Welcome to Our "VISA HAPPENINGS"
Newsletter!
In bullet point format, this Newsletter will keep single gentlemen
who are interested in a foreign fiancée
or bride advised of current developments in U.S. visas and
immigration. The format will be concise and mostly bullet point,
but may contain some service ads. It will be published periodically
from time-to-time as developments warrant,
but without any special deadline for publication.
(We know that not only sincere single gentlemen but also our legal
and other competitors will subscribe to this newsletter,
but we find that flattering and harmless, and are nonetheless
committed to the highest quality service and superior knowledge,
experience and ability over our attorney and non-attorney
competitors.)
Good Luck and All the Best in Your Visa Travels!
GARY BALA
USA IMMIGRATION ATTORNEY
"Visa Approved"
(C) Copyright, 2007. All Rights Reserved.
Tel: 610-446-VISA (8472)
Web: www.GaryBala.com
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SERVICE ADVERTISEMENTS SECTION
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I LOVE LATINS - "CARE AND COMMITMENT" THE LEADER IN ROMANCE TOURS
IN BARRANQUILLA, COLOMBIA:
WHY?
**The
most sustained LOYALTY to our Service
by USA Gentlemen & Barranquilla Ladies Attending our Tours
**The most demonstrated CARE AND COMMITMENT
to People's FEELINGS AND FUTURES, not
just their Business
WEB:
http://www.ilovelatins.com/
CALL TEL: 281-481-0036 and talk to the owners, Sam and Consuelo
Smith
"Hundreds of Beautiful and Sincere Women are Waiting to Meet You!"
(C) COPYRIGHT, 2007. All Rights Reserved. I Love Latins.
TRIP REPORT reported by
Attorney, Gary Bala
I LOVE LATINS
ROMANCE TOUR IN BARRANQUILLA, COLOMBIA IN SEPTEMBER 2007
I LOVE LATINS COMPLETED ANOTHER SUCCESSFUL
ROMANCE TOUR IN BARRANQUILLA, COLOMBIA OVER COLOMBIA'S VALENTINE'S
DAY WEEKEND, SEPTEMBER 2007
Over 20 wonderfully-fortunate
and well-treated single gentlemen from across the USA met with
hundreds of beautiful and sincere women over 3 amazing social events
with food, music, fun, dance, and romantic conversation. The evening
socials were held at the elegant and conveniently located Royal
Hotel. A relaxing Sunday pool party meanwhile was held at a nearby
private resort house.
At least three (3) new couples became engaged to marry or very
serious in the days following the events.
For the first time ever at an "I Love Latins" tour, or any company's
tour, USA Immigration Attorney Gary Bala offered a
BONUS EVENT on Monday evening - a free dinner at a local
Barranquilla restaurant with the engaged or serious couples to
answer any visa questions in a relaxed and friendly atmosphere.
In addition to the free visa dinner, all of the couples, as well as
the other USA gentlemen and also many Barranquilla ladies, made a
point of complementing and appreciating
this unique value-added service to the I Love Latins tour:
A live Immigration Attorney was available and
ready to answer their visa and immigration issues, especially since
everyone knows that successfully navigating the visa process will be
a REQUIRED PART of any couple's final union in the USA.
Once again, I Love Latins takes LEADERSHIP in the romance
tour experience for USA gentlemen in Barranquilla, with examples
such as the BONUS EVENT Free
visa dinner hosted by a live professionally-licensed USA Immigration
Attorney, which only I Love Latins has offered or will ever offer.
QUICK COMPARISON CHART
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I LOVE
LATINS
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OTHER COMPANIES
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1. Demonstrated care and commitment to loyal gentlemen
and lady clients:
With over 40+ tours completed over almost 8
years, I Love Latins has shown its commitment to the romance
tour concept, even to its biggest doubters, and has been
rewarded by a LOYAL group of gentlemen and especially lady
clients. Their clients continuously tell I Love Latins that
they feel and believe that Owners Sam & Consuelo truly care
about them and their feelings and futures, and have loyally
"stuck" with them over time. Examples of the "care and
commitment" to the ladies and men: food and prizes given at
the events, the free BONUS EVENT visa dinner for engaged
couples, and the constant individual and customized
follow-up by Sam and Consuelo personally and their
translators, guides and other staff on the ground in
Barranquilla.
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1. Other companies are only committed to
the typical company model: a cold and calculating business
entity maximizing profits and cutting costs at every angle
at your expense. These companies may have terrific marketing
techniques with slick photos of dozens, even hundreds, of
ladies at their tours in the past, but many of the ladies
(and gentlemen for that matter) do not stay loyal or return
to a future tour because feel that the company's tour event
was like a "cattle-call", cold and impersonal, and set up
for money-making volume rather than personal custom service.
Further, many ladies don't even bother to stay around to the
end of the tour evening, staying just long enough to eat
some finger-food offered by the company as a lure just to
keep the ladies at bay, as if they are mice lured by cheese.
The truly "extremely attractive" and desirable single women
do not have a very long "shelf-life" of singlehood before
they are "snatched away" for marriage, and thus what remains
at the tours are less attractive and desirable women,
nothing like the expectations created by the company's slick
marketing photos of scantily-clad women.
Further, in the past two or three years, the unseemly fact
is that less and less women are showing up for the tours of
these companies, and more of them are from
socio-economically deprived parts of town, meaning more poor
women and more black (African-Latin) women. Some women have
had trouble receiving mailed invitations to the tours, and
others have had no Internet access to even pick up their
E-mail invitations. Naturally, there is no screening
whatever done of the ladies invited to the tour by the
companies. In sum, less and less unscreened women, and less
and less desirable unscreened women are available at these
tours, and certainly falling far short of the expectations
generated by the photos, DVDs and other marketing of these
companies. Marketing and sales techniques by these companies
thus prevails over real delivery and product.
Many ladies (and even gentlemen in the men's room at the
tour) cannot resist the temptation to "count up the
company's money revenue" by multiplying the number of men
attending the tour times the ticket price paid to the
company. Moreover, many USA men who might be unemployed or
underemployed back home wonder if they cannot themselves,
for the apparent massive revenue generated at the tour, "put
on a better show" by doing it themselves, as proven by the
long list of self-started agencies and tours spawned in this
tour business in the past few years.
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2. Committed to the local community in one location:
Barranquilla.
I Love Latins has done over 40+ completed tours over almost
8 years at one location: the tropical and tranquil Caribbean
city of Barranquilla. They have made friends with the local
community, and people and businesses and organizations. Sam
and Consuelo know people by their first name, and many are
ecstatic to see them again at the next tour event. I Love
Latins has helped generate revenue for local taxis, hotels,
and restaurants and approved local translators and reputable
guides, all without asking for anything in return. I Love
Latins translators and guides on the ground constantly help
and guide the gentlemen and ladies, even well after the tour
events have concluded. Recently, I Love Latins have
suggested a local orphanage charity for the men to
contribute to, if they wish, without pressure, duress or
embarrassment.
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2. Other companies, set up in typical
profit-maximizing and cost-cutting style, "blow in and blow
out" of selected Latin American cities, with little regard
for the wants, needs or opinions of the local businesses and
people, the typical "Ugly American" pit-bull. In fact, these
companies arrogantly demand and require, as a condition of
doing any business, steep personal discounts and hefty
business commissions and massive one-sided concessions from
any local hotels, restaurants, taxi drivers, airline travel
agents, visa handlers, translators, and baggage men and bell
hops and hotel maids and shoeshine boys.
Further, they have no employees on the ground in these
cities, and offer no local agency office, or other client
support or follow-up on the ground. In short, once they
receive the client's money and issue a ticket to the tour,
other than some verbal advice, the client is left on his own
after the tour and certainly when he checks out of hotel
with his credit card, having paid his own airfare and spent
time out on vacation to attend.
The topic of local charity: These profit-making companies,
despite hefty revenues of thousands of dollars from
escorting dozens of gentlemen to a city, offer a max. of
something like $50 to $100 to a local charity while
pressuring and embarrassing the gentlemen into making
hundreds of dollars of contributions by having innocent
children at the tour asking for money-jars to be filled.
Meanwhile, rather than offering what most companies do,
namely a generous "company-matching contribution" of the
total of all money offered by the gentlemen, the company
caps its exposure to $50 to $100, and wins a shower of
massive positive local publicity for itself by claiming to
have raised hundreds of dollars for local charity,
but actually all based on the generosity of the paid
clients, not the company.
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3. Persistent
"stick-to-it" attitude and results, all focused on people's
feelings and futures, not just their business:
I Love Latins proves the old adage: Slow and Steady Wins
the Race. While critics and others thought that I Love
Latins could not last the years, I Love Latins successfully
completed 40+ tours over almost 8 years with dozens of
marriages and testimonials and photos and business
referrals. Other companies have come and gone in the time I
Love Latins has delivered for its customers and clients.
This starts with I Love Latins remembering people's first
names, unlike other companies. And it continues on with
follow-up care with individual men and ladies. Many of the
ladies go out of their way to tell I Love Latins why they
feel truly cared about with them as opposed to other
companies who show their "care" by an extra slice of
discounted cake.
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3. In the old Biblical tale, it was the
small and diminutive David and not the giant and dominating
Goliath who won the day in the end. The Goliath companies in
this business - despite constantly claiming "bragging
rights" about innovating and originating the "business" and
continuously raising the standards of the "business", i.e.
the so-called "King of the Hill" claim - must face the cold
brutal fact that the numbers of single men using their
service has declined and continues to decline, and the same
is true about the declining number and quality of single
women attending their tours. And they are faced with
unending and new competitors and detractors from the
Internet and elsewhere, thus have become the subject of many
small bloody nicks and cuts which cumulatively over time
will take its toll on any giant.
Unfortunately, the romance tour "business" of single guys
going to Latin America is very very small compared to other
businesses. In fact, it is not a "business" or industry at
all in the standard sense. All the companies started out as
a small operation with one or two people in a garage with an
idea. Over time, a few owners actually found a way to make
some money at this "business", and even pretty good money
for some time. Those companies and others might still even
be "holding their own" business-wise but competition and
pressure from the Internet and elsewhere has intensified,
and the cold fact remains that they are profit and cost
driven, not people-oriented.
(This "business" is one of the very few with ZERO COSTS for
the fodder or dough for the business - namely the pictures,
availability and names and addresses of the single Latin
women which has always up to now been massive, plentiful and
free and which probably accounts for why anyone has been
able to make any money at this "business" at all.)
These companies further fail to understand that the
long-term quality of customer service with clients and
fellow businesses, including simple business
generosity and kindness, in the end outweighs
the slickness of their photos or products or the size and
freshness of their database for their ultimate business
success. And they fail to further understand that with each
new self-serving claim of a "blow-out" tour of gorgeous
women, and each new "genius" idea of marketing, and each new
photo of a scantily-clad woman, the expectations of their
men to meet a model quality woman at the tour and through
the company is raised ever higher - but is only sure to be
inevitably dashed and squashed.
Can a company provide customer satisfaction when they can
barely provide you customized individual service at a
fully-paid tour event? In fact, some companies require
extremely pricey "executive plan memberships" costing
thousands of dollars for the company managers and staff to
even remember your first name. In short, these companies are
set up for quarterly and minute-by-minute profit, not
customer and client satisfaction.
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4. Customized results over time rather than flashy
over-hyped marketing and sales gimmicks aimed at simply
generating more profits and dollars:
I Love Latins successfully completed 40+
tours over almost 8 years with dozens of marriages and
testimonials, allowing the opportunity for hundreds of men
to meet hundreds of beautiful and sincere women from
Barranquilla through tours and the Internet and personal
contact. Through it all, I Love Latins remained true to its
core beliefs: the customer first.
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4. Other companies pay their married
clients to give them paid written testimonials and wedding
photo about the greatness of their service and products, yet
refuse to pay anything (or even say "Thank You"), because of
"cost management", for a kind word that a single client may
make on a live tour caught on video or DVD. Their "proof" of
successful tours as "leaders" of the industry is based on
self-serving and self-aggrandizing tour summaries, photos
and "paid" testimonials "documenting" their tours. But they
fail to present real proof such as PAID reports with photos
from a duly-accredited INDEPENDENT auditor or accountant
(because that would cost too much).
Their marketing relies on extremely slick and eye-catching
marketing of scantily-clad and very shapely women who are
presented as easily available at the tour to do for a man as
he wishes. Men being the visual creatures that they are are
"hooked" into their Ferrari-photo-style sales technique,
while the concept of romance for marriage sadly takes a back
seat in the car. This type of repeated sales technique
probably contributed to the passage of the IMBRA law to
protect against imbalance of power and potential abuse of
men against foreign women. Of course, the companies will
insist on all their untold numbers of successful marriages
yet have no independent verification of the total number of
their claimed marriages other then conjecture, and continue
to publicize photos of scantily-clad women to propel their
business.
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1. New Filing Fees effective July 2007
USCIS (Immigration Service) recently raised their U.S.
government filing fees for the K-1 Fiancée Visa and K-3 Spousal Visa
petition (I-129F) to $455.00.
The Resident Visa petition for spouse (I-130) filing fee is now
raised to $355.00.
2. "Do I need to see her more than once for the Visa Process?"
SHORT ANSWER: No, it is not legally required, but it is recommended
nonetheless.
Some people ask this question another way, namely: Will the
immigration or visa process "slow down" in a case where the couple
only met once, briefly and recently, as compared with a case where
the couple saw each other numerous times over a length of time? As
with most legal answers, the answer is neither "black or white" but
nuanced and not uniform. The case could potentially slow down, but
not necessarily or automatically. I have successfully handled many
K-1 visa cases where the gentleman called me to start the process
after he recently returned from Latin America to see her for the
first time. Immigration Service is somewhat more lenient in this
regard than the Embassy. However, the Embassy's Consular Officer
makes the final decision to issue the visa after Interview. And
generally the Consulates, including Bogota, examine a totality of
factors and have gotten more strict, such as repeat visits by the
gentleman for shared face-time, efficient communication between the
couple and yes even age differences and differences in
socio-economic and religious background.
The key, in regards to petition filing with USCIS, is sufficient
documentation and proof that the couple have a sincere and genuine
"intention to marry", and intend to use the 90-day visa to
"finalize" their decision to marry, and that the couple know each
other well enough. The regulation only requires that the couple meet
each other in person at least one time in the past 24 months (with
very limited exceptions). But that is bare minimum. I encourage
couples to see each other more than once, if time and money make
possible, for the sake of the relationship as well as for a
potentially smoother visa processing. Before petition filing in the
US, I generally encourage the gentleman to show, among other things,
at least a small set of communication documents such as E-mails,
love letters and phone bills at least for several weeks after his
visit to see her for the first time.
The purpose is to lessen any potential for doubt in the mind of the
USCIS adjudicator concerning the couple's on-going sincerity of
relationship. Keep in mind that the current K-1 Visa processing
takes months, so the couple will continue to generate documentation
about their communications and relationship before the Embassy
Interview. If the gentleman makes a second trip to see the fiancée,
the couple will be able to show additional photos and visitation
documents. While generally not required by the Embassy in most
cases, gentlemen are usually well-advised to make plans to attend
the visa interview with their fiancée.
3. "Can I expedite the Visa Process and get her here faster?"
SHORT ANSWER: No, not under normal routine circumstances, therefore
your patience and hers will be critical.
As for "expediting" the immigration process, under current
regulations, a petitioner must show literally a "life or death
emergency", or national security issue, or grave medical or family
or financial emergency to have their visa petition "expedited". In
the years I have done this, I have only been able to get a few
petitions "expedited", and that was due to a serious medical
condition.
It is far better in my opinion for couples to:
gather accurate information about estimated processing time,
have realistic expectations about speed, focus on making the process
go as smooth as possible to avoid unnecessary delays, and patiently
manage their separation time. Obvious examples are
things such as having the lady fiancée learn English during the
waiting time, and having the gentleman budget time and money to make
another trip to visit with her again while the visa petition is
processing.
4. Immigration Consultants & Assistants vs. Licensed USA
Immigration Attorneys: A PRIMER
SHORT ANSWER: ONLY licensed USA immigration attorneys can properly
represent you and yours in the legal process.
Under current Immigration Regulations, ONLY a
licensed USA Immigration Attorney, Law Student, Non-Profit
Organization, and Registered Representative may offer you legal
representation, and legal advice and counsel in the immigration
process. See
8 CFR 292.1 et seq. All others are prohibited from such
services such as immigration consultants and assistants or "notarios".
Many immigration consultants or assistants got into the business
only because they did their spouse's or relative's visa on their
own,
and decided to "open up shop" in this line of work to "help others."
Many pay hefty sales commissions to companies
and other referral sources as a means of having work channeled to
them.
In limiting the immigration consultant's duties, the immigration
regulations say the following:
"A visa [or
immigration] consultant or any other person who is not a licensed
attorney or an authorized representative pursuant to 8 C.F.R. 292
may only assist a person in in completing preprinted forms in
exchange for nominal remuneration, if any, and must not hold himself
or herself out as qualified in the area of immigration and
naturalization law and procedures...When [the consultant] fee is
other than "nominal", [the consultant] has engaged in the
unauthorized practice of law." INA Sec. 292, 8 U.S.C. 1362
Thus, if the immigration consultant or
assistant charges an amount more than "nominal" to prepare forms,
say more than $50.00 USD, he or she is engaged in the unauthorized
practice of law and unlawful conduct under current immigration
regulation.
In the interest of protecting the public, many states have enacted
anti-fraud statutes to protect the consumer from fraud by
non-attorney immigration consultants and assistants. Some states, in
fact, ask that the immigration consultant be registered and
licensed, and others require that the services of an immigration
consultant be put into written contract form and the consumer be
allowed a waiting time to change his or her mind before any service
is rendered.
Before hiring an immigration consultant or assistant, ask to see his
or her credentials, state registration and license, and written
contract for service.
Licensed attorneys on the other hand are regulated by the state and
national bar associations, and must take mandatory legal education
courses to stay current. They must renew annual licenses and pay
renewal fees, and are bound by strict attorney ethical rules for
your safety.
Our office is a member of the
AMERICAN IMMIGRATION LAWYERS ASSOCIATION (AILA), the premier
such immigration attorney group in the USA and the world, and we
have 25+ years of legal experience, and our office is rated "AV" by
Martindale-Hubbell Legal Directory:
"AV® Peer Review Rating — An AV rating is a significant
accomplishment -
a testament to the fact that a lawyer's peers rank him or her at the
highest level
of professional excellence. A lawyer must be admitted to the bar for
10 years
or more to receive an AV rating. "
COPYRIGHT,
2007. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
GARY BALA, USA IMMIGRATION ATTORNEY
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Endorsed by I Love Latins and Barranquilla Beauties.
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Sam and Consuelo Smith
11517 Sabo Road
Houston, Texas 77089 USA
281-481-0036
Phone
832-385-4161 USA Cell phone
281-464-3739 Fax
e-mail us 24/7
Sam@ilovelatins.com
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