Filipina Immigration Links - Fiancée and Marriage
I hope these links below will be helpful if you are considering a
trip overseas to meet your Filipina penpal.  If I start to get
significant numbers of pen pals from other countries besides
the Philippines, I will add additional links for those countries.  I
wish this much information was available on the web when I got
married six years ago.

United States Embassy in the Philippines- If there is even a
slim chance you will get married to your Filipina penpal during
your trip to the Philippines, you need to check out the American
Citizen Services section of this website before you leave. Find
the marriage information so you can read about a certificate of
legal capacity to contract marriage, general church weddings,
and civil weddings. In order to marry your Filipina bride, you will
need to know what things to bring on your trip, and what you
need from the embassy after you arrive. Do not worry, with a
little preparation and patience it will work out.
you use will depend on whether you get married in the Philippines or the USA.  No matter which visa petition you do file,
you will have to actually see your Filipina penpal in person. Your petition will eventually end up at the National Visa
Center - I do not know how long it will stay at this location because it has been a long time since I petitioned Melinda.  If
the National Visa Center gives the ok, and your wife/fiancée is from the Philippines, your petition will be forwarded to the
Manila Embassy.  Below are some Philippine government website links.
Should you pay a lawyer to take care of your immigration paperwork?  You need to ask yourself the following questions
before making that decision. Are you someone with limited financial resources?  Are you a determined person?  Can you
advocate for yourself effectively?  Can you follow directions carefully? Since I answered yes to all of these questions, I
chose to complete the process without an attorney.  I do not believe an attorney would have resulted in my wife coming to
the United States any earlier.  I actually believe I did more for myself than an attorney would have done. Having said this,
you have to make your own decision on the best way to handle this process. Everyone is different, and some people will
need guidance and help from an attorney to make sure things are done right.  Like every profession in life, I am sure there
are many good immigration attorneys and some bad ones as well.  Sometimes the best attorneys take a little time to find.  
If I make contact with a good immigration attorney that I like I may post their information on this web page.  

I encourage you to contact your congressman's office if you run in to a problem during the petition process.  Do not expect
this to result in any miracles, but you may get some valuable information and advice.  You should check out the United
States House of Representatives   website if you need to contact your Congressman.  This did pay off for me when I
petitioned Melinda.  After a year of waiting, she finally received her interview date at the Manila embassy.  As luck would
have it, Melinda ran into a problem with her paperwork at the last second. Going to the interview with missing paperwork
was a bad idea.  With some congressional support, I was able to get Melinda's interview pushed back two weeks.  She had
everything ready in time for her rescheduled interview.

One important thing before I forget.  When Melinda got her visa and plane ticket to come here I thought we had won the
battle.  I had no idea that when I was on my way to LAX to meet my wife, she was sitting in the Manila airport in tears.  All of
Melinda's luggage was on the plane, her family had left the airport to go home, and they would not let my wife on her
plane.  The Philippine government red tape machine had one last joke to play on us.  Evidently, if you work for any
government agency in the Philippines you have to get some kind of special clearance from your employer to leave the
country.  My wife and I did not know this.  My wife wrote down that she was a school teacher on some stupid form at the
airport, which triggered the special clearance requirement.  Minutes before Melinda's plane taxied down the runway
without her, and after an hour of crying and begging, some supervisor did something nice.  He had Melinda change her
occupation on the form and let her leave.  Something to keep in mind if your pen pal works for the Philippine government.

Bureau of Consular Affairs- This website contains a lot of
general information.  Be sure to check out the sections about
visas for foreigners coming to the USA.  

If you file a petition for your wife/fiancée it will first go through the
United States Citizenship and Immigration Services - The
only advise I can give you is to follow all the directions on your
petition exactly. The littlest mistake or omission will cost you big
time. You need to seriously consider which visa petition you will
file. I am not an attorney and this is no legal advice, but please
review this U.S. State Department - for information on IR1, K-3
and K-1 visas. The trend I see today is that many people
marrying Filipina penpals are staying clear of the immigrant IR1
visa because it just takes so long.  Please consider the K-3 and
K-1 visas if you want to marry a Filipina.

The K-1 and K-3 visas are distinctively different, so which one