Cadenza-93

Your faith in human nature is admirable.

civilservant

It's not faith - the adjudicating officers are REQUIRED to follow the policies - anyone that dosent will no doubt be appealed and subsequently disciplined.

Cadenza-93

Which is reassuring, however, there is a degree of personal judgement involved in the outcome of each case.

Noorah101

I disagree.

Rene

Michael

There may possibly be prejudices by the interviewing officer but that could also occur for interracial marriages, age differences, religion, where a person is from, etc. but if they exist, I doubt a lawyer can help over come those prejudices at the interview.

So far on BE, I haven't heard of any cases that were any different than those that were heterosexual marriages.

In fact, I suspect the chances of approval is far greater than if the immigrant was from Nigeria.

sir_eccles

The state of residence should be a concern but not from an immigration perspective. My understanding is that in some States where it is not recognised, day to day life can be heavily inconvenienced by the discriminatory laws put in place. Taxes, benefits, medical care etc etc. Think carefully about where you want to live.

ivoryboy

Our case went smoothly and as far as I could tell was handled professionally and as any other marriage based case is and should be

md95065

With respect, I am with Cadenza-93 on this one.

There is the way that things should work in theory and then there is the way that they actually work in the real world.

With something as important as obtaining a visa for a spouse to come to the US, while there is a very good chance that there would not be any problems, I would certainly err on the side of caution and would consider retaining the services of an attorney to be a good investment.

Nate_Matt

My husband and I applied for a CR1/IR1 visa about a month after DOMA was overturned, the process was straight forward and we encountered no differences or discrimination at the hands of anyone, these people have a job to carry out as government employees and did so professionally.

The only difference with us was my husband was living with me in the UK on a spousal visa and we filed through DCF which only took us 72 days, I believe it can take a year or so if you are separated.

Because this was new legal territory for everyone involved and it was our future at steak we used an attorney, she works out of Kansas City, MO. She was very thorough and one of the nicest people to deal with. If you need her name or have any other questions feel free to message me.

Jerni

Hi everyone new to the forum!

Just to add that my husband and I just completed the AOS process. We had our interview last Thursday (16th) and were approved on the spot. We encountered nothing that would indicate our case was treated any differently than an opposite-sex case.

We did hire an immigration attorney as I'd been out of status for 10 years. We've been together for 15 years and married since last summer.

Michael

That does seem to indicate that they are very professional. With being out of status for 10 years, someone that wanted to use that to put a "monkey wrench" in the works could have easily done it.

Jerni

Indeed. I'm hoping they are compassionate with all same-sex couples where the beneficiary has been out of status for a long time (it actually never came up in our interview which surprised me). Due to DOMA we had very few options available to us.

Michael

It'd also be nice if they treated all opposite couples that way.

Jerni

Well of course My point was that prior to June last year, a same-sex couple had no way to apply for a marriage based green card. For an opposite sex couple even one where the beneficiary was out of status a green card was always available. So when I mentioned compassion it was in reference to the difficult circumstances same-sex couples faced staying together without the marriage based green card option being available.

Michael

I was just pointing out that opposite sex couples often come on BE that were out of status for a long time and I'm not sure if all of them were treated that well. However I do agree that for same sex couples, there wasn't an option other than to leave or to become out of status so maybe they are more forgiving since opposite sex couples had a choice to do everything legally but instead chose to ignore immigration law.