bad now?   Wait 'till she gets here.	rlogan	Male	Philippines	2014-07-04 17:32:00
Philippines	Is Friend's Fiancee Scamming Him? How to convince him?	I don't think troll, no.     The official VISAJourney record was the guy who brought the stripper in from Russia.   She started stripping in NYC and slept with her customers but never with the sponsor.  I forget his name, but it was on the "Effects of Major Changes" page a few years ago.   I managed to find her picture on a modeling site and although she wasn't my type, she was definitely the hot body.    There are some scammers in my wife's neighborhood.   They meet guys on the 'net and Good Lord it's hard to believe how gullible some of them are.  The girls won't meet them in their home city because the risk of them finding the boyfriend/husband is too high.   So they meet in Cebu or Manila.  Tell the guy it is too dangerous coming to the province.              Edited by rlogan, 01 July 2014 - 11:16 PM.	rlogan	Male	Philippines	2014-07-01 23:15:00
Philippines	Is Friend's Fiancee Scamming Him? How to convince him?	http://www.census.go...12-results-2012   He said she's poor.   The above data shows the poorest decile families in the Philippines earn 6,000 pesos a month.   So 14,000 pesos for a birthday party is enough to support a poor family of five for ten weeks.  Or one person for a whole year.	rlogan	Male	Philippines	2014-07-01 15:26:00
Philippines	Is Friend's Fiancee Scamming Him? How to convince him?	mo·ron ?môr?än/   noun informal noun: moron; plural noun: morons a stupid person. synonyms: fool, idiot, ###, blockhead, dunce, dolt, ignoramus, imbecile, cretin, dullard, simpleton, clod; More informalnitwit, halfwit, dope, ninny, nincompoop, chump, dimwit, dingbat, dipstick, goober, coot, goon, dumbo, dummy, ditz, dumdum, fathead, numbskull, numbnuts, dunderhead, thickhead, airhead, butthead, flake, lamer, lamebrain, zombie, nerd, peabrain, birdbrain, scissorbill, jughead, mouth-breather, jerk, donkey, twit, goat, dork, twerp, hoser, schmuck, bozo, #######, turkey, schlep, chowderhead, dumbhead, goofball, goof, goofus, galoot, lummox, knuckle-dragger, klutz, putz, schlemiel, sap, meatball, dumb cluck, mook	rlogan	Male	Philippines	2014-07-01 13:23:00
Philippines	Mailing prices and safety	We did an experiment with the Philippines post office.   Out of two letters and two post cards from the USA, one post card made it.    I tried to send one letter to the USA from the Philippines.   I went down to the post office and paid for a tracking number.  Philippines registered mail or whatever.   I think it made it to what was called "sorting".   That's pretty incredible.  One out of five.	rlogan	Male	Philippines	2014-10-05 21:14:00
Philippines	Birth of Baby - US or Philippines?	Medical is cheap in the Philppines, but the one draw back is if you have complication then the Medical care is nowhere near what it is in the USA.         Yeah, we hear that meme all the time and it is not informative at all.   There are vast differences between what a poor Filipino gets in a remote province and the excellent facilities that private patients can afford to pay for in a modern city like Cebu, Davao City, Manila, etc.     Peter32 - thanks for that citation on cost of c-section.   About $2,800.   lol   Our first c-section was $26 K and the second was $28 K.   TEN TIMES MORE.    This is precisely why it can be so worth it to have work done in the Philippines.  Same with any kind of dental work.   Even with insurance covering 80% of a lot of things, we still pay less with cash in the Philippines than the U.S. co-pay costs us.    It's not because we get ten times the service.  It's better in the Philippines by our experience.	rlogan	Male	Philippines	2014-10-07 18:02:00
Philippines	Birth of Baby - US or Philippines?	Well, we had our first child in the US. But now the only hospital near where my family lives has gone "out-of-network" from our insurance. So we're seriously considering having our second child in Philippines (Davao City). Questions:       we also fell victim - again and again - to charges in Alaska being above what is called "customary" by the insurance company and the hospital being extremely uncooperative and combative about extra charges we did not want.   Thousands.    They smirk while saying that they have no choice, someone will sue if they don't heap all of these extra charges on top that we don't want.  Why two doctors signing off to leave instead of just one?   Another charge in excess of $1,000 right there.   The insurance company will not allow it.   You force us into a position where we are having to escape from the hospital?   Make you out to be a criminal for trying to save thousands to feed your baby.    Our experience generally is that for any service in the Philippines, it will cost less than the 20% insurance deductible, and the service will be better.   They do what you want instead of forcing you to do what you don't want.  Edited by rlogan, 05 October 2014 - 09:07 PM.	rlogan	Male	Philippines	2014-10-05 21:05:00
Philippines	Birth of Baby - US or Philippines?	The more important concern for us is that we want our child to grow up in a free country. In the USA, the government owns your children.	rlogan	Male	Philippines	2011-10-09 15:04:00
Philippines	Enunciation - get some	I have not found that issue regarding "glottal stop" as you refer to it.  Difficulty I find is how my asawa pronounces words using letters that were not in the Philippine alphabet prior to 1976, (c, ch, f, j, ll, ñ, q, rr, v, x and z.) and not implemented in the schools until 1987.  Hard to know how to pronounce letters you were not taught their pronunciation     As for you learning to speak tagalog, try this:   L-Lingo.com       Oh really?   You should try studying a little Tagolog, Hank.      Here is one of the many presentations of the glottal stop as an important feature of Tagalog:   http://learningtagal...ttal_stops.html   When it is such a prominent feature of a language that is nearly nonexistent in another, problems will arise.   I spent almost five months in the Philippines this year alone.  Years cumulatively since the early 90's.    My own term for this was "swallowing" letters when I was repeating terms like "Wala", which has the glottal stop at the end.  I didn't know the formal term for it.   The fact it comes so many times at the end of words in my wife's native language (Visayan) exactly like that means it is rife for problems.     French is probably the most famous example of not enunciating the letters at the ends of words, and many African languages are the same.   That's why my friend who is married to a lovely lady from Ghana has some difficulty, and I have helped them with this.  English is the spoken language there, yet it is difficult to understand because they both do this and have a habit of putting the accent on different syllables.    I realize you needed to get some put-downs in this post of yours.      I do not accept in myself the excuse you just used above.   I speak fluent Spanish, conversational Visayan, and enough working knowledge of Korean and Japanese to get along alone in both places.  A little French, and very limited Chinese.   I didn't say "Oh, there are no rising and falling tones in English like there are in Asian language groups... it's just too hard".   Or pretend that the rolling "r" is some kind of difficult thing.  Or the French "J".    You should be aware that there are many languages spoken in the Philippines Hank.      I'm not much interested in Tagolog as compared with Visayan, which is not on L-lingo.com   .   Nor is Ilokano, Waray-Waray, Kapampangan, etc.  I did not ask for help in learning a language, that was you taking the opportunity for a put-down.   So here is the same back to you:   It sounds like your wife has a lot of problems with English, so try this:   http://www.everythin..._ells_71638.php   Edited by rlogan, 10 October 2014 - 02:52 PM.	rlogan	Male	Philippines	2014-10-10 14:47:00
Philippines	Enunciation - get some	One of the most frustrating things for me in the seven years I have been with my lovely wife is the near-zero success rate in reproducing Tagaolog or Visayan words.   She isn't alone with this:   many Filipinos will say a word, I ask them to repeat, and repeat, and repeat - yet I am laughed at for not pronouncing it right.   Ultimately I will ask my wife to spell the word.   Lo and behold, she is not actually enunciating all of the letters.   Instead, she does what is called in linguistics the "glottal stop".   It is particularly severe for consonants at the ends of words, but that isn't the only place.   Were she to pronounce the words "tip", "tin", or "tick", every one of them sounds the same:   "ti".   The glottal stop is where you stop the airflow from going through the vocal chord so that it is silent.   So her lips will be closed to make the "p" sound, but since she has stopped the airflow with the glottal stop, there is no sound.  In English an example of the glottal stop would be "uh-oh", where the dash represents the glottal stop.   It is not a sound.  It is silence.  That silence has kind of an abrupt feature about it, since what is happening is the closing off of the airflow sharply.   Same thing with "t" or "p" or "k":  you just try to pronounce those letters with no airflow through the vocal chord.   It cannot be done.   Because correct pronunciation requires that air be flowing through the vocal chord.    My wife, God bless her, is trying.   Having identified what it is she's doing helps.  It isn't enough to ask someone to enunciate better and pronounce all of the letters.   Because they think that they are.  You have to identify what it is they are doing so that you can train them out of it.     While we are here, I have some tips that are nearly a lecture I have to give to people that seem to have zero empathy for a foreigner trying in earnest to learn their language.    What commoners seem to do is look away from you, speak rapidly and softly, without enunciating the individual letters of the words.   Without separating words so that you can't tell where one word ends and another one starts.  Como esta becomes "comsta" for example.  For me, it is instinct to slow down, separate words, enunciate all of the letters, speak loudly and clearly enough, and look at them directly so they can see your mouth and mimick better.  With some people it goes beyond lack of empathy - they actually enjoy frustrating you.  Because you are a rich Americano and this is one thing they can hold over you.   I have never once in my whole life laughed at someone who did not pronounce something I was teaching them, but to go so far as to not enunciate myself and then laugh at them for mimicking me - it is unthinkable.   To me.    Different vowel sounds are tough on my wife.   A, E, I, O, and U have different sounds in Spanish, the origin of so much Tagalog or Visayan, so "Ship" becomes "sheep" for example.  "Ball" becomes "Bowl".   My wife has a good attitude about being corrected, but sometimes can't help herself in getting defensive.   I remember the first Filipina wife I met almost 30 years ago, who had such a bad attitude that when I tried to help her with her pronunciation she would clam up and refuse to speak at all.  I wasn't making fun of her.   In fact, the whole point was to PREVENT anyone from making fun of her because people can be real savages about it with rude comments and put-downs.  Her husband's name was "Hank".   Everyone in the Filipino community was calling him "Hang" because she was doing the glottal stop and not pronouncing the "K".   It would have helped if I knew about the glottal stop, but helped even more if she wasn't so defensive about it.    Another curiosity is inserting sounds where they don't belong.   An example is the Filipino habit of putting an "e" in front of every "s".   So "stop" becomes "estop".   I had to train her to say "SSSSSSSSSSSSS, and then pronounce the word as she is already in the middle of doing the SSSSSSS, which prevents the "e" from being pronounced.    Frankly, a lot of this comes down to sheer laziness.   Lack of effort.   How much effort does it take to pronounce "P" instead of being lazy and ending the word before the "P" starts?   It takes almost no effort at all!   Yet, for some people this is some kind of Herculean effort.   But to pronounce words correctly isn't asking something extraordinary out of someone.   It is NORMAL BEHAVIOR and what is EXPECTED of a speaker:  to be heard clearly is your OBLIGATION to a person who is stopping what they are doing in order to listen to you.   So don't cop an attitude that this is some big extra effort on your part to enunciate words the way they are supposed to be pronounced.                    Edited by rlogan, 10 October 2014 - 12:37 PM.	rlogan	Male	Philippines	2014-10-10 12:34:00
Philippines	OMG...my long story...so excited right now! Need help though.	However a month later we broke up...the hardships of a long distance relationship. Nothing came from that 1st petition. A few months later, I got into a serious relationship with another,   A person who suffers fatal "hardships of a long distance relationship" does not immediately start another one.  An interviewer is going to ask.     My radar is trained to detect when my perceptions are being managed.  The passive voice is always a clue.    Positive voice:  "I dumped her because she's ugly".    Passive voice:  "the hardships of a long distance relationship".   Sounds like the hardships did it instead of people being involved that made decisions based upon concrete happenings.    The fact you don't want me to know is what I am trained to detect.   It is axiomatic to a trained investigator that this is something they need to probe:  why doesn't he want me to know?   I don't need to know.   I am just telling you to a trained investigator will want to know.	rlogan	Male	Philippines	2014-10-07 17:13:00
Philippines	pls take no offense	There is no greater fool than the person who lets other people's comments influence who they marry.   One of the most important things for a man to learn is that people say things not because they believe them but to put you down out of jealousy, envy, and spite.   People that said anything negative about my wife being 30 years younger went immediately on my list of people with bad character.   The problem is not the age difference between myself and my wife.  The problem is with THEM.  For saying anything.   For thinking they have any right whatsoever to comment on other people's relationships.  Inter-racial, gay, age differences - it's all the same idiocy and bad character to judge.    The most moronic thing about it is people actually placing themselves in the position of pretending to protect my wife from me.   Hubris isn't strong enough a word for this.   What they are proving is that they don't view my wife as fully human.  As if she were a imbecile, incapable of making her own decisions in life.   I can't think of anything more reprehensible than dismissing how my wife actually feels, and replacing that with their stupid framing.      Do we hear people saying, for same age couples, that she is old enough to be your sister or brother?   The only purpose of saying such a thing is to maliciously inject an insinuation of incest.    "Old enough to be your father" is smearing you with an incest comment, and "young enough to be his daughter" is a combination of sliming with incest and pedophilia.  The person saying such a thing has bad character.    Meeting on the internet?   Pffft.   So what.  Are we in the 18th century?   Oh my GOD!   I hear people BUY stuff on the internet too.   Well, it certainly isn't legitimate to buy stuff online.   lol.	rlogan	Male	Philippines	2014-10-09 23:24:00
Philippines	Same Sex K1 US Embassy Maila	We feel so sad right now we have seen timelines from girl-boy couples with filipina fiances getting noa 2 approvals at tsc lately even if we received our noa1 ahead of them. What's going on with our application? *sigh*   Oh hon - I feel your pain.    Our paperwork was delayed interminably and just getting fingerprints was a nightmare.  Social security number - another two year nightmare.  It may not be same sex related.  Stupid bureaucracy related.  We had to make a lot of phone calls, written requests.  Two congressional investigations.  Looking back, hard to believe they put you through this when illegals get the carpet rolled out for them.    It is great to see this working out for other same sex couples.  Some day tolerance may even extend to boy-girl couples with big age differences.  lol.	rlogan	Male	Philippines	2014-07-19 15:17:00