Many people falsely believe that mastering the forms and procedure are all it takes to successfully obtain a K visa. This may be true for a routine case going into a K-1 friendly Consulate. But it’s not likely to be enough if your fiancée/wife is Chinese. We have spoken to dozens of petitioners whose petitions were refused at Guangzhou despite the fact that the petitioner spent endless hours researching procedures through the internet and friends. Their cases were approved by the USCIS. The petitioners were elated. Their cases are then refused by Guangzhou and the petitioners were bewildered. Some of these people just got a raw deal from the Consulate. But that’s only about 10%. In ninety percent of the cases our attorneys could readily identify what the Consulate found troubling in the case and how the petitioner could have avoided the problem. We’ve handled dozens of revocation cases, and, believe us, they are very difficult for the attorney and are emotionally exhausting for the couple. We see every day that an ounce of prevention is worth a TON of cure.

You have to get all these things right when dealing with Guangzhou. The stakes are high since post-interview processing is a grueling and relationship-challenging marathon. Our firm’s long and deep involvement with Chinese cases has convinced us that the time to hire an attorney is not when you have problems, but before you have problems.

We haven’t had a single case sent back to the USCIS by Guangzhou since August 2008. We’ve had only two cases where additional information was requested, and in both cases the visa was approved within a month. Here’s what we do to prevent problems in our own cases:

We start each case by interviewing the petitioner and beneficiary at length, using our years of experience with immigrant visas and with the Guangzhou Consulate to review and assess the couple’s profile for obvious problem areas (our standard list for Guangzhou now runs three pages of bulleted items). Having the client fill out a questionnaire is simply not good enough. It’s common during these conversations for clients to mention something very casually, not giving it any importance, but we see right away that it can be either a big plus or a big minus in the case. Our Guangzhou office likewise calls the fiancée/wife to explain what’s ahead in the process and what documents we need, and they get to know the fiancée and give our office an early sense of how she might perform during the consular interview. If we see a problem we’ll put her on a plan for improvement.

We prepare the forms and document using a case management program custom developed by John Roth and a professional programmer during the past 15 years. No one has a comparable system. The program helps us obtain all the relevant information and documents we need from the client and overseas beneficiary as quickly as possible. Finally, we examine every detail of every document for any issue or problem lurking within.

Once all the facts are in, our attorneys get together and develop the final case strategy for the USCIS petition and the Consular interview. Winning a USCIS approval in fact is not that difficult. We view the petition stage merely as the place to build a strong foundation for the subsequent Consular phase (and avoiding doing anything that can come back to haunt the case at the Consular stage – we firmly believe in spare, tightly controlled USCIS petitions).

The I-129F petition is prepared and submitted according to the highest professional standards. We have the training and experience to be able to recognize the hidden issues that may lurk in the data and documentation, and we know how to quickly resolve any problems found therein. We know the “unwritten rules” regarding what constitutes a persuasive petition, and what does not. Our whole approach is to identify and resolve any potential USCIS or Consulate issues in the first days of the representation, rather than wait for problems to arise later, where one may get caught in a long, arduous battle with a government agency (to imagine what dealing with the USCIS or Consulate is like, just think of your local Department of Motor Vehicles, but imagine it ten times worse).

We have found that we can trust the clients with some things, but with other things we cannot. For example, many times we’ve been told by clients their fiancée speaks “fair to good” English, and then we call the fiancée and she seems unable to say more than a word or two in English. The clients aren’t lying to us or ”puffing”, they’re just thinking about the matter incorrectly. The problem here is that the Chinese fiancée will not be speaking with someone who loves her and knows her during the interview, she will be speaking to a complete stranger while in a nerve-wracking pressure cooker environment, and that stranger sure as heck doesn’t love her and is not inclined to forgive her shortcomings or cut her any slack. In fact, he’s likely to start with the presumption that she’s more motivated by immigrant intent than by romance, and press his advantage any chance he can get. So we check and check again to make sure our case strategy is being implemented fully.

An attorney is available throughout the visa petition process to provide answers and solutions to the client and fiancé or wife’s questions. Even though we take the vast majority of the case and it's complexity out of the client's and fiancée/wife's hands, and provide detailed instructions and updates throughout, we nonetheless find that every member of our office spends most of his or her day answering telephone calls or emails from clients who have new questions, problems, and concerns that appear as the case moves forward. We typically know the answer and solutions immediately, or if a novel issue is presented, we set about solving it in the shortest possible time.

The law changes often and Guangzhou consular practices change even more quickly (and with even less notice). Our dedication to providing our clients the best support and the best advise sent our lead attorney John Roth to Guangzhou twice in 2008-2009 to meet with Consular officers and to build “ground support” for our clients’ fiancées and wives. We now have unprecedented access to the Immigrant Visa Unit in Guangzhou. We are not content to follow. We are committed to being at the leading edge of legal advice and support for Chinese-American couples.

All forms contained in State Department Packet #3 (initial Consulate mailing to the fiancée) and State Department Packet #4 (final Consulate mailing to the fiancée) are prepared by our office and mailed to the fiancée or wife prior to the first Consulate mailing, so that the interview can be scheduled for the earliest possible date.

Our attorneys travel regularly to Guangzhou, China. We have an office right in the building where your fiancée or wife will be interviewed. We have three assistants in the building. We have direct access to the Immigrant Visa Unit Chief. We cover every step of the process and every detail because all it takes is one slip up to send an otherwise good case into months or years of post-interview delays, uncertainty, and frustration.

One of our attorneys (usually John Roth) calls the overseas beneficiary about a week before the interview to prepare her for the interview. The conversation typically runs 45 minutes to a hour as John Roth helps the fiancee to understand how to present a real relationship to a consular officer who may start with a negative view of Chinese-American couples.

One of our assistants meets the fiance upon her arrival in Guangzhou in order to prepare her for the Consular interview, check her documents one last time, and make sure she is relaxed, comfortable, and is fulfilling all of her obligations during her stay in the Guangzhou (last-minute jitters is one of the biggest reasons for failure during the interview). The paralegal assistance spares our clients the need to fly to Guangzhou for last-minute hand-holding upon the request of the inevitably nervous fiance (a common occurrence for petitioners doing the visa themselves, or without Consular support from the attorney; the irony is that the petitioner can do almost nothing at this stage, and aren’t even allowed into the Immigrant Visa Section). Our overseas paralegals have each assisted literally hundreds of fiancés and wives get through the interview process, and thus they can provide far greater assistance than can the petitioner.