~*~Our Goal~*~

Sleep? What's that?

Alright, as you know, we received our application last Friday from the American Consulate General. Richard has paperwork to fill out and it seems to be pretty straight forward. Once completed, he mails his application to the Consulate, they will complete all necessary administrative processing of his immigrant visa application and approximately one month before his scheduled interview appointment, he'll receive an appointment letter containing the date and time of his visa interview along with instructions for obtaining a medical examination.

What we need to do now is prepare for the appointment of his visa interview in which we need to gather some documents required for his application; birth certificate, police certificate, passport, deportation papers, court or prison records, military records, marriage certificate .. sure sounds like alot! After all this is obtained, we'll need to bring them to the visa interview.

I have paperwork to fill out as well .. although mine is going to be along the difficult side; I'm in charge of something called "Affidavit of Support" (form I-864) documents. As a petitioner (or sponsor), you must show that an intending immigrant has adequate means of financial support and is not likely to become a public charge. I need to show that my household income must equal or exceed 125% of the Federal poverty line for my household size, which according to the 2004 Poverty Guidelines would be $11,638 as I'm considered a household size of 1.

Examples of what I need to provide:

1.) Evidence of Income. I need to submit my Federal income tax returns for the most RECENT 3 tax years, or an explanation if fewer are submitted. 2001, 2002, 2003 - this is going to be fun!

• 2001, unemployed - due to my Ovarian Cancer diagnosis in 2000, treatment and recovery.
• 2002, I did work this year but the first few months were part time until I was eligible for full time in July. I quit right before leaving for the Netherlands in November.
• 2003, being illegal and waiting for a court decision to appeal a denial makes for an awkward way to gain employment and safe employment at that!

2.) Evidence of Assets. This is used only when you haven't sufficient enough income to meet the requirements. It just so happens I own a home .. my father left his home to me via 'Living Will' and I will have to provide documentation establishing location, ownership, date of acquisition and value. I have nothing stating the home is mine .. all I have is the Deed which my sister handed over to me and my name isn't on it .. having your name entered was done away with for some reason or another.
I wrote to the Chief @ the Immigrant Visa branch to let them know of my dilemna with my Fed. tax returns. What I'm afraid of is I'll need to find a joint sponsor .. and I hate to rely on anyone for anything but, if that's the case, I'm gonna have to break down and do so. Perhaps my Mom will help .. she wants us in America bad enough to kill someone or at least do some type of damage! We can only ask ..
Perhaps I'm worried over nothing .. with everything we've already gone through, how could I begin to imagine that this process would be easy? Some more sleepless nights to follow until I get some answers ..

'Nothing Ventured, Nothing Gained'

This definitely is our motto for the time being ..

We're resigned in the fact that we'll never get my denial turned around and decided a few weeks ago to begin filing a 'Petition for Alien Residency' for Richard to come to America. He made the call to the American Embassy with our request, received the paperwork the following day and filled out the forms. Now all we needed was to take a road trip to Amsterdam to hand them over!

Wednesday, Oct. 6, 2004:
With $185 (€157.25) in hand, we made the trip to the American Embassy in Amsterdam to file! But living with a silly Dutch guy makes this not such a simple trip to make! When you enter the grounds of the Am. Em., you go through a security checkpoint before going to a second checkpoint. The first Security Guard is checking us through and notices the "Gun" shaped belt buckle my darling wears most of the time and asks if it's 'real' (he's kidding, alright?). Richard is rambling at this time for he's not even aware that he has it on and how it could raise 'suspicions'. 1st guy lets us through after confiscating the Swiss Army knife Ries has on his keychain .. an on to the 2nd guy! We stand outside the building and one by one, the applicants go through the door once you're announced to do so. Once inside, there's a windowed booth with the 2nd guard enclosed within. He asks for your belongings which are put in this metal bin that's manually opened and closed by Mr. 2nd guard. This time though, he wants the belt buckle!!!! So we leave the buckle, the cellular phone and proceed into the building to file while I'm trying to remind myself to pick up our items once we leave. Apparently during this second inspection, Richard isn't given his wallet back so it is promptly returned to him while we're in line. We finally get up to the window with our petition and then the guy who's gonna help us says "One minute please .." and walks off! *sigh* 3 minutes later, he returns! We give him our petition, our passports, a passport photo of each of us, our Marriage Certificate and the process is begun! What I found funny is that he made a comment about how he's heard of us through colleagues of his .. yeah, word gets around .. must have been from the "Metro" interview .. guess those interviews did do us some good after all! We sit and wait for an approval which came after a few minutes and would you believe the official who does the approvals has a wife who's Missourian? Small world, ain't it? He makes me swear that everything I entered into the petition was truthful .. I swore it was .. and off we went .. knife, gun, mobile phone and wallet in check!
I have to mention that this trip would NOT have been possible if it weren't for our wonderful friend Martin .. he's been one of our biggest supporters from the very beginning of our union! He contributed our train tickets (he has a special card which gives him 40% off the normal train ticket price) and he even went so far as to request Madame Tussard tickets from his employer for something to do while we were there in the city. Yeah, who wants to take a 1 hour trip to one of the most awesome tourist spots in the Netherlands just to stand outside the Am.Em. for an hour only to drop off some boring paperwork and then come straight back home? Bless you Martin .. and we got our picture taken with the 'Robbie Williams' wax figure .. woohoo!

Friday, Oct. 8, 2004:Well, the paperwork arrived .. it will take up to 10 weeks for processing .. we've apparently got alot of work to do .. will post a blog about that at a later date! I think you've got enough to read for now .. lol!