Month Off?

[ECOCKS]

Interesting response.

My post is related to keeping people from thinking that what you said was true. People should read the chart from the CIS link for factual information.

Looks like 1.5M total rejections to me (only 1,461,634 were Failure to Establish Entitlement though), which fits the general understanding out there. People should read the chart and determine for themselves the odds. It's interesting to survey the report and note the cited  section of the INA that they were found to be ineligible under. Particularly interesting are the sections on overstaying visas (3 year and 10 year bans), abuse of student visas, moral turpitude and the misrepresentations categories.

As for being On or Off Topic, Chicagoguy suggests that this lack of time available for visits by the guys is a consideration in electing to try for tourist visas for your "friend" and responses are an effort to shed some light on that option.

As for your attempted implication that "commercial members" would resist this due to some implied conflict of interest, what a crock.

[Gylden]

ECocks,

The official denial rate of the American Embassy in Moscow (according to the Government Accounting Office) is 35%. In 2003, of the 100,000 Russian nonimmigrant visa applicants, 35,000 received rejections. 50% of students receive rejections.

Mods, can someone move this to another thread, so we can not go off topic so much?

Thanks

[Jooky]

Here are the statistics you are all speculating about:

Adjusted Visa Refusal Rate for Tourist and Business travelers

http://travel.state.gov/pdf/refusalratelanguage.pdf

For 2009:

Russia 4.9%
Ukraine 36.8%

That sounds about right for Russia, from what I've been told directly from friends working at the US embassy and from knowing many Russians who obtained B Visas without a problem.

I don't know anything about Ukraine, but from the statistics it's clearly a different situation and we shouldn't generalize about Russia and Ukraine together when talking about visa acceptance.

[ECOCKS]

Of course not, I'm only looking at overall rates and Ukraine.

[Gylden]

Thanks for the link Jooky,

Your right about Ukraine and Russia being different, it looks quite different.

I wonder also, if a woman has a profile on an agency web site, is it possible that the agents have compiled a list of those women and use it as some sort of a reference concerning refusal for reasons of the obvious intent to immigrate?

Yes ECocks you are looking at the total visa rejections for the world, not Ukraine. Sorry, I did say commercialmembers, what I should have said was people with agencies.

[kievstar]

There are a lot of work visa's given to Ukraine and Russians each year.  It is not hard to get one of these if the woman speaks decent English and has a degree and a company will sponsor them. There were more than 100,000 given to Russian and Ukrainians in 2007 just for work.

A Ukraine and Russian woman who does not speak English and is not married with children is going to have a hard time getting a visa unless she has connections.  A woman who speaks English her odds go up.

Regarding a month off.  You need to figure out what is more important - work or your personal life.  Many men can easily take a month off in the USA.  There are a lot of business owners or seasonal workers.  You can also change jobs and get one in Europe. 

[BC]

Every corner you try to cut will likely come back to haunt you.

We spent close to three months together over a period of 6 months.

Being self employed made it possible, but did take a rather large productivity hit.

If you're going to have trouble scrounging time to find and get to know her, you're probably going to be quite stressed out after she arrives and needs your attention.

Like funding, if time is going to be a problem best to wait until you have both well in order.

Seen too many that hit trouble after arrival with either or both.