Evidence and cover letter

[Crispyxx 36]

Hey

 

me and my husband got married last month in the US during my vacation there.

We have been dating for roughly 1.5years before we got married and he had been stationed in germany for almost the whole time that we have been together.

I am german and am going to finish my Bachelors degree here in germany, which will take about another 11 months, so I should graduate in march or april 2018.

It was recommended by the honorary consul we went to to handle the paperwork regarding my name change that we file for the GreenCard/submit the petition as early as possible so we just started filling out Forms I-130 and I-130a.

My first question is ...in the Guide Section here it says we should submit a cover letter. Is there any example for it? I didn´t find one...

Second question...I have added him to my bank account, as well as he added me to his, which we can proof by submitting the respective paperwork. Also I am the beneficiary of his life insurance of the Army, which we also have proof of.

This is pretty much the only evidence we have (from the possibilities listed), besides of course, our marriage certificate.

He has spent almost all his weekends as well as every leave either at my house or we have travelled through Europe together before he moved back to the US end of January this year (which I can only prove by pictures since European citizens can mostly travel with the ID-card and therefore do not get stamps in passports).

What possibility do we have to submit further proof or is it even necessary at this point?

I was thinking about having my dad writing a notarised statement since he has known of our relationship from the first day and of course where we have traveled together since he is my emergency contact.

 

Thanks in advance for everyones help

[bcking 3,157]

Congrats on the wedding!

 

I would agree that you begin filling out the process now. I'm an American and my wife is from Europe (UK, so I guess soon it won't actually be Europe...). We submitted out I-130 the day after our wedding, and she just got approved at the Embassy today! Unfortunately it is almost 365 days later (About 340 days or so). So the process can take awhile. If you have 11 months, you might as well do it now.

 

Unfortunately if he was still in Germany the process would have been quicker, but since he has moved back you can't do direct consular processing.

 

As to your questions:

 

1) Begin it with "Dear immigration officer" or "Dear USCIS officer" or even just "To whom it may concern" and then essentially give a slightly longer version of what you wrote here. How you met, how you dated etc... Then provide an itemized, numbered list of all the other documents you are submitting

2) That should be fine. We also included "personal evidence". Photos, tickets to things that we booked together that had our names on it. We didn't even have a shared bank account or a life insurance policy at the time. We had evidence of our relationship (1 year, then 2 year engagement) and then the marriage certificate. We also had "Affidavits" from 1 friend each (my best man, one of her bridesmaids) as well as letters from our parents. All sworn affidavits (You can google that, they have to include certain language saying they swear on penalty of perjury etc)

 

Do you have electronic copies of tickets from any travel? Or hotels? Anything you would have booked? Otherwise pictures are fine. We did it all. In the end you will never know if you submit "too much", so we just sent in a lot just in case.

[Crispyxx 36]

Thank you so much for your help @bcking !!!

 

We mostly drove to places instead of flying but we both have bank statements where you can see that we have both been at the same place at the same time. I have contacted booking.com as well as the hotels since we always had to provide both our passports in order to check in to our hotels but apparently they only register the one with which the hotel has been booked so the itinerarys now only say my name. In combination with the pictures I would think it should be enough proof tho.

[bcking 3,157]

If you have photos that match up with the booking references you could to that. In your cover letter when you itemize things you can reference the photo (e.g. 5) Booking reference of our hotel in Paris, see photo #5 of us in Paris together).

 

It is hard because like I said no one is going to say "Oh you didn't have to send so much information", but they technically could say you didn't send enough. So we sent the 4 affidavits, a print out of flights (We were long distance NYC - London so had a lot of flight bookings), about 30 photos matching up with trips together. I also gave them a print out of my gmail "search" for her email address that showed that we had sent >3,000 emails to each other. The one I struggled for awhile with his skype, because it doesn't have a "log" system that can show you the time spent. It can show you the calls, but not how long you spent on the call. We sometimes had marathon 5+ hour sessions on skype but couldn't demonstrate that.

 

Get going now for sure though. Since you are still busy with school it wouldn't feel like a big deal to wait. My wife had to leave her job about 2 months into the process (Her company was absorbed by a larger one, she was offered a job in London but since it would be temporary and when she left she would be quitting, she instead took voluntary redundancy to get a payout). She then had ~9 months with no job, which has been very hard (not financially, just emotionally). Her interview was today and approved so now it is just around the corner.

[bcking 3,157]

 

I googled I-130 cover letter and found this. This one doesn't provide any "relationship" information. I had about 2 paragraphs before the list briefly describing our relationship, and referencing evidence within the text. Then I provided a list.

[Crispyxx 36]

Oh wow.

Well congratulations to you guys and I hope she will soon have safe travels to the US 

Luckily the honorary consul in Arizona told us that the time we have to expect for the process to take is only 7-8 months considering the state we're applying at (AZ). Of course this only applies if we fill everything out correctly. My husband and I both agreed that if any issues come up with understanding how to fill out any of the further forms depending the greencard we will take an attorney. But right now it doesn't seem too hard so I have a pretty positive mindset.

[bcking 3,157]

5 minutes ago, Crispyxx said:

Oh wow.

Well congratulations to you guys and I hope she will soon have safe travels to the US 

Luckily the honorary consul in Arizona told us that the time we have to expect for the process to take is only 7-8 months considering the state we're applying at (AZ). Of course this only applies if we fill everything out correctly. My husband and I both agreed that if any issues come up with understanding how to fill out any of the further forms depending the greencard we will take an attorney. But right now it doesn't seem too hard so I have a pretty positive mindset.

That's interesting. Maybe there is some special system for military? You don't really apply to a state. You are applying to the USCIS/NVC which are National/Federal programs. When we started our application I was in NYC, and now I'm in Texas.

 

Yes it can be that quick, and my wife and I did unfortunately have a delay because of a birth certificate issue. If we didn't have that delay we would have been done in 8-9 months instead of 11-12 months. Delays are a huge delay because they "restart" any queue you are waiting in (For example the NVC can take up to 12 weeks to review paperwork, if you leave out one piece of paper you go back to waiting another "up to 12 week" period). So make sure you are thorough.

 

The only evidence I forgot to mention is if you happened to be married in a church, get something from the Vicar/Pastor/Priest/Whoever married you. I guess it could tecnically apply for a civil ceremony as well, but something about a religious person writing a letter in support seems more significant to me (maybe I'm biased?). Churchs also oftentimes require you to jump through some hoops, so their letter can attest to that. We were married by a Vicar in the Church of England and had visited the church for services prior to the wedding, had gone over the Vicar's house twice for dinner so he gave us a letter.

 

These forums are a godsend in terms of "common mistakes" and what not. We still ended up suffering from something rather stupid, but overall I think we would have been worse of if I didn't find this place. 

 

p.s. Just so you don't make the same mistake - Make sure you submit a "full" version of your birth certificate. Don't know how Germany does it but in the UK parents will get a "short" version in the hospital (well they did in the 80's, apparently they have updated their procedures more recently) that doesn't include parent's names. Her "original" birth certificate was that short version, and the website asked for an "original" birth certificate, so she sent it in (NVC Stage, not USCIS). Make sure you go to their page giving specific information for Germany, because if we had clicked through the website (it isn't on the main page, it is a few clicks deep) we would have seen that by "original" they actually meant "long form". By definition her long form wasn't her "original" because her parents never got one. She had to request one from the Registrar. Sending in that single sheet of paper (the only "new" info on it was her parents names, compared to her original 28 year old birth certificate) took an extra 11 weeks to look at with the NVC.

[Crispyxx 36]

It is crazy how one paper can affect the process so much.  

I actually found the information for germany already...it was more by accident because I tried to find information about what I need for the wedding in the US  (we got married in Arizona) and they simply require the international birth certificate since we don't speak English in germany lol. So my husband already has the original of my international birth certificate in the US so he can make as many copies as he needs. He needed one in order to put me on his bank account as well.

The person that married us was just a normal person being allowed to wed people (I don't know how the rules are in the us but it seems quite easy). We had a small wedding just in the smallest circle

 

[bcking 3,157]

1 minute ago, Crispyxx said:

It is crazy how one paper can affect the process so much.  

I actually found the information for germany already...it was more by accident because I tried to find information about what I need for the wedding in the US  (we got married in Arizona) and they simply require the international birth certificate since we don't speak English in germany lol. So my husband already has the original of my international birth certificate in the US so he can make as many copies as he needs. He needed one in order to put me on his bank account as well.

The person that married us was just a normal person being allowed to wed people (I don't know how the rules are in the us but it seems quite easy). We had a small wedding just in the smallest circle

 

That's good (the birth certificate part). From what I can tell the UK has stopped insuing the "short forms" to new mothers in the hospital, in part for this reason. The short forms are not actual legal birth certificates, so they are really meaningless. They are just a piece of paper but no one tells you that. So when someone asks for a copy of your 'Original birth certificate' of course your first thought would be the one in your parent's safe that they've had since you were born.

 

I actually argued with the NVC on the phone about the language. It should not say "original" birth certificate since in fact in certain circumstances (like ours) they don't want the original. They want an "official" birth certificate, which for a crazy reason is quite different. I'm a stickler for language. The person on the phone wasn't amused. 

[Ryan H 3,790]

10 hours ago, bcking said:

 

I googled I-130 cover letter and found this. This one doesn't provide any "relationship" information. I had about 2 paragraphs before the list briefly describing our relationship, and referencing evidence within the text. Then I provided a list.

 

The incorrect items in that list:  a copy of the beneficiary's passport and birth certificate is not needed for an I-130 submission.

[bcking 3,157]

32 minutes ago, Ryan H said:

 

The incorrect items in that list:  a copy of the beneficiary's passport and birth certificate is not needed for an I-130 submission.

Good to point out. I was only using it as an example cover letter. Didn't actually read the content. Was more for the header and such.

[Frustrated74 23]

One thing you should keep in mind is that with Germany you can electronically file to the Frankfurt consulate so that seems to speed the NVC process up considerably.  Most seem to be approved within a couple of weeks so your process could go a lot faster than those who manually file their documents to the NVC and are now stuck waiting a minimum of 11 weeks.

[Crispyxx 36]

Ryan H actually we have been told at the embassy that it is necessary right now to put both of these papers in.

Even a copy of the pages with my stamps from the US since the two stamps in my passport are proof that I have visited the US before. 

What is not necessary is passport pictures due to me being in germany. 

[Crispyxx 36]

1 minute ago, Frustrated74 said:

One thing you should keep in mind is that with Germany you can electronically file to the Frankfurt consulate so that seems to speed the NVC process up considerably.  Most seem to be approved within a couple of weeks so your process could go a lot faster than those who manually file their documents to the NVC and are now stuck waiting a minimum of 11 weeks.

Oh...That's interesting....I thought that would only apply for those where the petitioner (my husband) is still in germany with me? 

[Frustrated74 23]

Just now, Crispyxx said:

Oh...That's interesting....I thought that would only apply for those where the petitioner (my husband) is still in germany with me? 

No, it's for when you are in separate countries.  There is another couple on here with one being in Germany and one in the US who were approved in 2 weeks in January and that was with getting a checklist (request for further info).  You'll never get the NVC to say that's how fast it goes but it's what is mostly happening.  Someone from Brazil just had their case complete in 5 days this week and that was with electronic filing so definitely possible.