Visa Form I-130

Having completed all of the requirements to marry in the Philippines, we were married on April 5th. I got kind of lucky with these days. My anniversary being 4-5-06, and my wife's birthday being 5-6-78, I'm all but guaranteed to never forget an important date. ;)

We had a nice outdoor reception at Nanay and Tatay's house, and it was a real bargain compared to what the same ceremony would have cost in the US. For $200 we had a caterer provide all of the furnishings, decorations, enough food and drink for almost 100 people, and that even included 6-8 guys serving everyone. I was really amazed at the value. Filipinos work very hard for very little. Most of the time I feel bad for them on this point, but in this case, it really worked to our advantage, so we also made sure they were all well tipped. It was a very nice ceremony. Even the Mayor and local judges stopped by. They are old family friends because Nanay worked at City Hall for many years.

Now that we were married, we were finally able to start the process of her visa application for the United States. We didn't do this for the first few weeks. This was partially because we needed to wait for the official marriage license to be available at the NSO. I was in no hurry at this stage anyway, because as far as I knew at this point, what that USCIS employee had told me about the 3 month processing time was the truth, so I figured there was plenty of time to get around to it.


I'm not sure why, but this shot really appeals to me

During the time we were waiting for the marriage license to be available, we moved away from the White Mansion and on to our current apartment, which is much larger, and also much less expensive. There's no pool, but in two months time I never once used the pool at WM anyway, so no loss there. Besides, I can always go to the beach resort and for a very low price have my choice between the ocean or a very large pool, so I'm happy to be where I am.

When we moved here, we met our neighbor Steve almost right away. He has started the same process with his wife a few months ahead of us, so he has been like a crystal ball for me, because I get to see what the next step in the process is and prepare for it before it happens to me (thanks Steve).

He has only steered me wrong once, and as it happened, it was with the first visa form, the I-130 spousal petition. He had told me that when he sent his in, he paid an extra $5 and they sent him a check back for the excess amount. I do not know why he would make this up. Maybe they just changed the process between the time of his filing and mine, but that wasn't the case for me.

When I filed the form I-130 with USCIS at the beginning of May, I noticed that the fee was $190. I had purchased money orders in advance, prior to leaving the US, and somehow my money order was for $195, so I was over. At first I thought about making it out to my dad, and asking him to cash it and get one for the lower amount. I really should have done that, but didn't want to add complications for him, and I remembered Steve's story, so I went ahead and mailed in the forms with the payment for $195. That extra $5 turned out to be a big mistake.


The house lizard (actually it's a Wall Ghecko) is a common site in the Philippines. They're amazingly fast.

Let me quickly interject here that when I filled out the form, I used my dad's address in the US, and Fedex'd the paperwork to him to mail so that it would have a local post mark. I remember how insistant that knucklehead at USCIS had been about returning to the US, and everyone kept saying they really want you to file your paperwork from the US, so this way I could be here and appear to be there at the same time. Nothing illegal about it or anything. Just food for thought should anyone else be starting this process. All of my forms now get mailed to my dad's address, and he passes them on to me.

Moving on, about a month after I mailed in the Form I-130 my dad contacts me and says there's a problem. He said that the whole package was sent back to me and that he's going to Fedex it to me to look at. Boy, that was the longest 5 days ever waiting to see what was wrong. When I open it up, there is a letter saying that I did not pay the correct amount and they requested payment in the form of $190. My money order, which had been endorsed, was also included, stapled to a letter from the Department of Homeland Security instructing the issuer to refund the purchase.

This was an expensive lesson to learn. It cost me $48 for my dad to Fedex that package to me, $30 for me to Fedex the new package back, $12 to cancel the old money order, plus a whole month of processing time. I would have been much better of for them to just pocket the $5. I can not stress this enough - MAKE SURE YOU PAY THE RIGHT AMOUNT - NOT EVEN ONE PENNY OVER!! So anyway, by the middle of June my I-130 visa form was finally starting to get keyed into the system, so the immigration process has officially started. Hooray. :)

More to come...