Our U.S. Immigration Journey

[Chris]

Here is a timeline of my wife and my immigration experience-

August 2019- I filed a K-1 (fiancée) application in order to obtain a Visa for her to travel to the U.S. for marriage. The process proceeded in a fair amount of time and we were given an appointment at the U.S. Embassy in Helsinki for the final interview. Then Covid hit and a Presidential Proclamation brought such processes to a complete halt.

Early March 2021- After 12 months of no progress we decided to formally withdraw the application and for her to travel to the U.S. as a visitor and get married. This was easier said than done. Due to U.S. restrictions, travel from Schengen countries (basically any country in the EU) into the U.S. was forbidden due to the pandemic. Travel from Russia was not (because they handled the pandemic so well, right?). So she flew from Helsinki to Moscow and then onto the U.S.

Late March 2021- We were married in Florida and then filed the I-130, Petition for Alien Relative, for the purposes of obtaining Legal Permanent Residence (green card).

October 2022- A 2-year Conditional Green Card was issued.

October 2024- We filed the I-751, Petition to Remove Conditions, for the purposes of obtaining a 10-year Green Card.

March 2025- Yesterday we received that 10-year card.

Only one step remains to gain full freedom from restrictions and governmental oversight. In this coming October we can file the N-400, Application for Naturalization (Citizenship). We are both looking forward in anticipation for this process to be finally completed. 👏🏼

 

[burgold]

Congratulations on ten years! Happy Melting Pot day.

 

[burgold]

Going through anything immigration right now has got to be hell. Best luck, RedWolf

More to the point, I'm sorry you're going through this. You shouldn't have to.

 

[Chris]

Chris that sucks but congratulations. VERY HAPPY for both of you

I am going through immigration hell right now.

Her fiance visa was shot down because I could not produce a court document from 1988. NO county state or federal records even showed it. We got married and resubmitted the I130 based on legal advice (the requirement for that doc goes away)

Paid taxes since 1978/14 yo.
Decorated Veteran honorable discharge, former Ranger that supported the 10th SF Group. Some Ops that I was involved with are in movies.
Tons of federal experience:
*Post 911 I was part of a limited team that built a new Pentagon critical Communication Center.
*I did all three Network designs for TSA airports. I built the TSA headquarters and data center.
*I built four DHS headquarter elements and three DHS data centers
*I have held a TS/SCI clearance and a Q clearance

Does any of that mean anything? Do I get any cred or props? Hell no. Effing Aholes

And people ask me "Why are you retiring outside of the US?"

Is the I-130 working it’s way through the system now?

 

[RedWolf]

Is the I-130 working it’s way through the system now?

Yes sir

 

[Chris]

Yes sir

Good to hear. It’s a slog, no doubt, often with no apparent end in sight. Keep the faith.

I understand your frustration. I wrote a detailed and heartfelt letter to Biden expressing both the particulars of my case and the frustration I was feeling. You can guess the impact it (didn’t) have. I did, however, get back a nice response from him that had absolutely nothing to do with the subject matter that I addressed. So there is that. 🤣

 

[RedWolf]

Good to hear. It’s a slog, no doubt, often with no apparent end in sight. Keep the faith.

I understand your frustration. I wrote a detailed and heartfelt letter to Biden expressing both the particulars of my case and the frustration I was feeling. You can guess the impact it (didn’t) have. I did, however, get back a nice response from him that had absolutely nothing to do with the subject matter that I addressed. So there is that. 🤣

I'm going to wait a little bit more and then call a buddy of mine at DoS to escalate. He will make gears grind

 

[The Rook]

I wish you all the best in your struggles.

It upsets me that there is a proposed process of just paying $5 million to get American citizenship. Rich get to move to the front of the line. It's really not supposed to be like this.





The Rook

 

[philibusters]

I went through a similar process with my wife from the Philippines. I filed for the K1 Visa in October of 2019. She didn't get here until December 2021 due to covid. She got her Green Card in Dec. 2022 and we filed to remove the conditions in November 2024 so we waiting on that. The one thing that surprised me about the original poster is how quickly the conditions got removed and she got her 10 year green card. I was hearing that was taking over a year on average, but it seems like it only 6 months in his wife's case. I guess I don't under quite understand why the original poster felt frustration with his case. To me it looks like everything happened on the normal timeline.

In regards to RedWolf, I would contact your Congressman or Congresswoman's office and work with their staff. All major agencies have a Congressional liason office to work with requests from the staffs of Congressmen. If you think your case is not progressing as it should have you Congressmen's staff contact USCIS. At minimum someone from USCIS will physically have eyes on your case because they need to report back to the Congressperson's staff. Now if your case is not really being screwed up, it might not do anything, but if you case is not being handled properly that should fix it. I work in a JAG office and servicemen come to us when they think their case is not progressing and for the most part there is nothing we can do as USCIS is a different agency so we refer them to their Congress person. I am not sure your friend in the State Dept. is going to have sway with USCIS as State really doesn't have anything to do with processing routine immigration cases.

 

[Chris]

I’m curious as to why you felt that I was expressing frustration. Covid threw a wrench into the process but other than that our process was better/faster than most that I was reading about. The home country of the immigrant seems to play a significant role in the timeline; perhaps due to volume, perhaps due to something else. Our time moving through the the removal of conditions stage was a big surprise. We submitted a plethora of evidence, most likely more than truly necessary, to avoid questions of marriage fraud which seem to be the #1 concern of USCIS.

My only frustration was that travel to the US from Finland was not allowed by presidential proclamation but travel from Russia was. There is evidence to support that Russia was one of the countries with the poorest responses to the pandemic and that had one of the worst outcomes among it’s population, unless one believes the reporting from it’s free press.

 

[philibusters]

I’m curious as to why you felt that I was expressing frustration. Covid threw a wrench into the process but other than that our process was better/faster than most that I was reading about. The home country of the immigrant seems to play a significant role in the timeline; perhaps due to volume, perhaps due to something else. Our time moving through the the removal of conditions stage was a big surprise. We submitted a plethora of evidence, most likely more than truly necessary, to avoid questions of marriage fraud which seem to be the #1 concern of USCIS.

My only frustration was that travel to the US from Finland was not allowed by presidential proclamation but travel from Russia was. There is evidence to support that Russia was one of the countries with the poorest responses to the pandemic and that had one of the worst outcomes among it’s population, unless one believes the reporting from it’s free press.

The extra context cleared it up. You said you write a letter to Biden regarding your frustrations. But now understanding that you were upset that travel to Finland was not allowed while travel from Russia was allowed explains the frustration. I initially thought you were just more frustrated with the process itself.

 

[Renegade7]

USCIS is almost intentionally clunky and maliciously expensive.

I feel for anyone that has to go through that process.

My Wife is from Nigeria and already here on a student visa when we met. We went to Nigerian embassy in DC for advice first, one of which was even after getting married to NOT change her last name until it was over in order to not confuse the process.

So after we got married in Virginia in 2019 we started working on the I-485 package and related required documents without a lawyer almost immediately...which was almost immediately followed by Covid. Filing all that initial paperwork still required paying their processing fees that was well over a grand (I'm going off memory here. Pretty sure it was more then twice that, I jus distinctly remember one of the many forms, the one i mentioned, in the initial package being a grand by itself)

https://www.uscis.gov/sites/default/files/document/forms/g-1055.pdf

We still had to do the interview in person with masks on, kept copies of our documents in our Google drive because they eventually did want certain copies again or questioned us on our answers (so we didn't want to forget then saying something different then we originally submitted).

This eventually lead to her getting her physical green card...which I wanna say was two years later because we filed N-400 last November because needed to hold the Green Card for at least 3 years before filing for citizenship (since she was already in the states before we met):

Chapter 3 - Spouses of U.S. Citizens Residing in the United States

A. General Eligibility for Spouses Residing in the United StatesThe spouse of a U.S. citizen who resides in the United States may

www.uscis.gov

She passed her citizenship test the other day, but because she wants to change her last name still she couldn't take the oath at the USCIS center but has to wait to go to a courthouse instead in June.

I never got the impression this was a very inviting process...way too much paperwork that had to be printed out and mailed but had to be done in a way that it could be easily scanned into their system...if they were serious all of this coulda been filled out online and saved all of us a lot of time. The Process is NOT meant to save time, imo.

I cant talk too much shit because we got through it, but I'm not only one calling it inefficient and borderline dysfunctional and I stand by that after us going through it ourselves.

 

[Chris]

Our filing for the N-400, which we will file for in October when we return to the US, can now be completely done online. This will be our first filing where that was possible.

 

[Chris]

Congrats Renegade7 on you guys securing her citizenship. It’s not easy but very much worth it.