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Dear friends and family,
As you all know Lexi and I (Cassandra) moved to Germany in July 2005 in the search of happiness, a new beginning, and a bit of luck. After many ups and downs, we found our luck, and I found my better half, Frank, who is my absolute dream prince! (He is seriously amazing!) We also expanded our family, Wenke is Franks daughter. she's 17 and is a happy and rather crazy young lady who claims that she will NEVER move out and get married as life is a lot easier at home where her Dad and I take care of her. (smart girl)
Our goal now is to move back to the United States. Something Frank and I have discussed and have been wanting to do for about 2 years now. Having lost my sister in December it has made us even more determined to make it happen, and that as fast as possible. Being so far away from our family when we are needed is a heartbreaking challenge and my sister left 2 wonderful boys behind that could use our love and support, but we are limited at how much we can help and in what we can do for them being so far away!
Our biggest challenge is the financial one. Here is a breakdown of the costs we have to move back:
Immigrant Visa Filing Fees: $420 ($840 for Frank and Wenke)
Immigrant Processing Fees: $165 ($330 for Frank and Wenke)
K3 and K4 Visa: These visas are referred to as non-immigrant visas and would give Frank and Wenke permission to live and work in the USA for 2 years. Filing for this visa while the immigrant visa (which gives permanent permission for them to live and work in the USA) allows us to return a lot faster as it typically approved within a matter of weeks, when the immigrant visa takes 6+ months to obtainI'm not sure on the costs yet, I'm still waiting for citizen services to answer my email or actually answer the phones.
Translations: Estimated at about $500
Flights: Estimated at $1500 each, it varies constantly. ($6000 for Frank, Wenke, Lexi and myself)
Room and Board: We will be looking for jobs from here before we move back but still have to provide for our family until the first payday arrives. We also have to plan for the hard reality that we may not find jobs until we are there as it is hard to convince employers to do a video interview and hire you on when you're not even in the country yet.
Move: If we have our household moved to the USA it will cost us an estimated $10,000, which is something we see as a rather unrealistic sum of money.
Our backup plan, if we cannot reach the goal of saving up for the move (plus the above listed costs) with your help, is to sell everything here, except our clothes and irreplaceable items (pictures, etc) and repurchase it all in the states. This we will be doing with our car either way. It is simply unrealistic to plan to bring it with us, the costs of freight, import/export and having the changes made for American streets would cost more than simply buying a good used car when we arrive.
A vehicle: We will be selling our car and buying another with those funds once we arrive. It is simply unrealistic to plan to bring our car with us; the costs of freight, import/export and having the changes made for American streets, plus the estimated 6 weeks waiting period for the car to arrive.... it is simply smarter to buy a good used car when we arrive.
Totaling a bare minimum of $7670 for visas and flights. Which is why we have setup this Fundrazr site, so that should you want and be able to assist us in gathering these funds together you may safely do so. When we are finally back and have settled in we will throw a big BBQ party (when it's warm, brrrr) and invite you all as a thank you for your time, consideration, efforts, and assistance.
We hope to see you soon!
Love,
Frank, Cassandra (Sandy), Wenke and Lexi <3
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Moving the Patton family back to the USA Community
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