Need help opposing immigrant's resident status

[PeeWee]

Wouldn't you think that at some point the immigrations people should have stepped in and said, hey wait a minute we seem to have an immigrant...a K-1?...here ready to marry an incarcerated felon. What is wrong with this picture? And we now have to give up our records to potential female immigrants?

He probably wasn't incarcerated when he filed the K-1 (and the background checks were done).  Do you think the USCIS keeps an hourly updated file on every person that files a form?  Or that local and state officials routinely notify the Federal government (or each other, for that matter) of each transaction they perform?
[/quote]
Why would you think they would do background checks? And someone preformed a background check on the man that my friend Tatiyana married they may have found out that he was already married to another woman and that he have been arrested for any number of felonys prior to his application for her visa and marriage. I don't think that the INS does squat to check anything other than you did sign the check they deposit for all of their hard (cough cough) work.

 

Peewee

[catzenmouse]

USCIS is also very good at checking for a missed dot on an "i" or a missed cross on a "t". You'll get the whole package back for such a heinous error.

Ken

[PeeWee]

USCIS is also very good at checking for a missed dot on an "i" or a missed cross on a "t". You'll get the whole package back for such a heinous error.

Ken

I have been considering giving the entire process over to an immigration lawyer and letting them do as much of the process as possible for me. Whatever I need do then I can do that. I also hire a CPA every year to do my taxes for me. There is money cost to that, of course, but the savings in time and I do beleive that by him doing my taxes I get more money back than if I would do them. I don't know but it seems to me that I would not hurt anything buy having an expert do this process for me.

 

Peewee

[Turboguy]

I have been considering giving the entire process over to an immigration lawyer and letting them do as much of the process as possible for me. Whatever I need do then I can do that. I also hire a CPA every year to do my taxes for me. There is money cost to that, of course, but the savings in time and I do beleive that by him doing my taxes I get more money back than if I would do them. I don't know but it seems to me that I would not hurt anything buy having an expert do this process for me.

Talk to some of the guys who have done it before you take that step.  Ask Clyde for one.  Using an Immigration attorney is fine as long as you don't mind nightmares, delays and problems.   I started off last year with that idea and the more I talked to people the more I realized that it puts one more link in the chain to slow things down and they make more mistakes than we do.  And, yes, I use a CPA too, of course my tax returns are about 5 times the number of pages as my K-1 filing.

Visit VisaJourney and do it yourself, you will save bucks, time and frustration.

[Maxx]

Giant AMEN to what TurboGuy just said.

 

Maxx 

[PeeWee]

Giant AMEN to what TurboGuy just said.

 

Maxx 

Good advices. One thing I do not worry about is saving money. I worry about doing it the most effective way possible. I'm the guy who always buys the business class seat, not coach, remember? If this is an easy process then I will do it myself. If not then I won't do it. Time is more precious than money. I have little of one and a lot of the other.

Thanks. Peewee

[Jet]

One thing I do not worry about is saving money. I worry about doing it the most effective way possible.
Thanks. Peewee

PeeWee,

Not sure how soon you are looking to file, but if it's not less than 4 weeks out I may have a very effecient compromise for you. For sometime now I've been involved in developing an alternative that falls right in the middle between doing it all yourself and dumping everything in a lawyer's lap. Send me a PM if you are interested in details...

[Turboguy]

Good advices. One thing I do not worry about is saving money. I worry about doing it the most effective way possible. I'm the guy who always buys the business class seat, not coach, remember? If this is an easy process then I will do it myself. If not then I won't do it. Time is more precious than money. I have little of one and a lot of the other.

Thanks. Peewee

You can figure a lawyer will add a month to the process even if it all goes perfectly.  He tells you what to get.  You get it and send it to him.  It sits on his desk till he gets around to it and sends it in, then everything goes though him so it is more delays and everyone I heard of had a sloppy lawyer and got RFEs and more delays.  Then when you need stuff the lawyer has it and getting him to send it is like trying to get blood from a stone.

You do it yourself, and you save that extra step in everything.  I have yet to talk to anyone who used a lawyer and was happy with it.   There is really not much to it.  One form you each fill out, one for both of you, a copy of birth certificates, a copy of divorce decrees.  some photos and copies of boarding passes and e-mails and phone records, a letter of intent to marry from both.  And the check.  VisaJourney has sample forms filled out and links to get the forms and all the help you could ever want.

If you really want to use a lawyer I think there is one called John Roth.  He is the only one I have ever heard good comments about.   I fly couch myself but would have paid anything for the fastest processing of the whole thing and was convinced I wanted to use a lawyer until I reseached it and heard nothing but bad comments.

Check with Jet.  He is a smart guy and has been through it.  Whatever he is doing might be a good compomise but it is easy to do yourself.

[PeeWee]

Good advices. One thing I do not worry about is saving money. I worry about doing it the most effective way possible. I'm the guy who always buys the business class seat, not coach, remember? If this is an easy process then I will do it myself. If not then I won't do it. Time is more precious than money. I have little of one and a lot of the other.

Thanks. Peewee

You can figure a lawyer will add a month to the process even if it all goes perfectly.  He tells you what to get.  You get it and send it to him.  It sits on his desk till he gets around to it and sends it in, then everything goes though him so it is more delays and everyone I heard of had a sloppy lawyer and got RFEs and more delays.  Then when you need stuff the lawyer has it and getting him to send it is like trying to get blood from a stone.

You do it yourself, and you save that extra step in everything.  I have yet to talk to anyone who used a lawyer and was happy with it.   There is really not much to it.  One form you each fill out, one for both of you, a copy of birth certificates, a copy of divorce decrees.  some photos and copies of boarding passes and e-mails and phone records, a letter of intent to marry from both.  And the check.  VisaJourney has sample forms filled out and links to get the forms and all the help you could ever want.

If you really want to use a lawyer I think there is one called John Roth.  He is the only one I have ever heard good comments about.   I fly couch myself but would have paid anything for the fastest processing of the whole thing and was convinced I wanted to use a lawyer until I reseached it and heard nothing but bad comments.

Check with Jet.  He is a smart guy and has been through it.  Whatever he is doing might be a good compomise but it is easy to do yourself.
[/quote]
The beauty of the forum. I will do it myself. And I will contact the Jet-man because jets are one of my most favorite things.

Peewee

[Maxx]

Here is an PM I got from a guy known over at RWG.

One guys' immigration lawyer nightmare

My wacko attorney pre-prepared my K-3 when I went to "Russ" to get married Autumn of 2004. All she needed was Marina's signatures, photos of the wedding and honeymoon, and our wedding certificate, which you get right after the wedding is completed.

When I returned from the honeymoon I sent my courier to my attorney's office with all the documents two weeks after our marriage. My attorney (Elena) said that the application would be sent within a couple of days.

She never sent the application! I started asking her for the file number after about 2 months. She avoided my e-mails and phone calls, played dumb, never actually answered anything. After about 5 months Marina was starting to panic. Finally Elena said that she hadn't heard anything and maybe ICE lost our file. Then she said that she located the file and it had been sent to Laguna Niguel (CSC). Then she said that she talked them into skipping the K-3 and giving Marina a green card. I never got one shred of proof (any document from ICE, any receipt, cancelled check, etc) that Elena had actually filed the visa. All the while, my attorney would not take my phone calls or allow me to set up an appointment.

After 7.5 months I staged a sit-in at her office (with my 72-yr-old father) until she saw me. 30 minutes of bull and no proof later, I fired her.

I hired a new attorney out of the LA area, recommended by my super-rich cousin Steve, who used this attorney to get his son's fiancee from Argentina a K-1 in 2001 and then get her entire family into the country on some kind of entrepreneur visa program - he opened three Argentinian bakery/restaurants in the LA area for them.

My new attorney did 2+ months of due diligence/freedom of information act requests to see if ICE could find my file, because my former attorney kept lying and saying that she filed the visa. We didn't want to have two active files! Finally we sent in an application on 8/25/05. 11 months lost.

As of now we have been notified of the receipt of the I-130 and 1-129F forms. So we just sit and wait. Based on the ICE online schedules for CSC (they are currently processing I-129F's from 3/28/05!!!!); probably another 4 to 6 months for the I-129F to be processed. Then we wait for the interview, which is about 90 days out after I-129F approval based on my buddy Jeff M' K-1; whose I-129F was approved in August and his fiancee is scheduled for the interview on 11/30/05 in Moscow. So Marina's ETA is anywhere from May to August 2006. What a %&*^% pain in the a$s!

Marina is taking all sorts of $hit from her neighbors (you know how Russians enjoy the misfortune of others); her family is also questioning my motives and/or my competence. Of course it's all my fault. It is not helping our relationship. She wants the hell out of "Russ" and to be with me. We want to start a family but there's no way that we're taking the risk of me knocking her up while she's still living in Russia and we can't say when the visa will be approved. What a ing pain in the ass!

What's the deal with RWD, vs. RWG? Just another board, or is there more to the story?

Take it easy.

[Rvrwind]

I will say this so ya'll can understand it.

Using a lawyer for any of this process is the biggest waste of time & money you'll ever encounter & totally friggin' unessessary!!! Might as well give your money to a scammer as it amounts to about the same thing!!

The perfect example is the yahoo over at RWG from Canada who wanted to get married in SPB & wanted to know what paperwork he needed. When somebody else gave him a whole list of nonessential crap he fell for it & wouldn't believe me because what I wrote was too simple & he thought it couldn't be done without lawyers & legal papers & all this other crap that was totally unnessessary. As it turned out, he was wrong, I was right & he got dicked around big time & ended up making the process a whole lot longer than it needed to be.

You can take my advice or not, thats your choice, but I live here, I work with this system & there are three cardinal rules that if you follow you will never go wrong.

1/ Never Ever listen to what your Government, Canadian or otherwise tells you the Russian government requires, because they don't have a friggin' clue what the Russian government wants, needs or must have!!!

2/Never ever listen to a damn lawyer from your country because they know even less than the government!!!

3/Never do more than the Russian government requires. This may work in your country because as we all know if you can't dazzle them with brilliance, baffle them with bu!!sh!t!!! However in Russia, that doesn't work. What it does do is confuse the issue & throw out of balance a well oiled machine that once derailed can take weeks, even months to get straightened out. Russians are very fond of the KISS method, "Keep It Simple Stupid" don't throw a monkey wrench into the machine because it will break!

I have come to know quite well how things work here & although at times from my western perspective they seem totally wacked & out of sync, there is a reason for them & they love to make things look more complicated than they really need to be. They have used their methods for centuries & neither you, nor I, are going to change them so it is best if you want things to work to stay within' the boundaries of their understanding & you will not have any problems.

The immigration process to Canada or the US is very simple & straightforward, until you involve lawyers. Nobody on Gods Green Earth can take anything so simple & screw it up better than a lawyer can & overcharge considerably for doing so.

Just my opinion from my experience & experiences of some of my clients who chose not to listen.

RVR-Canadian Cowboy/Agency Owner

[Rando]

 "but so many times my brain was overruled by my heart."

 

Actually I don 't think its your brain or your heart that is guiding you....its that thing hanging between your legs..:cool: