i recently married a spanish citizen, and we are going through the gauntlet of immigration so she can come live over here. its a nightmare, and im going to live in spain while we figure it out because she isnt allowed to come here on any visa until this is figured out.

anyone here have any good stories/nightmares to share? i feel like this is all a game in patience and government bullshit- but we are trying to jump through all the hoops properly.

any help or encouragement is welcome!

Obviously immigrants are terrible and a threat to our very nature. This is why those hurdles exist. It should not be done. Not ever.
Also, 'they took'r jubs!'

Seriously though Michael, wish you all the best with it. I know it can be difficult here, and can only imagine that is amplified in the US. It is pretty universal though, with most countries having a crack downon visas (goes hand-in-hand with the growing conservatism worldwide).

a friend of a friend married a girl from Spain so she could get US citizenship and so he could get an Audi.

that's all I got.

Myeah, but there is also a huge, huge lot of fraud that makes these controls most definitely necessary. It's hard for people that are legit, but you have to understand why it's so. My wife is also from overseas, and it took roughly 9 months to get her permanent resident (aka green card in the US). Not so bad overall.

(Another debate I probably shouldn't get into though)

i agree wholeheartedly with both of these statements. on the flip side i know a girl who was paid by the thai family she worked for to marry their son. that paid for her college entirely.

i understand the hoops that need to be jumped through- im just overly paranoid and worried constantly. i know a couple of young weird kids wont look like a threat to the government (hopefully) haha.

anyway thanks for the thoughts- got some nice PMs as well.

always open to hearing stories!

I was married in Tokyo, and we did all our paperwork in person at the US Embassy there. It took about three weeks for my wife to get her green card.

Everything I had read at the time said that the embassy route was the fastest method. Not sure if that has changed over the years or not.

The two years in renewal process to get the conditional permanent resident status removed was an absolute nightmare though.

it took me a year and had to live outside the US to get my green card...then another 3+ years for citizenship. the good part is, over that year one of my brother's was living/working in Hong Kong so I would just hop on a plane and visit for a couple of weeks. one time, while visiting him, we decided to go to Macau...where I almost got sent back to Hong Kong because I was..."not carrying enough cash" to be visiting Macau. you just have to make the most of it and really just be patient. the first thing i did when i became a US citizen...get my passport so i could go to Japan.

i tattoo quite a few people from other countries and or their spouses.

yeah its a you know what, and you have to take a test and what not to learn the national athem and different things like bill of rights, constitution...... so you can always start having her study that stuff.........


but that's what i have heard........



also im not sure about this, but after listening to quite a few stories about immigration.

they start with a work visa or student visas till they get it all worked out. and usually these expire before you get your citizenship, but may help buy some time.




also my wife maren. her sister married someone from whales. he spoke perfect english, so that probably helped, but i think it was about 6 months - 8 months till it was all done and he was a citizen.



he does have some, well this is kinda f'ed up about my citizenship, or being a dual citizen. i will get some details and post agian once i get some definates and not relying off my terrible memory

this one time a haitian family tried to low ball me to take their daughter off their hands & help get her papers. they wanted to pay me in installments too. she was so ugly & our names were eerily similar lol

When I took the test, they asked about 4 questions from a list of 20 that they give you, prior to taking the test. None were really hard and finding answers was pretty easy...it was really a matter of memorization. They ask you to write a sentence but I forgot what you had to write. So...it's a written and a verbal but it really isn't that difficult. I don't remember being tested on the national anthem but at the end of the citizenship ceremony, we did sing it and do the pledge of alligence.


This is the reason I went back to the Philippines for a year.
Knowing English does help because they will probably ask you less questions off the list depending on how you do verbally, but it doesn't cut down on the wait time. I went through High School, College, worked a few years, and still had to wait a few years. I think it has more to do with the country the person is from.
Having said all that, your situation is different from what I went through...but one thing is for sure, it really is a lot of waiting and it is best to just keep up with the paper work and move on with your daily lives until your number is called.

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