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Hi there, found this place by accident and decided to stay. I'm Jared, a 39 year old restaurant manager from Texas, married to Jade, a 39 year old teacher from London. We met online almost 2 years ago, by accident as is usually the case, and we were married in Texas last December just before Christmas.  I have flown over to London several times and she to Texas and she decided from the very start that she wanted to live here out in the country miles from the nearest town. Go figure.
Anyway we did the visa thing, both I-130 and I-129f, and are still waiting for one or the other of them to hurry up and get processed - it's only been almost a year now (sarcasm.) So a month ago we decided to look into the possibility of my coming to London to be with her while we wait for the US visas to get done. I called the British Consulate General in LA, looked online, and found that it only takes about 2 weeks to get a spousal settlement visa to get there from here. Wish I had known that months ago!
With any luck I will have my UK visa application filed in the next 2 weeks and will have my visa to fly back over there shortly afterwards. We are shooting for an early December flight to London, in time for our 1st  wedding anniversary.
On an ironic note, the I-130's we filed in Texas back in April for Jade and her 2 kids were transferred to the California Service Center yesterday. The speed at which they process those there means that by the time I actually make it to London my I-130 will be approved.
Someone somewhere is laughing at that...

    Jared

Hello Jared!!!!!!! Your phot of you and Jade is very nice!

You are scaring me though on how long your I129F process is. Im currently going thru it with my English fiancee. I didnt realize you could apply for the I129F and a British spousal visa at the same time; good for you and best of luck.

Welcome 

Your I-129 for a fiance and my I-129 for a spouse are 2 completely different animals. A fiance 129 is to bring over your fiance so you can get married. A spousal 129 is to bring over your spouse so your family is together while the long process of the I-130 is being waited on.  The I-129 for a fiance is sent to your local USCIS office and may take 2-3 months to get processed. The 129's for someone already married are different - they are only processed at the National Benefits Center and they are, at this moment, more than 7 months behind schedule - they took 5 months to process February's spousal I-129's for example, and they have worked for the last 2 weeks on the March 25th apps and are still working on that day. Get the picture?  So it is ironically true that the I-129f, which is supposed to speed up family unification while the big 2 year I-130 is processed, can easily end up taking longer to process than that same I-130. It is also ironic that someone who isn't married can be together, get married, and stay in the US ages before someone already married, with kids, can get their spouse over to the States.

Now both types of visas are in the works to bring my wife and kids to Texas. These will still be quite some time in getting processed and in the meanwhile there is nothing to stop me from applying for and getting a British spousal settlement visa and coming over to England while my wife's papers are working in the US - a change of address form sent to the USCIS is easy enough to do, though since I own my own house and land outright and don't plan on being gone longer than 6 months to a year it will probably not become necessary as my US address will not change. If you really want to see something scary let me post here the timeline of the National Benefits Center's I-129f spousal visa processings:  ( at this rate they will get to mine in about a year since it is a June 17 date)

Date          Date of apps being processed
10/15/03   08/06/03
04/27/04   01/21/04
05/19/04   02/04/04
06/04/04   02/06/04
06/23/04   02/10/04
07/12/04   02/11/04
07/21/04   02/12/04
08/09/04   02/12/04
08/18/04   02/20/04
09/17/04   02/27/04
09/22/04   03/11/04
10/06/04   03/25/04
10/21/04   03/25/04

So my advice to you US-UK relationships who are not yet married but are thinking of getting married and THEN doing a visa - DON'T!!  Go the route of the fiance visa and then change status once your partner is in the US and married to you on the I-129. My wife and I could have been together nearly a year ago if we had gone that route instead of going ahead and getting married first. Check out some of the online immigration forums out there and you will see tons of husbands and wives going through the same sort of situation as my wife and I, though most of them don't have the option to go to their spouse's country while they wait.

  Jared

Wow Jared! I really wish the best to you and your family. Please keep us updated on your journey. {{{hugs}}}   

Hi Jared!

Boy what a story!  Just tahnk god you are not going through the Vermont Center as they tend to be even slower than Texas!  Sorry NYtoUK!

We too did the K visa to get him over there and got married in a quickie service in Florida.  It took them close to 5 months to process the whole thing and he was given an apointment for almost 6 months to the date we sent it in.

We have had a whole mess of crap with the Dept. of Homeland Security which pains me as there are still nuttos getting in while law abiding citizens get screwed. 

We actually got to see "the file" on us which was a load of paperwork about 4 inchs think in a folder.  This after we were detained at the airport coming back into the USA, after having travelled to the London Embassy to get the paperwork I had been told to get by some idiot at the call center in the USA.  Note triple check anything someone tells you! Paperwork which they call travel documents that basically only lets the airline not have to pay fines for transporting an illegal immigrant.  Nevermind that my husband had been living and working in the USA and paying taxes and still was working and had a job and that THEY were the ones that were close to two months PASS due on the date the application to remove the conditions on his permanent residency card.

UGH!  Anyways... the guy at the Atlanta office was nice, got our stuff processed THAT DAY after asking why on earth we were there.   

So now I decide to do a PhD in the UK which means that we will be outside the USA for more than 6 months which means he loses his green card... :\\\'( which means to go back which I am sure we will one day we have to do it all over again from here!

Sorry... hijack of thread but I just had to let you know I UNDERSTAND!!!!

Anyways!

Welcome to UKY!!!   

{{{hugs}}} to you too Vnice! {PS- Thankfully I think our time with the VT process center is over. Andy has already filled out the 2nd part of the package in England and is now waiting for his {clean} police report.}

Jared- welcome again! I hope you get to London in December to be with your family.