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I found this community very helpful for navigating US immigration for my non-American wife: http://www.visajourney.com/ http://www.visajourney.com/

knz 10y ago
Likewise. Visa journeys was the definitive source when I went through the process about 10 years ago.
wjmclaugh 10y ago
It's a great site to be sure! But we have translated our content to Spanish (and soon ten other languages).
kcorbitt 10y ago
Seconded. Having access to a huge community of people who were a little further along in the visa issue process made navigating it much, much easier. Little stuff like "oh, they're now requiring 2 passport photos instead of 1 and the consular website hasn't been updated everywhere yet" saved a ton of pain. It was also really nice to see almost in real time how long processing was taking, because you could see when people ahead of you got their interviews scheduled and guess how long you had left.
Cerium 10y ago
http://candleforlove.com/forums/ http://candleforlove.com/forums/ is also very good. Those two sites together have enough information for a person to educate themselves enough in the visa process to do all the work themselves. For marriage and fiancee visas, if the couple is not high risk (previous denials or red flags like short courtship of a high age difference couple) completing the paperwork yourself can be very straight forward. I did the paperwork for my wife to get her a k1 visa. Cost only a few thousand dollars in filing fees an a good amount of time preparing all the documents. It is a little frustrating that you put so much effort into the documents then they are simply looked at a bit and stamped. My wife reported that during her interview the officer looked at the papers we put together for a minute. Said, looks good and stamped them. 5 minutes total, while people before her had much more lengthy discussions.
fd5773 10y ago
This. Stack exchange is kind of like the visajourney.com for tech nerds. :-)

knz 10y ago

Likewise. Visa journeys was the definitive source when I went through the process about 10 years ago.

wjmclaugh 10y ago

It's a great site to be sure! But we have translated our content to Spanish (and soon ten other languages).

kcorbitt 10y ago

Seconded. Having access to a huge community of people who were a little further along in the visa issue process made navigating it much, much easier. Little stuff like "oh, they're now requiring 2 passport photos instead of 1 and the consular website hasn't been updated everywhere yet" saved a ton of pain. It was also really nice to see almost in real time how long processing was taking, because you could see when people ahead of you got their interviews scheduled and guess how long you had left.

Cerium 10y ago

http://candleforlove.com/forums/ http://candleforlove.com/forums/ is also very good. Those two sites together have enough information for a person to educate themselves enough in the visa process to do all the work themselves. For marriage and fiancee visas, if the couple is not high risk (previous denials or red flags like short courtship of a high age difference couple) completing the paperwork yourself can be very straight forward. I did the paperwork for my wife to get her a k1 visa. Cost only a few thousand dollars in filing fees an a good amount of time preparing all the documents. It is a little frustrating that you put so much effort into the documents then they are simply looked at a bit and stamped. My wife reported that during her interview the officer looked at the papers we put together for a minute. Said, looks good and stamped them. 5 minutes total, while people before her had much more lengthy discussions.

fd5773 10y ago

This. Stack exchange is kind of like the visajourney.com for tech nerds. :-)