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Q: How do I get a visa for my Chinese gf to come to US?
I intentionally searched Chinese women on a singles site (I can't meet the expectations of American women, nothing is good enough for them, so it seems) and hit it off with a beautiful 47 yr old divorced woman (I'm 55). We started expressing deep feelings for each other after only a couple of weeks of emailing back and forth (very quickly I know). I told her that if we still have these feelings after a few months that I think we should live together in separate bedrooms in my home for about 6 months to be sure we are in love before we talk about marriage. I don't even where to start. What kind of visa should I be researching? Where can I find the info that I need? About how much will it cost and about how long will it take to get her a visa? Any info would be appreciated, opinions welcome. Thanks in advance.
11 years 23 weeks ago in Relationships - China
Whats with the separate bedrooms? If you want to meet her, then go to China, take a vacation. If she asks you to buy anything other than meals or give her money , no matter what,,,RUN.
You won't get a visa for her to visit you, if it was easy I'd have 20 of them visit me.
billme1:
I am looking for a wife to spend the rest of my life with, and it is much easier to form objectionable opinions of someone that you are not sleeping with. Before I ask her to give up everything she knows to move to a strange country to be my wife, I want to be sure we are in love with each other and that requires a certain amount of time spent with each other.
TedDBayer:
I wouldn't call someone I never actually met my girl friend and I would be worried about getting married too quickly. Maybe thats a problem I have, but I'm sceptical.
1) It is much easier for you to visit her, then the other way around. For a Chinese person to get a visa to the US is very difficult and has a high chance of being denied.
2) If you get to the point where you want to marry her and have her move to the US, you will need to prove that you can finacially support her.
3) China is not a puritan country. If a woman has feelings for you (especially if she has been previously married), they won't have any hesitation sleeping with you if they have strong feelings for you.
(I am being nice here guys, so keep the snide comments to a minimum.) ;)
GuilinRaf:
I have heard it said that if you have been married for more than two years or if you have a child or if the age difference is not that much, it is much easier.
Would you by any chance know if this is true or not?
Xpat.John:
If you are married for more than 2 years, it is much easier to get a visa. I don't think that having a kid makes it any easier though. And sometimes it can cause problems.
One time I was at the Consulate in Guangzhou getting my boys their passports and the lady ahead of me was there to get a visa for her son and herself so they could go and be with the husband/father in the US. But when the officer saw the baby, they ordered a DNA test to prove the child belonged to the father. By the way the woman was crying and carrying on, I don't think the DNA test would have supported her case much.
Age difference might be a determining factor if the couple is married for less than 2 years, or if it is for a fiance visa, but it doesn't matter too much as long as the relationship looks legit. I have seen guys get visas for girls with a 25+ year age difference. (For questionable relationships, the couple may be subject to surprise visits from the immigration folks to see if they are actually living as a real couple.)
The main things they worry about is financial support. If they think the woman will be a draw on the government, the visa will almost certainly be denied.
xpat.john, thanks for the realistic comments and they are very on the mark, IMHO.
She needs money in her acct. for starters without that you can't. Also if there is a business like travelling job she could always get a business visa.
If I were you I'd come to China, leaving aside the difficulties of the visa, there are the financial implications.
For an American to come to China is not so financially troublesome so long as you have a job and an average level income. For a Chinese person to be able to afford to go to the USA she would have to either be relatively rich or use up a substantial amount of her savings as the average standard of living in China is considerably lower.
Of course you would offer to pay for her, but it would still require her to have access to a (for her) considerable sum of money, think of it from her point of view, what if when she arrives you turn out to be a sociopathic monster? She would need the cash to buy a ticket home and stay in a hotel at the very least. That would be (again for her) a considerable amount of money.
GuilinRaf:
I just want to add to what Hugh said above re: her possibly turning into a monster::
In addition to what was said above, if she does indeed turn into a monster YOU could be in a world of legal trouble! In some Jurisdictions, Domestic Abuse laws are very one sided toward women, which means that you could find yourself locked out of your own house, living in the street or having to crash in a friends sofa if she puts a restraining order against you. For better or for worse, the Domestic Violence laws tend to be stacked in favor of women, and the courts tend to be particularly protective of immigrant/minority women in these cases (I was a criminal prosecutor before coming to China). Sleeping in different bedrooms? No judge will buy the notion of the two of you sleeping in two different bedrooms.
By coming to China, you get to see her in her own environment (the good and the not so good) you see how she deals with others ( pay close attention how she deals with beggars. Does she give? Does she ignore them? Does she scold and yell at them?). If she does indeed turn out to be a monster, you can just hop on a plane and come back home or go to another city or province without any major loss except time.
Xpat.John:
And just to add to GuilinRaf's and Hugh's answer, when foreign women come to the US, they are handed a pamphlet that clearly states "If you are subject to spousal abuse, you will get an automatic green card." This keeps the green card from being used as a tool for the husband to control the women. Unfortunately, I have seen that law used to punish an innocent guy just so the woman could get a green card and a good portion of what the guy owned after just a few weeks of marriage.
You need to come to China.
And... You'd better be careful. Chinese absolutely love to scam foreigners. You buy her a ticket, some hot meals, a place to stay, some expensive electrics, some nice gifts for her family because she talks endlessly about her family being so poor, etc. etc. etc.. Next thing you find out, your beautiful wife has a dick.
American women might be a lot harder to catch, but you're FAR FAR Less likely to get scammed / robbed / tricked / cheated out of a lot of time and money..
Even if she isn't trying to scam you, you'd better be prepared having to send her family (especially her parents) some significant amounts of money eventually anyway, either directly or indirectly. That's just Chinese style. When they marry a foreigners, all their family and friends "benefit" from it. In fact, there's even an old Chinese proverb about it. "When one finds the way, even their chickens and dogs ascend to Heaven".
So I just hope you know what you're getting yourself into and I hope you are careful. A lot of people get scammed over this kind of thing and some Chinese think that if they scam you, it gives them "face" because it shows how much smarter they are than you.
Anyway, from somebody who has been living in China for 6 months. It's really not bad here. Things are a lot cheaper, but also a lot more dangerous as well. Lead paint and asbestos is still used everywhere, nobody obeys traffic laws, oil that has been recycled thousands of times and pulled from the sewer or human waste is used to cook your food, no trucks have any kind of filters on their exhaust and spew endless amounts of black smoke everywhere that make it hard to breathe, the water from the faucet isn't drinkable, etc. etc.)..
But if you can overcome all that, and you come to China to stay with your Chinese lady anyway, you can be sure that you're truly in love.. So look on the bright side, you don't need to lock yourselves in separate rooms for 6 months. Come stay a week in China and if you find yourself resisting the urge to book the first plane ticket out of here, then you're in love.
Hugh.G.Rection:
Strange, I've been married to a Chinese woman for 8 years and I've never given one kuai to her family, nor have I ever been asked to. I paid for the wedding and even that returned a small profit (which I gave to them). In fact her father has just loaned us a significant amount of money to start up a small business for ourselves.
maggiegirly:
It all depends on the Individual,Not all Chinese families are like that.
what's more,not all foreigners are rich,Some are pretty poor.almost No savings.
I am a Chinese woman and I married a western guy.My husband is not rich either.
He did not give any money to my parents and my parents never asked that too,
But husband buys gifts for them and take care of my parents when they come over here.
How strange, yesterday I could comment on answers and today there is no submit button for comments so I will have to do it this way.
Thank you all for your help, it is much appreciated.
Sidicas, although I found her profile on a site and I initiated contact, and she is 47 instead of 32, there are still concerns over legitimacy. I have asked her if we could video chat and she said her English is not good enough, so I asked for her address to send her a program that they claim takes only 10 days to learn a language well enough to get by and she declined it saying that she already has a program and a friend teaching her English. I said I still want to video chat and she said her computer is broke. Maybe all true but a little suspicious. My main suspicion comes from when I asked about her family. She said she has a grown son, her parents are dead, and she has two older sisters. Hmm, two sisters? That itself is a red flag.
I done a little research on Chinese culture and tradition and discovered info about the one child rule and the high percentage of newborn girls that were "aborted" so it would be very unusual if she does in fact have two sisters and no brothers.
On the other hand, let's say that I did get someone to take care of my animals and business for 2 or even 3 weeks so that I could meet her, that is just not enough time to determine whether we love each other enough for a successful and meaningful marriage, it isn't even enough time to spend together before sleeping with each other in my way of thinking.
Now let's say that I am stupid enough to go to China, find that all she had told me was true, I jump into bed with her and the lovemaking is so intense that I convince myself that I am in love with her, we get married in China right away, will she automatically have the right to get on a plane and come home with me because we are married?
There are a lot of complicated issues here that I need to sort thru so I very much appreciate all of the knowledge and help I am getting here.
andyinshenyang:
There is certainly a lot to raise suspicion in her story, but having two sisters is highly possible for somebody of her age, particularly if she was raised in a village. My girlfriend's mother is about 47 and she has plenty of siblings - I lose track! It's the younger generation where the one child policy kicked in, although there are exceptions for rural couples who have a girl first and also non-Han couples.
TedDBayer:
If you marry, you need a visa for the wife. The visa application takes about 6 to 8 months to process and may be turned down. Then you have to reapply over and over, could take you 6 months to 3 years to get her home and then she may not like it.
When I met my wife she refused to talk to me over the phone for the first few weeks, she said her English wasn't good enough and she just wanted to communicate over email until she felt comfortable. The funny thing is that she was already in the US (granted for less than a month at that time) and attending USC to get her MBA. But when it came to talking to a non-Chinese she was very self-conscious.
Even once we started talking on the phone, it was still another couple weeks before she agreed to actually meet me. (We met by introduction from a friend who knew us both for a long time.)
Having multiple sisters at your woman's age is not uncommon. The killing of female children in China is pretty rare (After all, there are 800 million of them).
The most likely reason she doesn't want to video chat is because she looks nothing like the photos placed on the dating website (or the photos are very old).
I am not saying there aren't fakes out there, because there are. Lots of them (especially the Filipina's). It looks like you are approaching this with a touch of caution and that is good.
As someone who has ran a dating site in the past, the things to look out for is this: She says, "I love you" way too fast. She asks for money. She doesn't ask for money at first, but will suddenly have an emergency (parent/child/yak gets really sick) and she doesn't know what to do. She will say she doesn't want to take your money, but if you offer it you will be her prince and she will love you forever.
There are lots of tricks the sneaky ones use. But it all boils down to money. Never, ever, under any circumstances send money.
When you marry a woman from another country, even if she speaks perfect English, there will ALWAYS be huge cultural differences. It is best if you can spend even a little time in her country just to get an small taste of what her culture is like first hand.
Chinese women make great wives, but if you are expecting a docile little flower who will not talk back, you will be in for one heck of a shock. Chinese women are some of the most strong minded women I have ever met. They will not think twice (or even once) about having a screaming match if it is something they believe strongly in (savings, being the number 1 for most ladies).
Hope there are easier ways to get American guys who live in America.
Well, will you consider to retire in China?
If you got some money/ sell your business , you could consider just buy a single ticket to move to China. And then work on teaching English (full/part-time).
Even you find this woman is not suitable eventually, you will never worry about women by living in China anyway!
