Happy New Year and Merry Christmas!

Today, the new year began in Russia and the celebration begins for the holiday season.
In Russia, they celebrate Christmas and New Years day beginning January 1.
Anna, the children and the entire country of Russia will celebrate during the next 9 days. Tomorrow the children will open gifts from Santa Claus beneath a fur tree just as we do here. Tonight the whole country welcomed in the new year. This time occurred at 1:00 P.M. Mountain time. Anna had to close her windows in fear that a rogue firework would enter her home. It is common that they light off fireworks to celebrate the new year.
We hope that this will be the last New Years Celebration that we will experience apart. In fact we hope we will all be together in a few months. The average time it takes to get and approval on our petition is 5 months and we have already waited over 2 months so we think we are halfway there.
Anna and I have discussed how we will celebrate the future holidays and we have agreed that we will begin the celebration on New Years day as they are accustomed to in Russia. We may celebrate Christmas on the American Holiday but we will also celebrate the Russian Holiday as well.
So today, Anna and I wish everyone a Happy New Year and Merry Christmas.
We will see you next year!

Hurry up and Wait!

I have hesitated to make a new blog entry over the past month because there is nothing new to report. We are still waiting for the USCIS (United States Citizenship and Immigration Services) to approve our petition for the alien fiance (Form I-129F).
They sent me a notice informing me they received the request on the 22nd of October.
Unfortunately we must continue to wait until we receive an approval letter from the USCIS. I must admit though that every day seems like an eternity as we wait for the approval of our petition. Unfortunately the approval process takes an average 5 months. There is not much we can do until the time it is approved so we can only sit and wait.
Anna has been busy trying to sell some property she owns in southern Russia as well as trying to get the necessary papers that will allow her to take her daughter out of Russia. It seems her lawyer has found a document that indicates that her ex-husband is dead. So we hope when our petition is finally approved, she will have no difficulty taking her daughter here.
She is also trying to find the time to learn English as I am also finding some time to learn Russian.
We have now exceeded 2400 pages of written correspondence. Interestingly enough, every word we ever spoke (not including the words we spoke while I was in Russia) is in a 2400+ page document with almost 1,000,000 words. We find it interesting to refer back to our correspondence from over a year ago and read the words we spoke to each other and discover how much our relationship has developed over the past year.
We are also working on writing our individual stories to include in our future book. We hope to focus on writing the book over the next year. In fact I interviewed an author who is very interested in helping us write the book. But as in any story, it will need an ending before we can finish it. We hope that the end will be "and they lived happily ever after." but none of us can predict the uncertain future. Especially since it is assumed that the end of the world will occur in 4 days (12-21-2012). It seems even in Russia they consider this a possibility.
But if the world doesn't end on that day and we have to wait for the 3 more months, we can expect we will have over 3000 pages to edit and publish in our future book.

Bad news from Russia

Anna received some bad news from her employer today. It seems her days are numbered there. She has been an employee at this particular educational institution for over 7 years.

Today, during a meeting, the director of the institution announced that they will be closing their doors. While this came as no surprise to Anna, approximately 70% of the other employed personnel were shocked at the news.
This is all part of a major plan to shut down many universities throughout Russia with the thought of improving the quality of education vs. quantity of education. It was a plan that was started with former Prime Minister (and now president)  Vladimir Putin and supported by the current Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev.
This will not only take away jobs from many people in Russia, but it possibly will limit the abilities for many potential students to find further education in Russia.
While I will not get into any political debate regarding this issue, my biggest concern is for Anna. I am glad that we have already begun the process to bring Anna and her children here. My only hope is that our petition is approved before her employment is terminated there.
It has been one month since the Department of Homeland Security received our petition and the average length of time is 5 months for an approval. Now we are in a race against time. We only hope that our I-129f Petition will be approved before the scheduled closure. The last thing she needs to worry about is to look for a new job there.
If you are new to our blog and you haven't read our story yet Click Here to read our story.

A mother's work is never done

As we continue to wait for our papers to be approved by the Department of Homeland Security, Anna must file papers with the courts in Russia to allow her daughter to leave Russia.
The father of her daughter disappeared 9 years ago and now Anna has to get a judgement in court to allow her to leave the Russian Federation.
This will be required for her to come here. So Anna had to retain the services of a lawyer to file papers with the court system in Russia to either declare her first husband dead or missing.
Unfortunately we are at the mercy of not only the USCIS, but now we are at the mercy of the Russian Court System.
But we are confident that the court system will rule in her favor and when the USCIS finally approves our petition, she will have no difficulty getting a visa for her daughter to come here.
If you are new to our blog and you haven't read our story yet Click Here to read our story.

The official start of the process.

Finally we have a confirmation letter from the USCIS (The Department of Homeland Security) indicating they have started processing our petition.
I received an email early this morning from them indicating the receipt of our application. This is a copy of the actual E-mail.

USCIS Acceptance Confirmation

Your case has been accepted and routed to the USCIS California Service Center for processing. Within 7-10 days by standard mail you will receive your official Receipt Notice (Form I-797) with your Receipt Number #############. With the official Receipt Notice (Form I-797) you may visit www.uscis.gov where you can check the status of your case using My Case Status. We suggest you wait until you have received your Form I-797 before checking My Case Status.

This confirmation provides notification of the date USCIS received your case.  This notice does NOT grant any immigration status or benefit. You MAY NOT present this notice as evidence that you have been granted any immigration status or benefit. Further, this notice does NOT constitute evidence that your case remains pending with USCIS. The current status of your case must be verified with USCIS.

PLEASE DO NOT REPLY TO THIS MESSAGE

Fortunately, now we have an official timeline we can follow. We still have many forms to file among other things and there will still be at least 5 months before Anna's Visa can be approved but at least we have started the process.
If you are new to our blog and you haven't read our story yet Click Here to read our story.

The clock starts Monday!

Finally after sitting in U.S. customs for 8 days, Anna's letter arrived with the signed papers necessary for me to submit the I-129f to begin the process to file for the K-1 Visa.
After I received the papers, I was able to overnight the package to the USCIS office in Lewisville Texas using FedEx. The estimated date of arrival is Monday, October 22 after I sent it on Friday Evening.
Once the U.S.C.I.S.(The Department of homeland security) receives the package they will review it. This will begin a long process that may take between 6 months to 1 year. In fact statistics have proven that the average waiting time for the approval of the K-1 Visa is 250 days.
I must admit this is not very convenient for either Anna or I. But, we have no choice than to wait. We hope that somehow our petition will be expedited in some way. But at least we can expect that Anna will be here within a year. Finally!
If you are new to our blog and you haven't read our story yet Click Here to read our story.

At the mercy of U.S. Customs

Anna sent her signed papers to me using the express mail service on the 29th of September. Unfortunately, Express Mail means nothing when it comes to U.S. Customs.
Since Anna used the Express mail service we are able to track its location. It appears that it was delivered to U.S. customs at 3:30 AM on the 8th of this month.
It is hard to believe that a letter containing 2 sheets of paper can be held for such a long period of time. I guess they must suspect that those 2 pages must contain something that compromises the security of our borders. In truth, all that is contained in the 2 papers is a letter of intent and the Form I-129F signed by Anna so that we can send the complete package to the USCIS in order to apply for the K-1 visa.
I tried calling Customs to ask them why it must take so long and they told me (and I must say very rudely) that they can hold a letter for up to 45 days. Government efficiency displayed at its finest.
But now we are held at the mercy of U.S. Customs. I only hope that it will leave customs this week.

So much for express mail I guess!

If you are new to our blog and you haven't read our story yet Click Here to read our story.

Waiting and Waiting And Waiting...

Both Anna and I have filled out the necessary papers to file the I-129F, Petition for the Foreign Fiance. My papers are all packaged and ready to go, but now we wait for Anna's signed papers to arrive in the mail.
She sent the papers using the express mail service on September 29th and it took nearly 5 days for the letter to leave Moscow after waiting in customs for almost 3 days. It finally arrived in New York almost 3 days ago and now it sits in customs again.  There is nothing I can do but ask myself the question "Why must a single envelope with 2 papers enclosed spend over 6 days waiting in Customs?".
Unfortunately we must continue to wait for the time that customs will allow a letter to pass through. It seems neither the Russian Postal service or the U.S.  Postal Service knows what the word "Express" means.
I can only hope that the letter will leave customs in New York tomorrow.
So Anna and I will lay and wait until the papers finally arrive so we can file the necessary paper. Unfortunately though we must continue to lay in separate countries.

Filing for the Visa

Anna and I have began to fill out the necessary paperwork to file for the K-1 Visa which is a Visa that is issued for a foreign fiancee. We will also need to get K-2 Visas, one for each of her children.
We have found that this is not an easy process and it will take a great deal of time until we can finally have her come here to be with me.

I had to fill out and sign the form I-129F which is the Petition for an Alien Fiance. Both Anna and I had to fill out the G-325A Forms which are Biographical supplementary forms that will be included with the petition. We also had to write and sign letters of intent to get married in addition to providing proof of us meeting each other in person within the past 2 years. That is the easy part. I have included photos of us together along with a copy of the plane ticket and the letter of invitation she originally sent me. Also we had to both get passport style photos taken to include in the petition.
Right now, I am waiting for Anna's signed papers that she mailed me last week so that I can submit the application. We hope the paperwork will arrive early next week. Once I receive the papers then I can get all the documents into one package and send them to the USCIS in Texas.
Once again we must wait. I can only hope that our Visa will be approved soon and Anna will be here soon.

Photos from Russia

I am sorry it has taken so long to upload the photos from Russia but I managed to finally get many of them uploaded to my Google photos.

Unfortunately I don't have the time to post them all here but you should be able to access them with the following link. Hopefully everyone can view them without difficulty.
https://plus.google.com/u/0/photos/107596148582140333168/albums/5794501328282559121
Enjoy!