Lori

Some of the horror stories i've read have me concered about the chance
my husband will be denied entry at the POE even with a consular-issued
immigrant visa, and the immigrant visa is no guarantee he will be
allowed to immigrate, right? under what circumstances are immigrating
(I-514) people often denied entry at the POE? or can i pretty much
stop worrying that the officer will.. decide to send him back for not
liking my husband's look or something? I know there are two sides to
every story, but many posters make it sound they are denied entry due
to no fault of their own, and i ... stand to lose so much if my
husband and i cannot be together now. i'm am afraid of Murphy's
Law... long history of it for me. Innocence is no protection when
accidents and oversights occur. but is it so bad as some make it
sound? that officers send people away (even with an immigrant visa)
without a good reason? i want to believe it isn't so... i want to
sleep again.

i have not even seen him since January... the thought of spending
more months or years alone is unbearable. it has already been almost
4 years we've been living apart due to circumstance and immigration.
i cant stand it anymore. those years can never be reclaimed, and i
dont want to lose more time. one interview could decide our fate.
forgive my Thomas complex; I probably won't rest until i can see his
hands and feet and touch them again.

fretting rediculously,
Lori

Ingo Pakleppa

On Tue, 22 Apr 2003 20:16:45 -0700, Lori wrote:

    > Some of the horror stories i've read have me concered about the chance
    > my husband will be denied entry at the POE even with a consular-issued
    > immigrant visa, and the immigrant visa is no guarantee he will be
    > allowed to immigrate, right? under what circumstances are immigrating
    > (I-514) people often denied entry at the POE? or can i pretty much stop
    > worrying that the officer will.. decide to send him back for not liking
    > my husband's look or something?

It is theoretically possible, but almost never happens. In fact, this is
the very purpose of having visas in the first place: all the checking
takes place before the applicant leaves on the trip.

Before visas were invented, people would just get on board a ship in
Southhampton, Bremerhaven or Cherbourg and then travel to New York. They
would then end up at Ellis Island, where all the processing took place.
They wouldn't find out until they got there whether they spent their life
savings for nothing because they were denied admission for things like
tuberculosis.

Today, the visa basically tells the immigration officer "we already
checked out this guy, and he is OK". So the immigration officer just
checks that the person is the same for whom the visa was issued, that the
visa wasn't forged, etc.

There are a few reasons why people still get denied admission even with a
visa, but they are few and far between:

- the visa was forged or issued to somebody else. That, of course, is
immigration fraud.

- they do verify that the purpose of the visa agrees with why the person
seeks admission. For instance, if this is a marriage-based immigrant visa,
they might verify that the marriage still exists. Usually, though, this is
an issue only with non-immigrant visas.

- if there is a very obvious thing that makes him inadmissible, he would
be denied admission. For instance, if he was coughing blood, he'd be
inadmissible for tuberculosis. Not a very realistic thing to happen. They
just do some very cursory checking.

Bottom line, there would have to be a very good reason before they deny
admission.

    > I know there are two sides to
    > every story, but many posters make it sound they are denied entry due to
    > no fault of their own, and i ... stand to lose so much if my husband and
    > i cannot be together now. i'm am afraid of Murphy's Law... long history
    > of it for me. Innocence is no protection when accidents and oversights
    > occur. but is it so bad as some make it sound? that officers send
    > people away (even with an immigrant visa) without a good reason? i want
    > to believe it isn't so... i want to sleep again.

Go back to sleep. There is nothing to worry about. Keep in mind that this
newsgroup will have a slant towards horror stories. Every day, dozens of
planeloads of people arrive in the US. I hear that there are as many as
500 flights over the Atlantic Ocean alone at any given time, although it
could be less nowadays. And there probably is a similar number over the
Pacific and coming in from South America. At 300 people per planeload,
that's easily 50,000 people entering the US every day (and that's not even
counting those coming in from Tijuana, Detroit, Ciudad Juarez, Niagara
Falls, Vancouver, etc.)

On this newsgroup, you won't hear from the thousands or millions who had
no problem - but of those people who did have a problem, many will post
here.

I myself entered and left the US probably about fifty or a hundred times
over the years (I didn't actually keep count, but recently got my million
miler status from one airline!) on various types of visa, and now with a
Green Card. I never posted anything about those occasions that went
smoothly, but I keep mentioning the one occasion when I had a problem (and
that was a thing I cannot blame INS for; they actually handled this very
well).

Lori

Dearest Ingo, thank you so very much for your time. I do feel better
after reading your responses, and your credibility for me is supported
by your sensitivity to the fear and anxiety that people sometimes feel
and that i've voiced here. You are, whatever your reasons, helpful
and caring. Thank you for that and for not sacrificing people's
dignity in your responses. Even business-minded folk take advantage
of people in their ignorance to bolster their own image. I've never
seen you do that. Even silly, worried posters like me get attention
and a reasonable suggestion!

There are others here who are also caring and helpful, i'm grateful
for them too.

so, i'm taking your advice and going to sleep now. ... now that i
can.

Grateful,
Lori