It is a lot of reading, a lot of forms, and nerve-wracking interviews so I understand where you're coming from. But now she has a green card and it's a huge weight off our chests, great to be able to live a normal life. No one is coming for legal permanent residents, especially by marriage.

Almost everyone we interacted with along the way (except for the border control at PHL) was pretty friendly and just doing their job. No one seemed to have an axe to grind against immigrants.

The best resource I found was VisaJourney which has guides, timelines, useful forums, crowd-sourced processing times, etc.

I'm sure you'll find other users there from your partner's country so you can get a feel for what the process is like from a relevant perspective.

Here is the process/timeline for a fiancee visa: http://www.visajourney.com/content/k1flow

Happy to help if you have any questions

For example, they scheduled her for an interview on a date that was impossible for her to make (iirc, that was her first day of a new job). She went to the INS offices to ask to have it rescheduled, and the person at the desk just gave her a flat "no, we do not reschedule interviews". My wife asked to speak to a manager - something that's eminently reasonable, if maybe slightly annoying, at any business - at which point the INS employee bushed a button that summoned to burly guards to physically remove her from the premises, stating that she was a threat to the office's security.

Your desire not to be a burden is laudable, but there's a more-important principle at stake here. Government officials should always make an effort to accommodate reasonable requests, or if that's not possible, to explain why — and moreover, those officials, as representatives of this country and its citizens (including me), should damned well be at least that welcoming and courteous to a visitor or new resident such as the GP's wife. Assuming that the GP was accurately telling the whole story, every American should be thoroughly embarrassed that the GP's wife was treated so abysmally, and the officials responsible should be disciplined.

That's not what I said. I don't try not to be a burden, I just don't expect consular officials to give a shit about my schedule, and set my priorities based on that. Sure they should be welcoming and all, but it is what it is.

Attempting to reschedule an immigration interview doesn't strike me as unreasonable, nor does escalating to a supervisor if you don't like the answer you got. The employee calling security, on the other hand strikes me as abusive. I think that employee should be fired and probably not given a position of authority where they can mistreat others that way again in the future.

Given how long everything takes when dealing with immigration, it's not exactly surprising that they aren't able to accommodate people's schedules.

> Given how long everything takes when dealing with immigration, it's not exactly surprising that they aren't able to accommodate people's schedules.

If things take a long time, it shouldn't make much difference to them whether they do an interview this week or next. It's surprising that everything takes a long time though, from a certain point of view anyway.

The visa process is relative straightforward. Will the person who is given the visa come back to the country of origin? This is determined by money more often than not, and it's the harsh reality of the situation.

The US has many natural wonders, and it has a lot of quite good people. But the political system is so out of whack that it makes me want to stay away for a very long time.

Furthermore, having to deal with US taxes while living and working abroad is really a hassle. True, one doesn't typically owe any US tax money if paying a higher rate elsewhere, but filing is still required. And filing can be messy if your life is not the standard simple permanent employment situation.

If it's not too personal / I'm curious, where do you live?