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Hey everyone,
I'm faced with a very specific scenario. Tried to find answers from every possible source, still no one was able to give us targeted advise. Hope someone in this forum can shed some light. So, here goes...
I'm an undergraduate and my fiancee too. Our final semester examinations end on the 2nd of August this year and we both have been accepted for PhDs in a US university. I have been offered full aid (TA covering tuition and living expenses) while my fiancee has been offered only the admission. Since it is hard for her to pay for the program, we've talked with the university and delayed her admission till spring semester next year (2010). Yet, everyone advises her to come with me this August so that she'll be able to hang around the university, do some voluntary work with a faculty member and then she'll be able to find some form of funding when she enrolls in spring. I have to be in USA before 14th August as the program requires me to.
After considering all these issues, we've decided to get married (since it seems easy, in terms of financial proof that we have to give when obtaining visa) and to take my fiancee (wife by then) on F2 visa. Still, coming from a SouthAsian country with a lot of customs and traditions, we cannot have a wedding ceremony till 6th August since there's no auspicious time for both of us (most people would laugh at this line thinking that people care about these things at this age, including me, but it's very hard to not care for the beliefs of our parents if you are coming from this part of the world). However, we are registering our marriage on the 22nd of this month (April), and postponing our wedding ceremony till August.
OK that's the situation. Now these are the questions...
1) I understand that when the person applying for dependent visa goes for the visa interview, he/she has to take wedding photos with him/her. The marriage certificate would not be a problem since we are getting married on this month. But, we won't be able to provide convincing photos of a wedding ceremony (photo albums, invitation cards, etc) at the time we apply for visa. However, we can take some photos at the small function we have on the 22nd when we are registering our marriage. Would these photos be enough? (there won't be any photos depicting the specific rituals of a typical wedding in my country).
2) How should we apply for visa? I have informed the university that I'd be bringing a dependent with me. So, do they send us all the required forms, for me and my wife? Can we go for a visa interview together, on the same date? Or does my wife have to wait for a certain time after I've gone for the VI?
3) If by any unlucky incident her visa gets rejected (on the account of insufficient proof of a wedding ceremony), can she re-apply after the actual wedding ceremony in August?
4) Now, she has been offered admission to the same PhD program, only that she has delayed it till spring semester. Does she have to disclose this information at the visa interview (that she intends to convert the F2 status to F1 status during the first six months in USA, if she gets a funding opportunity). Or else, should she just skip that information and just go with process as any other wife, who's going with her husband for his studies, would do? Does withholding this information account for information hiding and can that affect her visa application adversely?
5) Finally, by the time we apply for visas (I guess we'll have to apply somewhere between June and July) our undergraduate degrees will not have finished. In fact, we won't even have finished our final examinations. I gathered that we have to submit proof that our education in the home country is complete at the time we apply for the visa interview. So what can we do regarding this? We can obtain letters from the Dean of the faculty saying that our degrees will have finished by the time we plan to travel to USA. Will such a letter suffice?
I understand that there are too many questions and that answering all of them could be a painful thought itself. But, I'd really appreciate if someone can give me some guidelines as to what I should do in this situation. We'd really like to materialize the opportunities we've got and look for all your help in doing so.
Thanks.
I'm faced with a very specific scenario. Tried to find answers from every possible source, still no one was able to give us targeted advise. Hope someone in this forum can shed some light. So, here goes...
I'm an undergraduate and my fiancee too. Our final semester examinations end on the 2nd of August this year and we both have been accepted for PhDs in a US university. I have been offered full aid (TA covering tuition and living expenses) while my fiancee has been offered only the admission. Since it is hard for her to pay for the program, we've talked with the university and delayed her admission till spring semester next year (2010). Yet, everyone advises her to come with me this August so that she'll be able to hang around the university, do some voluntary work with a faculty member and then she'll be able to find some form of funding when she enrolls in spring. I have to be in USA before 14th August as the program requires me to.
After considering all these issues, we've decided to get married (since it seems easy, in terms of financial proof that we have to give when obtaining visa) and to take my fiancee (wife by then) on F2 visa. Still, coming from a SouthAsian country with a lot of customs and traditions, we cannot have a wedding ceremony till 6th August since there's no auspicious time for both of us (most people would laugh at this line thinking that people care about these things at this age, including me, but it's very hard to not care for the beliefs of our parents if you are coming from this part of the world). However, we are registering our marriage on the 22nd of this month (April), and postponing our wedding ceremony till August.
OK that's the situation. Now these are the questions...
1) I understand that when the person applying for dependent visa goes for the visa interview, he/she has to take wedding photos with him/her. The marriage certificate would not be a problem since we are getting married on this month. But, we won't be able to provide convincing photos of a wedding ceremony (photo albums, invitation cards, etc) at the time we apply for visa. However, we can take some photos at the small function we have on the 22nd when we are registering our marriage. Would these photos be enough? (there won't be any photos depicting the specific rituals of a typical wedding in my country).
2) How should we apply for visa? I have informed the university that I'd be bringing a dependent with me. So, do they send us all the required forms, for me and my wife? Can we go for a visa interview together, on the same date? Or does my wife have to wait for a certain time after I've gone for the VI?
3) If by any unlucky incident her visa gets rejected (on the account of insufficient proof of a wedding ceremony), can she re-apply after the actual wedding ceremony in August?
4) Now, she has been offered admission to the same PhD program, only that she has delayed it till spring semester. Does she have to disclose this information at the visa interview (that she intends to convert the F2 status to F1 status during the first six months in USA, if she gets a funding opportunity). Or else, should she just skip that information and just go with process as any other wife, who's going with her husband for his studies, would do? Does withholding this information account for information hiding and can that affect her visa application adversely?
5) Finally, by the time we apply for visas (I guess we'll have to apply somewhere between June and July) our undergraduate degrees will not have finished. In fact, we won't even have finished our final examinations. I gathered that we have to submit proof that our education in the home country is complete at the time we apply for the visa interview. So what can we do regarding this? We can obtain letters from the Dean of the faculty saying that our degrees will have finished by the time we plan to travel to USA. Will such a letter suffice?
I understand that there are too many questions and that answering all of them could be a painful thought itself. But, I'd really appreciate if someone can give me some guidelines as to what I should do in this situation. We'd really like to materialize the opportunities we've got and look for all your help in doing so.
Thanks.
