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.
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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!
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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!

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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!

So what is next for Anna and I?

Many people ask me, what Anna and I are going to do now. We have been corresponding through Skype using Google Translator for a year now. And now I have returned home after spending over a week with her. So "What is next?", you may ask.
Anna and I are still very much in love and we plan to get married as soon as we can. But an international marriage is not a very simple process. It will require a lot of time and effort to file the necessary paperwork with the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services controlled by the Department of Homeland Security.
Anna and I are preparing to file for a K-1 visa. A K-1 visa will allow Anna to come here for a period of 90 days as my fiancee with the intent to marry me while she is here. In fact this has been our plan for quite a length of time and I must admit it was one of the motivating factors for my visit to Russia. My trip to Russia was a very crucial step in the process. One of the main requirements to file for the K-1 visa is to prove that we have met in person within the past 2 years.
Both Anna and I must provide many documents to the USCIS. Fortunately we prepared many of the documents during my visit with her. In fact we had to pay a company in Russia to translate birth certificates as well as other documents so we could include them with the application.

I hope this will answer everyone's questions for now and I will let everyone know when the visa is approved.

My visit to Russia, Continued...

I cannot say how much we enjoyed our time together in Russia. Anna showed me many places and introduced me to much of her family.

I wish I had time to post all of the pictures we took while I was there but, unfortunately I do not have the time.

We had a great time. But unfortunately after a period of 7 days, I had to leave.
I must say this was not a very happy time for us. I wish I could have spent more time there but my visa was scheduled to expire on the 31st of August and I had to leave.

Once again we had to get on a bus and make the long trip to Moscow for my scheduled departure.

We were able to spend the day Touring Moscow together before I left though. She showed me Red Square and many other popular attractions there before I left.

I hope to add a special page showing many of the pictures I took while I was in Russia but unfortunately this is all I have time to post at this time.

My visit to Russia, Continued...

Anna and I really enjoyed our time together. She showed me all around her hometown. She brought me to a place they call the "Valley of the beggars" which is ironic because it is where all the government officials live. While the average Russian lives in a 400 square foot flats in complexes like this,

the government officials and religious leaders live in nice homes like the ones seen here.

Thus the irony stated in the term "Valley of the Beggars".

Anna and the children took me to the mall where we had a great time shopping and having lunch. 

I must say the Russian food was excellent, but I have to admit Anna cooked much better meals than were prepared in any of the restaurants there.

Anna even treated me to a haircut while I was there with her personal hairdresser. If you ever find yourself in Russia and want a haircut, look up this place and ask for Natasha. She did an amazing job.

This is the Salon she works at.

To be continued...

My visit to Russia!

I am sorry it has taken me so long to write this but I have became sick soon after I arrived.
But for all of you who have been waiting for the details, I will try to remember them. Fortunately we took many pictures while I was there so I hope it will trigger my memory.
After I arrived at Moscow, Anna picked me up at the airport and we briefly toured Moscow before taking a 12 hour bus ride to her hometown which is approximately 450 miles from Moscow. For those who want more information on the first day you can refer to my previous blog entry titled "My first Day in Russia".
After resting for a while Anna began showing me around her hometown. I must admit we did struggle a little bit with communication because neither Anna or I were as well prepared as we had hoped. Fortunately she had a cross-translation dictionary that we used quite frequently.
We spent time shopping at the local meat market as well as other local shops to purchase some things for dinner.

We had to visit the post office twice in order for her to contact the U.S. Embassy to notify them of my arrival.

We even spent time at the park with the children.

While we spent many hours walking the streets in Russia, from shop to shop and from attraction to attraction we would pause briefly at night to handle any communication problems we had using, yes, you guessed it "Google Translator". In fact I took a picture of Anna preparing a message for me to read. Our only regret is that we did not save our written correspondence while we were there. It would have been nice to be able to add those words to our over 1800 pages of correspondence.

On a side note, this is the very location I met Anna online. She was sitting in this corner on this laptop and read my first message to her "Privet Anna!".

To be continued...