Sunday, December 7, 2014

So When is the Wedding?

By Victoria

This question is by far the one I get asked the most, and I have been asked it constantly since Colin and I became engaged: When is the wedding going to be?

Short answer: It'll probably be a year or more before we have a wedding ceremony.

Long answer: We are legally required by the K-1 Visa to get married within 90 days of Colin's arrival within the U.S., but that just means we need to get an official marriage license/certificate issued to us within that timeframe. Because there will still be so much to do immediately after Colin arrives in terms of getting him a green card, getting him official work permission and a job, getting him a driver's license (which means teaching him U.S. driving), etc. etc. etc. -- ALL of which require more government forms, processing, and fees -- we just don't think we'll be able to simultaneously plan a real-deal wedding ceremony anytime soon (and when I say "we," I mostly mean me, because we all know who's really going to be in charge of that). On top of that, we would almost certainly have our wedding ceremony in South Carolina where my family lives, which means I would be doing long-distance wedding planning from where I currently live in Virginia.

Our idea, at this point, is to wait at least a year after we're legally married to have ourselves an actual (small) wedding ceremony. The timeframe is flexible, and I don't think we'll be making any major decisions about setting a date or anything until after things with Colin's immigration calm down.

Even so, we will likely have an informal get-together of some sort down with my family after our legal marriage, so we can still have a chance to celebrate!

Monday, November 24, 2014

NVC Approval Received

We have a dual post for you today, since some things happened nearly simultaneously.

By Victoria

I finally received the National Visa Center (NVC) letter of approval on Thursday, the 20th. It's dated November 4 (it took 16 days to get here?!) and is a very simple letter stating that NVC has processed our petition and forwarded it on to the U.S. embassy in London. It also provides our official case number and the address of Colin's interview location...which turns out to be the London embassy. I guess he can't interview in the Belfast consulate after all (that's going to be annoying).

-------------

By Colin

I received my letter slightly before Victoria, on November 18th.

It contains the check list of what I now have to do, which involves form filling and gathering documents.

The list includes: Passport, Birth Certificate, and Police Certificate (to prove that I'm not a criminal).

Once I have completed the check list, I can arrange an appointment for a medical exam, which has to be done in London. I'll report back here once that process has been completed.

-------------

As it turns out, the London Embassy moves much faster than the U.S. government, seeing as Colin received his letter from the embassy before the NVC letter even arrived -- which means London had time to receive the K-1 petition from across the ocean, process it, and mail Colin's letter across another body of water from England to Northern Ireland faster than NVC could get a letter from New Hampshire to Washington, D.C. Who's surprised anymore?

Friday, October 31, 2014

Approved!!

By Victoria

We received the approval notice from USCIS (known as the Notice of Approval 1 [NOA1]) for our K-1 petition application! The letter is even printed on official watermarked paper, unlike other notices we've received in the past. Fancy.

The letter is dated October 16, and we received it early this week. (I'm a bit late posting this -- we've been busy!) It reads in part:

The above petition has been approved. We have sent the original visa petition to the Department of State National Visa Center (NVC), 32 Rochester Avenue, Portsmouth, NH 03801-2909. The USCIS has completed all action; further inquiries should be directed to the NVC.

The NVC now processes all approved fiance(e) petition [sic]. The NVC processing should be complete within two to four weeks after receiving the petition from USCIS. The NVC will create a case record with your petition information. NVC will then send the petition to the U.S. Embassy or Consulate where your fiance(e) will be interviewed for his or her visa.

You will receive notification by mail when NVC has sent your petition to the U.S. Embassy or Consulate. The notification letter will provide you with a unique number for your case and the name and address of the U.S. Embassy or Consulate where your petition has been sent.

Based on that information, I suspect Colin will receive his official visa around January. A maximum of 4 weeks for NVC processing puts us at the end of November already, and I imagine it'll take some time through December to go through the Consulate interview process (Colin will need to arrange a medical exam, obtain various records to present, etc.).

In any case, things should go a little speedier now! Woohoo!

Total USCIS process length
Application Receipt Date: May 14, 2014
Approval Notice Date: October 16, 2014

Sunday, October 19, 2014

October Visit: Border Security Experience

By Colin

Since the application for my visa had been submitted, I wasn't sure if I should try to visit Victoria.  I did some research on a forum dedicated to visa procedures and discovered that there were a large number of posts from people who had successfully visited America with a visa application in progress.  I took the chance and booked my tickets.

Before I left, I asked one of my supervisors at work to provide me with a letter to say that I had a full-time contract and that I intended to return to work after my holiday.  It thankfully turned out that I didn't need it.

I left Belfast International Airport on Saturday 18th October.  The flight to Newark went well.


I handed over my passport at border control, expecting quite a few questions.  It turned out that the process was fast and straightforward.  I was asked why I was visiting America.  I replied that I was visiting my fiancee.  I was then asked:

  • What my job is
  • What Victoria's job is
  • How did we meet
  • How long were we engaged
  • How long did we know each other
  • How long I planned to stay
  • When did I last visit
  • How long did I stay then
I answered all of the above questions, and then I had to get my fingerprints scanned and a photograph taken.  After that, I was free to go and make a sprint for my connecting flight!

Three weeks of fun ahoy.

Thursday, September 25, 2014

Request for Evidence from USCIS

By Victoria

Today in the mail I received a I-797E Notice of Action form (dated September 19) with a Request for Evidence from USCIS.

It seems that the proof of citizenship documents I provided in our original application packet didn't fit the bill. I included a copy of my birth certificate as issued by my hospital in South Carolina, as well as a birth certificate card from the South Carolina Department of Health and Environmental Control (DHEC). The note I received back from USCIS explains, "If the petitioner was born in the U.S. and will be submitting a birth certificate as proof of U.S. citizenship, such must be a civilly registered long-form certificate. Abstracts of Birth and birth documents issued by hospitals are not sufficient."

In hindsight, I suppose I should've realized that I needed a full DHEC document (not the card) or looked into it more...but at the same time, it would've been nice if the I-129F Petition form instructions would've clearly stated that they needed the long-form birth certificate issued by a civil authority (i.e., my birth state government). The only thing the original instructions say is: "If you were born in the United States, submit a copy, front and back, of your birth certificate."

So I feel kind of dumb, and also ticked that I may have delayed our process a little bit longer. Since I imagine I would have to wait a while to receive my long-form DHEC birth certificate if I put in a request, I've decided I'll go the route of submitting a copy of my U.S. passport for proof of citizenship instead. I've already made the copies and will be putting the new evidence in the mail tomorrow (Friday). Hopefully approval won't be long after that.

UPDATE: Our online case status shows that the USCIS California Service Center received our response to the Request for Evidence on September 29, 2014.

Sunday, September 7, 2014

He can Visit the U.S. Again!

By Victoria

Great news! Before I left Northern Ireland from my August visit, Colin kept thinking about it and saying there had to be a way for him to visit me in the U.S. again even with our K-1 application pending...so he did some more digging online and found a forum with a community of people going through U.S. immigration. One of the discussion threads is very helpfully called "Yes, you can visit!"

http://www.visajourney.com/forums/topic/67796-yes-you-can-visit/page-65

It's focused pretty specifically on people going through K-2/K-2 and IR-1/CR-1 visas. The last few pages of the thread have a lot of recent anecdotes (as recent as this August) regarding foreign fiances entering the U.S. to visit their citizen fiances. People seem to have been able to successfully enter the States at all stages of their K-1 application process -- from pre-Service Center approval, post-Service Center approval, National Visa Center stage, and even up to the U.S. Embassy interview stage. According to others' experiences, the key is to make sure the foreign fiance has the evidence to assure the border official that they intend to return to their home nation and NOT get married or attempt to stay in the U.S. without the official visa. Such evidence can include a booked return flight, a lease agreement to show there's a home and financial obligation to return to, and a message or note from work regarding when the person is expected back at work.

There are still a few horror stories scattered throughout the pages of people being pulled into interview rooms and grilled (although often eventually allowed to enter) or even being turned away with some kind of probation term attached (eek!), which certainly sets off my anxiety mode. However, so many more of the personal anecdotes in the thread indicate that it will be okay. In fact, there are quite a lot of people who had/have foreign fiances from the UK coming for a visit during K-1, and I don't think I saw a single anecdote about a UK fiance being turned away.

Colin already went through the tourist/visitor visa waiver process a few days ago, since his previous 2-year one had already expired, and was approved by the online system. And now...he has also officially booked his flights! He arrives on October 18, so we won't have long to wait between visits this time.

There is still a little concern (mostly on my end, since I'm the major worrier), but we're both optimistic and excited about it! The countdown has started!

Wednesday, September 3, 2014

Back from Visiting

By Victoria

I just returned on Monday from a visit with Colin in Northern Ireland. I was only able to go for 10 days (arrived on August 23 and left on September 1), but we packed in a lot of adventuring! That included a 3-day road trip through County Donegal in the Republic of Ireland, staying at Bed & Breakfast places for the 2 nights. We did a lot of things and visited a lot of places all throughout the week that were new experiences for both of us.

We had a really amazing time. And we might have an update soon about Colin making an additional visit to the U.S., so stay tuned...

Monday, August 18, 2014

Transferred to California

By Victoria

I received a mailed notice today from USCIS. It simply states that the Texas Service Center has transferred our case over to the California Service Center. Verbatim:

"This is to advise you that in order to speed up processing we have transferred the above case to the following USCIS office for processing:

California Service Center, 2nd Flr, 24000 Avila Road, Laguna Niguel, CA 92607-0111

That office will notify you of the decision made on the application or petition."

Then there's some language basically saying not to bother them unless we really have to, but otherwise, that's all it says.

I'm cautious to not read too much into the "speed up processing" part -- I think they just mean that the Dallas office didn't have the time or resources to deal with our case, so they basically outsourced it to the California office.

I certainly hope our case can now be approved sooner than expected, but again, I'm not going to read too much into it. If it stays on schedule to be approved 5 months after submission, then we're aiming for an approval in October (we submitted in May). Then again, it took them 3 months just to realize they needed to send it somewhere else, so my optimism isn't all that high...


PS: The letter is dated August 8, so when people call regular USPS post "snail mail," they aren't joking. Sheesh.

Sunday, July 27, 2014

Any Updates?

Nope. Still no updates.

Just twiddling our thumbs over here.

Sunday, June 1, 2014

This Could Take a While (Volume and Trend Charts for Form I-129F)

By Victoria

Colin and I were doing some research on USCIS's website the other day and found an interesting area where you can look at charts regarding the intake volume and processing times of any USCIS field office in the U.S. It is, unfortunately, a little bit bleak in terms of how quickly ours might be processed...

To find the information regarding Form I-129F (which is what we submitted), you can go to http://dashboard.uscis.gov/ and enter the following information in the drop-down fields:
  1. Form Type: I-129F
  2. Office: Dallas Field Office
  3. Chart Type: Pick either one
Trend: The top trend chart shows values for USCIS nationally, and the bottom chart shows the Dallas office's trends for each month over the past year. The top chart is scary looking, but it's national, so that makes sense...Dallas has much more manageable numbers. But still, you'll notice the "pending" values are much higher than any of the other values. As I suspected, they definitely have a backlog to get through.

Volume: The volume chart shows only a couple of months ago (March 2014); the top one is national volume, and the bottom one is volume for just the Dallas office. Again, that national one is really intimidating. The second one has much more relevant information: the Dallas office had 12 total I-129F forms pending as of March, with only 1 making it all the way through to completion in March. If that's the rate of completion, it doesn't look like the completion time for ours will be coming up very soon...we're probably at least #15 in the queue, since we submitted in May.

Average Processing Time: The most definitive bit of disheartening information comes from our discovery of the average processing time for I-129F forms that go through Texas. To see this one, go to https://egov.uscis.gov/cris/Dashboard/CaseStatus.do and enter the following information in the drop-down fields:
  1. Form Type: I-129F
  2. Form Sub-Type: K-1/K-2
  3. Texas Service Center
You'll see that the average processing time for Texas Service Center is 5 months. Keep in mind, getting approved by the Dallas office is only STEP 1 of this whole process. After Texas, it still has to go through the National Visa Center in New Hampshire and then on to the U.S. Consulate in Belfast, Northern Ireland, which then has to set up interviews with Colin and process his additional documentation submissions.

So there's the bad news. If it does actually take 5 months for our application just to get through the Texas center, then it'll be a tight race to get Colin into the U.S. before the very end of the year. Let's just hope the processing time for us is somehow above average.

Tuesday, May 13, 2014

Arrived

By Victoria

Just a quick update -- USPS tracking confirms that our petition package arrived at the USCIS Dallas lockbox facility (fancy name for a P.O. Box) on Saturday morning (5/10)!

I don't think I will hear anything from USCIS to confirm receipt, so I'll have to wait until they actually review the contents and make a decision before I receive a notification.

By the way, I'm sure you've noticed that these blog posts have been written almost entirely by me so far...that will change once the visa application gets forwarded to the U.S. Consulate in Belfast, at which point all the hard work has to be done by Colin for his interview(s) and further evidence submission. You'll be hearing more from him on that side of the process once we get there.

UPDATE:
They actually did sent me a confirmation of receipt. Since I submitted form G-1145 for electronic notification, I got both a text message and an email saying that the Dallas center officially received our packet on May 15. I also received a letter of confirmation stating the same thing a few days later via snail mail. And here I thought the electronic notification option was meant to save paper...

Wednesday, May 7, 2014

PETITION SUBMITTED!

Our K-1 petition application is now officially in the mail!!


The application goes to a U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services lockbox facility in Dallas, Texas for processing. Once approved, it's sent to the National Visa Center, where it goes through another round of processing and approval. From there, the case is sent to the U.S. Consulate in Belfast, Northern Ireland; representatives there will contact Colin to continue the K-1 visa process.

Don't hold your breaths for this initial petition to be processed and approved too quickly, though...the Federal Government is not known for its speed. I'm hoping it wouldn't take more than a month to hear about the status of the case from Dallas, but honestly, who knows. Fingers crossed!

Sunday, May 4, 2014

Organizing the Petition Submission

By Victoria

There are a lot of components to this initial petition application, so I've had to consider how I was going to put it all together without it being a jumble of random papers. I want to make sure these documents are as easy to follow and check off the checklist for the Government reviewer(s) as possible. To show off my organizational prowess (and in case anyone reading this needs this information in the future...), I'll detail how I packaged the contents.

To start off, I decided to break it into three different packets. I went to Target and bought some clear report covers -- the kind that have a clip binding along the side so you can flip through the papers inside. I also bought a package of tab dividers for one of the packets, which I'll explain later. Since the Government probably doesn't care about the aesthetics THAT much, and because I'm never going to see these things again, I didn't invest much into my supplies: all told, I spent about $2-3 on the report covers and dividers.

The three packets are 1) Forms; 2) Supplementary Documents, and 3) Evidence of Meeting in Person.


Packet 1: Forms

There are four forms that must be submitted for the petition application:

  1. G-1145 (Electronic Notification of Acceptance of Application/Petition)
  2. I-129F (Petition for Alien Fiance)
  3. G-325A for the Petitioner (Biographical Form)
  4. G-325A for the Alien Fiance (Biographical Form) 
However, I moved the two G-325A forms to the second packet (which, again, I'll explain later). I-129F is the main/major form; the instructions for it specifically state that G-1145 should be clipped to the front of I-129F, so I clipped the two together inside the report binder.

Packet 2: Supplementary Documents

As stated on the cover, the documents I included in this packet are:

  1. Petitioner Proof of Citizenship (my birth certificate, front and back)
  2. Statements of Intent to Marry (one letter each from me and Colin)
  3. Petitioner G-325A with Passport Photo
  4. Fiance G-325A with Passport Photo
These are where my divider tabs come in. Because the supplementary documents are so varied and not necessarily similar in topic, I decided they needed a little more internal organization. I just divided this packet into three, based on the groupings of documents.

Tab 1 has my birth certificate to prove my U.S. citizenship. The instructions state that the front and back of the birth certificate must be included, so I made copies of both sides, even though there's nothing on the back of my certificate.

Tab 2 has two letters, one each signed by me and Colin, that state our intents to marry each other within 90 days of Colin's arrival in the U.S. on the K-1 Visa. They're basically the same letter, just with the ordering of the names and some pronouns altered. They're in business format, so we also have our names and addresses at the top of each letter.

Tab 3 has two copies of biographical form G-325A, one each for me and Colin. I originally intended for this section to just hold our passport-style photos (which is another requirement), but I couldn't figure out how to put the photos in there without them getting bent by the binding or just clipping them to a blank piece of paper to keep them from floating around. I did a little digging online and saw that others had attached their passport photos to the G-325A forms, which made so much more sense to me. Originally I had the G-325A forms in Packet 1 (Forms), but I still consider the passport photos to be supplementary documents and not quite right for the forms packet (they're listed in the instructions as a requirement unto themselves, not necessarily part of the G-325), so I moved the G-325A forms out of Packet 1 and into Packet 2 to stay with the photos. The forms are technically still supplementary, and since I have everything clearly listed on the front covers, I figure the bio forms will still be easy to find for the reviewers.

Packet 3: Evidence

I put the evidence of our relationship into a separate packet just because we have a lot more documentation for this requirement than all the other ones in Packet 2. The instructions give you quite a few options for presenting evidence of your relationship, so this is how I structured and presented ours:

  1. Opening formal statement of all dates on which we have met/visited each other, signed by me
  2. Internal cover pages for each meeting, followed by:
    1. Printed official flight itinerary for the visit
    2. One representative photo from the visit



We've met six times in the past two years, so that adds up to quite a few pages. (I blocked out some of the info in the example photos because that stuff doesn't need to be publicly available on the Internet.) I chose the photos based on how much identifiable background they contain, so it doesn't look like they could've been taken all at once or set up in a studio. The one pictured above is a bad example of this (whoops), but the others have as much setting in the background as I could find. The final evidence photo, from Colin's recent April visit, has the Jefferson Memorial in the background -- and that's about as identifiable as you can get.


So there you have it! The way I've organized all the papers might be overkill, but I'm so paranoid about this getting approved the first time that I want to make sure it's absolutely as clear and obvious as possible. No Government reviewer is going to open my submission, shuffle through a pile of papers, and claim they couldn't find one of the requirements!

Saturday, April 26, 2014

Strange Questions

Filling out official forms is generally a serious business, but there are just a couple questions on this Form I-129F that made me pause and think, "Wait, really?"

Part 2, 15.a.: He or she [the alien fiancé] last arrived as a: (visitor, student, exchange alien, crewman, stowaway, temporary worker, without inspection, etc.)

Er...would we tell you if he or she were a stowaway? Also, "without inspection" sounds like some kind of euphemism for illegal entry.

Part 2, 33.: Is your fiancé(e) related to you?

Yikes, I certainly hope not!

The rest is just your humdrum information about addresses, birth, family, etc.

Wednesday, April 23, 2014

A Slight Delay

By Victoria
 
Colin was scheduled to fly back to Northern Ireland tonight, but delays in the first leg of his flight made us decide that he would stay here in Virginia until tomorrow. His flights were supposed to be from DC to Newark, NJ and then from NJ to Belfast, Northern Ireland; the flight to Newark became delayed by about 2 hours, which meant Colin was going to miss his connecting flight to Belfast.

Rather than have him stranded overnight in Newark waiting for the next day's flight to Belfast, we decided he should stay here and just fly out of DC tomorrow (Thursday). The very helpful man at the United counter got Colin a flight set that would give him a 3-4 hour layover in Newark, just in case this happens again, which he seemed to think was likely. He told us that apparently the Newark airport currently only has one ramp for United flights, which frequently causes delays. (PS: Newark is horrible.)

Another slight delay is in regard to the paperwork: one of the forms we have to fill out for this initial petition application is a biographical form (one for each of us). The required information includes things like job history and housing history for the past 5 years, but Colin doesn't have access over here to his files and records to make sure he gets that information right. He's going to bring the form back to NI with him and fill it out, then send it back to me -- since I have to be the one to submit the full petition materials. Based on the time it takes mail to ship between UK and US, it'll probably only delay our petition submission by 1-2 weeks.

Otherwise, it's been a wonderful 3 weeks together. Here's a photo from our visit to the cherry blossoms in DC!


Saturday, April 5, 2014

Visitor

Guess who's here for a visit?


He's here until the 23rd!

Monday, March 17, 2014

The First Step: Petition Application

By Victoria

The K-1 Visa process actually starts with the U.S. citizen filing a petition application on behalf of the non-citizen fiancé. So, recently I printed out the main Form I-129F, plus the instructions, plus Form G-1145 to request email confirmation of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) accepting my petition. Form G-1145 is really not much more than a box to put in my email address, which you would think could easily be included in Form I-129F itself, but whatever...they can make more paperwork for themselves if they want. 

I haven't actually filled out the form(s) yet, but I did take a highlighter and go through the Form I-129F instructions. The major takeaways are:
  1. Submit evidence of my U.S. citizenship with the application. For evidence of citizenship, I can either submit a copy of my birth certificate or a copy of my passport...but I'd have to copy every single page of the passport, which just sounds like a pain to me, so I had my parents mail me my birth certificate. (Side note: There's a letter missing from my mom's name on the certificate: "Sana" instead of "Sanae." Whoops.)
  2. Submit evidence of my relationship with Colin. The specific requirement is that we must have met in person within the past 2 years (unless you can prove that meeting in person would cause undue hardship on the involved parties OR your religion/culture doesn't permit meeting your fiancé before marriage). We easily fit this requirement, since Colin has been over here 3 times already (soon to be 4) and I've been over there 2 times. We can submit any combination of photos together, plane tickets, flight itineraries, and passport pages (with tourist visa stamps). We would have saved more of our actual plane tickets if we'd known we would need them, but oh well.
  3. Submit evidence that we intend to marry within 90 days on the K-1; this evidence "may include a statement of intent to marry." This, quite honestly, is a ridiculously useless requirement, because from what I can gather, the statement of intent is nothing more than a signed piece of paper saying "I, [name], intend to marry [fiancé name] within 90 days of his arrival on the K-1 Visa." Isn't that obvious given the fact I'm submitting this petition to begin with??
  4. Submit two completed Form G-325A (more forms, surprise), one each for the citizen and non-citizen, with biographic information.
  5. Submit passport-style photos of both the U.S. citizen and the non-citizen fiancé. We'll get these done when Colin is here in April.
Oh, and of course there's the $340 filing fee...can't forget that, can we? The first of many immigration fees.

I briefly mentioned in an earlier post that we won't be submitting Form I-129F until the end of April. Colin is visiting me from April 3 to April 23 (!), and we're waiting to submit until he's back in Northern Ireland. We can't submit earlier because we found out the Department of Homeland Security (DHS)/Customs and Border Protection (CBP) can view it as immigration fraud if you submit an immigration application and then try to visit the country: Knowing that you're interested in immigration, they might suspect that you're actually trying to illegally immigrate under your tourist visit. Because Colin had already booked his trip before we found out this information, we decided not to submit until after Colin is out of the States again. This will give us time to fill out the application together and also avoid any possible issues with DHS. It also means that Colin can't come back into the U.S. until he's awarded his visa, at which point he'll enter the country permanently anyway. I can still go over to NI to visit him, though.

We're getting closer to the official starting line of this visa process. Everything starts at the end of next month!

Tuesday, March 11, 2014

Our engagement (by Colin)

In October last year, I travelled across the world to change my life forever.

I entered the United States of America without any questions being asked by the Department of Homeland Security.

I made the journey from Ronald Reagan Airport in Washington D.C. without any problems and ended up on the doorstep of the most beautiful lady I could know.

On October 26th, I followed the advice given to me by Caribou Coffee:


That evening, as the sun went down behind the Washington Memorial, I asked Victoria to spend the rest of her life with me.


She said yes.
I have very little regarding possessions or money, but yet I am the richest person on earth. I have everything I could ever wish for.


I would give my life for you, Victoria. You are my princess, my life, my dream come true. I love you with all my heart.

Monday, March 3, 2014

TLC's 90 Day Fiancé



By Victoria

Recently I’ve been hearing a lot about TLC’s new-ish reality series (the first season finale aired in February already) called 90 Day Fiancé, which follows four couples planning their weddings on a K-1 “Fiancé(e)” Visa. Three people have already brought up in conversation with me, “Hey, you know TLC has this show about people on that visa…” (yes, yes I know) and I’ve been seeing commercials for the show pretty regularly, so as someone in a couple that is about to go through the K-1 Visa process, I was slightly curious about it (although also very skeptical, because it’s TLC). Recently I tuned in and caught just a few episodes toward the end of the series, and I have some mixed feelings about the show.

What I do like is its realistic portrayal of people assimilating to a new country, culture, and family. That is not an easy process on the accelerated timeline required by a K-1 Visa, which requires a couple to be married within 90 days of the non-citizen entering the country on the visa. I do like that the show portrays each of the couples going through a different set of struggles as they progress toward marriage, which to me fits the show’s opening card statement, “This is the story of four couples’ unique journeys” (emphasis mine). And I do especially like that there is a lot of love shown between the couples—Alan and Kirlyam are the cutest!—as well as some of the American family members.
                                            
What I decidedly don’t like is the fear mongering. The storyline of one particular couple, Mike and Aziza (Russia), focuses strongly on the distrust of Mike’s American family, who think Aziza is just using Mike to get U.S. citizenship. One of the episodes I watched saw Mike sit down with his father as his father expressed such moronic concerns as, “If she hasn’t been planning to get U.S. citizenship for a long time already, how come she already speaks better English than me?” Seriously? English has grown to be an international language, and numerous countries require their students to learn it as a second language for practical purposes; if it’s not required, it’s definitely offered. And if she speaks better English than you, then I think that’s an issue on your end, not hers.

Aziza also headed to the salon for a test hair and makeup session with Mike’s sister and cousin, which was intended to be a bonding session for the women and an opportunity for them to get to know each other; however, instead of going with Aziza as she sat in the chair, the two relatives went to a different area for pedicures and gossiped hatefully about their distrust of Aziza’s intentions, including moaning about how they still didn’t know anything about Aziza. She’s sitting on the other side of the salon, for Pete’s sake—if you want to know more about her, go talk to her!

This was followed by an episode featuring a horrifyingly awkward, sorry excuse for a bachelorette party in which the female members of Mike’s family openly distrusted and harassed Aziza for not finding someone in Russia to love instead of Mike. It was disgusting, and although it was spun into a positive by the end of the encounter (by Mike’s mother finally believing Aziza loves Mike only after Aziza broke into tears), it was still pretty humiliating to watch.

I am fully aware there is a stigma attached to the idea of a foreigner gaining permanent residence or citizenship in the U.S. through marriage to a U.S. citizen, and the K-1 Visa is one of the most abused U.S. visas that exist. Believe me: I’m aware. But what kind of environment toward non-citizens have we developed in this country that the first reaction to a U.S. citizen’s engagement to a non-citizen (especially female) is, “Are you sure you’re not being scammed?”

In just the three episodes I watched, Aziza is constantly referred to by Mike’s family—implicitly or explicitly—as a mail-order bride. Are we living in 1910, people? The likelihood of people from different countries finding each other and falling in love increases more and more as online technology develops. Our world is a very open and connected world now. Granted, 90 Day Fiancé doesn’t help alleviate the “mail-order bride” stigma by only featuring couples in which the woman is the foreign non-citizen (how about some couples with male non-citizens, TLC??), as well as couples that have not spent a lot of in-person time together.

As a reality show, of course 90 Day Fiancé will focus on as much drama as it can muster; I just wish it didn’t choose to highlight a stereotype that only further stigmatizes relationships and marriages to foreign non-citizens. There’s more I could say about the show and the issues of perception surrounding K-1 relationships, but for now, suffice it to say that watching 90 Day Fiancé leaves me with both a sweet and sour aftertaste.

Monday, February 24, 2014

Who are We, and What is K-1?

By Victoria


Welcome! We're Victoria and Colin, an international, long-distance couple from the United States and Northern Ireland, respectively. We met in June 2012, got engaged in October 2013, and now we're working on getting Colin over to the U.S. on a K-1 Visa so we can get married and finally be together permanently! We've set up this blog to keep track of our own process and keep family and friends informed of our progress.


What is a K-1 Visa, though? The K-1 is also known as the Fiancé(e) Visa. It's a visa that allows the foreign non-citizen fiance of a U.S. citizen to enter the country, get married, and then stay as a permanent resident (after submitting more forms). Once the non-citizen -- Colin, in this case -- is granted the K-1 Visa and arrives in the United States, he has 90 days to legally marry me, the U.S. citizen, or else the visa expires and he has to go back to Northern Ireland. As long as we're married within that window of time, he can stay in the U.S. That's stage 1. After getting married, we have to submit a Change of Status application to make sure he's registered as a permanent resident, which the Federal Government will then accept, but only on conditional terms. That's stage 2. Stage 3 is then submitting more forms to have the conditional status removed, at which point Colin becomes a permanent resident of the U.S., period.


The U.S. Department of State has a really good step-by-step description of just the stage 1 process involving the K-1 Visa. The actual visa application paperwork and such is located at the Department of Homeland Security's U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services website though, because the Government likes to be confusing. You'll note that the K-1 Visa is officially considered a nonimmigrant visa because the K-1 itself does not grant permanent resident status.


We'll probably go more in-depth into the K-1 process itself in a later post, but that's the summary. We're getting started on our own materials-gathering and will be submitting the initial petition application at the end of April, so stay tuned! We'll be posting updates from here on out as we get the ball rolling.