Canadianinlove said:
I can't imagine going through this twice.
Yeah, it certainly adds a whole new dimension to it. Our first application was a Conjugal Partner application (part of that long story) in September of 2013. In May of 2014 we got a request for more documents, which we provided. We then got a second message saying we needed to pay the RPRF. We were excited because everyone told us "They won't ask for the RPRF unless they are planning to grant your application." We paid the fee, waited a couple weeks and then got a rejection. We were devastated and it took until April of this year before our circumstances changed so we could apply again as a married couple.
We think someone looked at our first application and said "Yep, approved, pay the fee" and then after we paid the fee it landed on someone else's desk who looked at it and decided "Nope, denied." We'll always wonder if we had paid the RPRF up front and not made them come back to us if we could have been together for over a year already.
Needless to say, we're super paranoid this time -- AOR, SA, DM...we see all of those as little steps. Until we have that COPR in hand and successfully get my wife landed, we're taking nothing in this process for granted, no matter how many times people tell us spousal applications from the US have a very high approval rate.
It's been a long three years since we became a couple and we're just hoping we're finally getting close to the end.