Immigration Forum / USA Marriage Base / September 2006

My fiance in the US & I have been blissfully unaware of the possible
huge waits for visa processing up 'til now, instead thinking that we
could apply when *we* were ready and have everything sorted out fairly
quickly. Basically, I'm in the UK and hoping to get made redundant from
my job, as the redundancy payment would come in useful - we thought
that was the main thing we were waiting for, and then I delved a bit
deeper into the whole visa-application process/wait times yesterday,
and realised it's a lot less straightforward than we'd imagined. Oh
dear.

So, we are (well, he is, obviously) going to get the I-129F form off,
to get things rolling (or crawling, more like, by the sound of it), but
we want to make sure that it's all done properly so that it doesn't end
up coming back due to insufficient evidence/information/whatever. So, a
couple of questions....

"Provide copies of evidence that you and your fiance´(e) have
personally met within the last two years"

What 'evidence' is acceptable? I mean, we've spent plenty of time
together in the last two years, but I'm not sure what would constitute
'proof' of that. We can prove that I was in the US and he was in the UK
(well, I'm sure we could find some boarding cards, and print out flight
booking confirmation things and suchlike) but that surely 'proves'
nothing at all! If we get prints of photos of us together and include
them, is that the kind of thing they're looking for? Not that there's
any proof that the photos were taken within the last two years, as it
never occurred to us to hold up newspapers as proof of the date! But
seriously... is this the sort of thing they're after, because I can't
think of much more evidence of us that we can provide!

"Provide original statements from you and your fiance´(e) whom you
plan to marry within 90 days of his or her admission, and copies of any
evidence you wish to submit to establish your mutual intent"

What does that mean, then? Do we both just write (or type) a statement
saying "I, X, plan to marry Y, within 90 days of my arrival in the US"
and so on? And again, "evidence"? I don't know what evidence we're
supposed to provide - yes, of course we intend to marry as soon as we
can, but how on earth do we prove that? I can't find any information as
to the sort of information they want.

In the FAQs on the Embassy (in London)'s website, it says you can't
apply for the I-129F while your fiance(e) is in the US. Do we have to
take that totally at its word? I only ask because I'm going over for a
visit in a couple of weeks, and will be there staying with my fiance
for about 3 weeks - it would be much easier to get passport photos etc
there, than to mail them to him and wait weeks for them to arrive. But
having realised that we're facing a potentially very lengthy wait, we'd
rather get the form off ASAP once I get there - they're not going to
reject it based on the fact that I was over for a visit for a few weeks
at the time the form was sent off, are they?! Surely....

Another question.... the USCIS website says that the I-129F should be
sent to the service center in Nebraska - but I found the page where
they list processing times etc, and the Nebraska service center had no
mention of I-129F forms on it at all. After a lot of Googling I spotted
a recent post on a messageboard saying that they're now being dealt
with by California.... if this is true, is it just inevitable that
we're going to face god knows how many weeks' extra wait because of
this, or would we be better off just sending it to California?!

Sorry, so many questions! Last one.... could anyone give me even the
roughest of estimates (if anyone has any recent experience, that would
be great) as to how long the whole thing might take, from my fiance
sending the I-129F to the place in Nebraska, to the Embassy in London
issuing my visa? We've just let months & months go by thinking I'd be
over there by next spring, and I'm now realising that might be
incredibly optimistic - the thought that we could have got this whole
process started months ago makes me feel sick!

So... any advice appreciated, and sorry for the huge, long post.