bringing interpeter to interview

[toby]

Is it a negative sign to bring an interpreter to the interview? That is, does it send a signal to the interviewer that the couple must not be able to communicate well if an interpreter is necessary, and therefore the relationship may not be genuine?

On the other hand, if we don’t bring an interpreter, my wife might get nervous, might misunderstand a question, and give a poor answer.

What do you think?

 

[canadianwoman]

Can you speak Chinese? If so, having an interpreter won't be a problem, just as long as your wife makes clear that the two of you can communicate in her language (which I am assuming is Chinese).
Having an interpreter can be a problem - I've seen it in several appeal cases. If the VO believes the applicant and sponsor do not share a language, this is a grounds for a refusal.
On the other hand, giving poor responses because her English ability declines when nervous will not help. An interpreter is also a witness about any impropriety on the part of the VO.

 

[PMM]

Hi

Can you speak Chinese? If so, having an interpreter won't be a problem, just as long as your wife makes clear that the two of you can communicate in her language (which I am assuming is Chinese).
Having an interpreter can be a problem - I've seen it in several appeal cases. If the VO believes the applicant and sponsor do not share a language, this is a grounds for a refusal.
On the other hand, giving poor responses because her English ability declines when nervous will not help. An interpreter is also a witness about any impropriety on the part of the VO.

For the Interpreter in Hong Kong you can't pick your own. HK will give you a list, from which you must choice.

 

[candy4]

You cannot being your own interpreter. The VO will usually provide you with one, I think. And I don't see why it would impact your case negatively.

 

[canadianwoman]

You cannot being your own interpreter. The VO will usually provide you with one, I think. And I don't see why it would impact your case negatively.

It has a negative impact in cases where the Canadian spouse speaks English (or French), but not the native language of the applicant. If the applicant wants an interpreter, this is an admission that his or her English (or French) is not good enough to communicate. They are thus admitting that the husband and wife do not share a language, and can't communicate with each other.
If the visa officer thinks the husband and wife can't communicate with each other, the PR application will be refused.

My own experience with this: my husband speaks Igbo, English, and Chinese. I speak English and Chinese, and we communicate in English; in Chinese once in a while, especially when we don't want people to know what we are saying. His English is heavily accented - in fact it is almost pidgin English. I can understand him, but people who meet him for the first time have a hard time understanding him. We debated whether to have an Igbo interpreter for our appeal hearing, and decided not to. I am not sure that was the right decision.
The judge and Minister's Counsel had a very hard time understanding him, and the judge wrote in the decision that she didn't believe my husband because he did not answer many questions directly and often needed questions to be repeated many times. This is because of his poor command of English, not because he was lying (in my opinion), but that is not what the judge thought.
At one point my lawyer said that the problem with my husband's answer was with the English, not that he was lying, and the judge got angry and yelled (direct quote): "It was your decision not to have an interpreter, Counsel!"
The judge also questioned our ability to communicate with each other. Thank God we had established we both knew Chinese, because the judge had no way of disproving that in the courtroom.

 

[toby]

Thank God we had established we both knew Chinese, because the judge had no way of disproving that in the courtroom.

Canadianwoman:

How -- may I ask? -- did you learn Chinese? Mine is rudimentary, and while I learned French and Spanish relatively easy, I'm finding Chinese slow going. There are online courses (like Mocca Cafe, Berlitz etc etc), but they are a slog.

Any tips?

 

[canadianwoman]

Canadianwoman:

How -- may I ask? -- did you learn Chinese? Mine is rudimentary, and while I learned French and Spanish relatively easy, I'm finding Chinese slow going. There are online courses (like Mocca Cafe, Berlitz etc etc), but they are a slog.

Any tips?

I lived in China for one year, and in Taiwan for 5 years. I had taken Chinese classes in university, and continued to take classes in Taipei. I also had a private tutor and several language exchange partners.
I found the studying I did in Taipei to be the most useful: my classes were two hours a day, 5 days a week. That, plus a tutor, and the informal language exchanges, was enough.
It is slow going, though. My suggestion is to concentrate more on actually speaking. If you have a tutor, don't waste your time getting him or her to explain the grammar to you. Instead, just practice talking. Spending too much time struggling with the characters is not useful for most people - unless you are the type of learner who is very visually oriented.

My husband, on the other hand, never took any classes in Chinese, and doesn't know any characters. He learned Chinese by interacting with the factory owners and businessmen he met while doing business in Taiwan.

 

[babynsx]

Re: bringing interpreter to interview

Toby,

I can share with you my experience which may be relevant to you.

I am a fairly "generic" Canadian who started traveling to China several years ago. I've never studied Chinese but started trying to learn the language when I met my eventual wife. She did not and still cannot speak English very well and would not be able to carry a meaningful conversation. Over the past 3 years together my Chinese has developed quite a bit and my wife and I manage to communicate with relative ease. There are times when a dictionary needs to come out but those times are pretty rare as we have learned to talk around our language short comings.

On January 10th my wife and I attended an interview in Hong Kong and of course had an interpreter present. Hong Kong does not provide interpreters for you so you must arrange have one present if your wife doesn't have a strong command of English.

The interview was conducted nearly entirely between the Immigration Officer and my wife with me being outside the room. At the end of the interview the Immigration Officer asked for me to come into the room and wanted to test my wife and my ability communicate. He had us enter into a hypothetical conversation and used his own interpreter (a total of 5 people in the room now - two interpreters, the IO, my wife, and me). After about 5 minutes of talking the IO cut us off and asked his interpreter what we talked about. They concluded that my wife and I could communicate well enough and based on all other evidence had convinced the IO that our relationship was genuine.

My wife is now going to redo her medicals and should have her PR granted in a few short months.

 

[toby]

Hi

For the Interpreter in Hong Kong you can't pick your own. HK will give you a list, from which you must choice.

Right -- Hong Kong did so, and told me we must pay for him or her -- $500 CDN minimum.

 

[toby]

Re: bringing interpreter to interview

Toby,

I can share with you my experience which may be relevant to you.

On January 10th my wife and I attended an interview in Hong Kong and of course had an interpreter present. Hong Kong does not provide interpreters for you so you must arrange have one present if your wife doesn't have a strong command of English.

The interview was conducted nearly entirely between the Immigration Officer and my wife with me being outside the room. At the end of the interview the Immigration Officer asked for me to come into the room and wanted to test my wife and my ability communicate. He had us enter into a hypothetical conversation and used his own interpreter (a total of 5 people in the room now - two interpreters, the IO, my wife, and me). After about 5 minutes of talking the IO cut us off and asked his interpreter what we talked about. They concluded that my wife and I could communicate well enough and based on all other evidence had convinced the IO that our relationship was genuine.

My wife is now going to redo her medicals and should have her PR granted in a few short months.

Thanks for that. Very useful. Can you remember what the topic was? My wife and I can discuss everyday issues, but if the conversations veers toward technical issues (where her vocabulary is inadequate) she can get into trouble.

Second, did you have to renew her police report (since it would have expired, been more than 6 months old, by the time of the interview)?

Thanks.

 

[babynsx]

Re: bringing interpreter to interview

Thanks for that. Very useful. Can you remember what the topic was? My wife and I can discuss everyday issues, but if the conversations veers toward technical issues (where her vocabulary is inadequate) she can get into trouble.

Second, did you have to renew her police report (since it would have expired, been more than 6 months old, by the time of the interview)?

Thanks.

The IO asked us to talk briefly about my first trip to her home town in early 2008. I started off and then my wife and I spoke back and forth and joked around bout some of the funny things that happened during that trip. It was a fairly natural conversation about something real so there was no need for us to go outside our comfort zone.

The IO did not mention anything about updated police reports but suggested that once the medicals were updated that the PR would be issued. I believe it is the discretion of the IO to decide if new police reports are warranted. Actually, in all the cases I've read about in on-line forums I've never heard of anyone needing to resubmit police reports. It seems that the medicals are the only item that have a real deadline that cannot be extended.

Do you have an interview scheduled yet?

 

[toby]

Re: bringing interpreter to interview

The IO did not mention anything about updated police reports but suggested that once the medicals were updated that the PR would be issued. I believe it is the discretion of the IO to decide if new police reports are warranted. Actually, in all the cases I've read about in on-line forums I've never heard of anyone needing to resubmit police reports. It seems that the medicals are the only item that have a real deadline that cannot be extended.

Do you have an interview scheduled yet?

Yes, our (my wife's) interview is the 3rd of April.

The Police Report is still a concern to me. The form letter we received from Hong Kong listed a bunch of documents we should bring to the interview, but then said we need not bring any documents already submitted with the application, or ones that do not apply to our case. This leaves the decision in our hands -- but then the letter ominously said that if we do not bring required documents to the interview, the decision will be made on the documents already in hand -- i.e. Hong Kong will have an excuse/reason to deny the visa.

If the Visa Officer decided that a new Police Report is required, but gave us time after the interview to provide it, that would be OK. Getting a new Police Report requires my wife to take a long journey -- at some expense -- so we'd prefer to get it only if Hong Kong specifically asks for it. We don't want to spend the considerable money to get it in advance just to be safe, only to find out that it never was necessary.

This is why the vagueness of the form letter is so annoying. We have emailed Hong Kong for clarification, but no answer yet.

Like you, I had never heard of anyone being asked for a new Police Report -- UNTIL rjessome mentioned that her husband had to submit one.

So, the uncertainty continues.

 

[rjessome]

Re: bringing interpreter to interview

Like you, I had never heard of anyone being asked for a new Police Report -- UNTIL rjessome mentioned that her husband had to submit one.

So, the uncertainty continues.

Yes but my husband was processed through Rabat, Morocco. It's common for them to request a new police clearance to bring to the interview. But it's also really easy to get! That doesn't seem to be the case for your wife so hopefully the embassy will get back to you regarding your question.

The consistency of the embassies bothers me as well. In my husband's case, he was emailed about his interview and the instructions were very clear about what to bring with him. But because he only had 6 days notice of the interview, he actually had to courier the police clearance to them after the interview was completed as it wasn't ready when he had to travel to Rabat.

 

[babynsx]

Toby,

It sounds like your wife received the exact same form letter as we did.

What we did was prepare 3-3inch binders full of pictures and other supporting documents that we hadn’t already provided them in the original application or were new. Included were over 4,000 pictures, MSN chat logs, Skype logs, new receipts, and other relevant documents.

We did our best to follow the supplied list of documents but excluded documents that we had already submitted such as police reports. Basically we focused on supplementing what we had already provided and included anything that “might” be relevant.
When we arrived for the interview I took the 3 binders out of our bag and placed them on the chair so the IO could clearly see them.

The IO did not ask to see ANYTHING. He simply conducted the interview and at the conclusion confirmed the relationship as genuine and that my wife would have to redo her medicals to complete the process. I felt the process was very fair.

I suggest you prepare as much as possible and do whatever you feel is reasonable. I trust you have never been told by Hong Kong that the police reports are out of date and that you must provide new ones. As such they cannot expect you to “know” that they have or have not expired. If they do in fact want new police reports I’m sure they will give you a fair opportunity to prepare them after the interview, but I suspect there is little or no chance they will ask for it.

The most important thing I believe you can do is attend the interview with your wife. You may not be a significant part of the actual interview but being there will ensure you can answer any relevant questions the IO might have for you. I am 100% sure that had I not been at my wife’s interview she would not have passed it, because the conversation my wife and I had in front of the IO was clearly the tipping point in the interview.

Try not to get too worked up about the whole thing… The process is much fairer than you think and while it shouldn’t be taken lightly, I don’t think you need to worry about them trying to trip you up.

Congrats on the interview letter and good luck!

Cheers,
Doug and TangYan

 

[toby]

Toby,

It sounds like your wife received the exact same form letter as we did.



We did our best to follow the supplied list of documents but excluded documents that we had already submitted such as police reports. Basically we focused on supplementing what we had already provided and included anything that “might” be relevant.
When we arrived for the interview I took the 3 binders out of our bag and placed them on the chair so the IO could clearly see them.

The IO did not ask to see ANYTHING. He simply conducted the interview and at the conclusion confirmed the relationship as genuine and that my wife would have to redo her medicals to complete the process. I felt the process was very fair.

I suggest you prepare as much as possible and do whatever you feel is reasonable.

Living together, we have few photos; not really any reasons to take them, except during the few trips we have taken together. However, we have lots of evidence that we have been living together -- including a notarized letter from our landlords/friends who will state that they see us together often, in and out of our apartment, and that we are a couple. This --more than photos or bank statements -- should show that we are a genuine couple.

I trust you have never been told by Hong Kong that the police reports are out of date and that you must provide new ones. As such they cannot expect you to “know” that they have or have not expired. If they do in fact want new police reports I'm sure they will give you a fair opportunity to prepare them after the interview, but I suspect there is little or no chance they will ask for it.

Very reassuring . Thanks for this!!

The most important thing I believe you can do is attend the interview with your wife. You may not be a significant part of the actual interview but being there will ensure you can answer any relevant questions the IO might have for you. I am 100% sure that had I not been at my wife's interview she would not have passed it, because the conversation my wife and I had in front of the IO was clearly the tipping point in the interview.

Try not to get too worked up about the whole thing... The process is much fairer than you think and while it shouldn't be taken lightly, I don't think you need to worry about them trying to trip you up.

Congrats on the interview letter and good luck!

Thanks, guy. Much appreciated.
Cheers,
Doug and TangYan