“Your Visa is approved! Congratulations and good luck in the US.”

My heart almost melted and tears almost came out when I heard the words from the US visa officer at my visa interview in Guangzhou. 5 months of preperation, and 5 months of waiting and praying just came to an end like that.

That is my wife Natalie's strongest memory from the US immigration process.  My strongest memories, however, were the US consulate in Guangzhou, China, losing our application and Air Canada telling her she absoutely could not board our flight from Hong Kong to the US after her visa had finally been approved.


By way of background, applying for a US visa as a spouse of a US citizen is supposed to take somewhere between 3 and 6 months to do, assuming you can follow mind-numbingly tedious and inconsistent directions and instructions.  We were fortunate enough to be able to do that as we submitted our application in October 2009, the week prior to getting married.  After the initial excitement of hearing that everything we initially submitted was approved by the US embassy in Beijing, China, we waited for months while the application was "transferred" by diplomatic pouch to the US embassy in Guangzhou, China, where all Chinese spouse applications are processed.  Little did we realize "transferred" actually meant it was sent to a pig farm in Inner Mongolia or else transferred to the circular file in the Guangzhou embassy basement.


After hearing for weeks and weeks, "we will probably find it at some point, so sit tight and do nothing and put your life on hold while someone takes 20 minutes out of their weekly schedule to check a few places it could be," the Guangzhou consulate finally (three months later) told us our application had magically appeared on someone's desk and it could continue being processed.


Then $900 and a battery of medical tests later, Natalie finally got a letter saying that the magical day for her interview was March 8 in Guangzhou.  Seeing how prepared Natalie is for everything, the interviewing officer at the US consulate took one look at the suitcase full of materials, photographs, tax returns, affidavits, etc., and uttered the magic words Natalie heard in the title of this post.


Little did we realize that as we were celebrating her final acceptance by the US to be a lawful permanent resident by flying directly from Guangzhou to Hong Kong and then through Vancouver to the US, the Canadian embassy would tell their Hong Kong Air Canada agents that under no circumstances could a new US green card holder transit the Vancouver airport on his or her trip to Seattle.  But all was not lost.  United Airlines magically happened to have a flight from Hong Kong to San Francisco and on to Seattle at exactly the same time, and the stars were aligned when we were able to get two seats together on both legs to enjoy the rest of our journey to Seattle.


One very convoluted trip and process later, we were warmly welcomed to the USA.


- Courtesy blogging from my darling hubby


With the blessings from our families, our friends and even the US visa officer :), we finally landed safely in Seattle and settled down well in our apartment here. Thank you all for being so supportive for the last seveal months. Welcome to Seattle to visit us! It doesn't even rain that much :)