my husband says he read somewhere that it is a bad thing for USCIS to know he already has family in the US
but i don't think it would be a big deal

do you think it matters if he already has family here? he has 3 cousins here that are permanent residents

and do you think it is possible for one of them to be our co sponsor?

any advice?

Not a problem having family in the USA.

Can use them as co-sponsors and/or joint sponsors, you the US Citizen Spouse must be primary sponsor.

Yes, I agree.

Maybe you should here my story before you think it won't create problems.

On my husbands interview they asked him if he had family in the US. He told them yes, his ex brother in law and sister. That is where everything turned bad for us. He asked him why his sister and ex brother in law got a divorce. He tried to explain, but it was too late. The truth is that the ex brother in law was married to a sister that has never been here before, and the sister is still married to the man that petitioned her. They didn't want to hear it. Rather the questions continued about her. When was the first time her and I talked, how often did we talk, did she arrange our marriage.

He was given a 221g and our petition was sent back to the USCIS with the recommendation that they revoke our petition. In other words they thought that his sister paid me to marry him. This took an addition 15 months for us to fight the case, have our petition readjudicated, second interview, and finally he got the visa. This was a nightmare because no one would tell us anything. It was as if we ceased to exist. Thanks to a very pro active senator our case didn't fall between the cracks like so many others with this kind of denial.

Now, and this is important. If they ask if he has family you need to tell the truth. Lying just makes you look guilty. What you need to do is to be prepared to answer questions about the relative, and make sure you can establish that any contact between the petitioner and the family is only to get to know each other. Make sure to have proper names of these members because they can look them up on their computers. My husband gave them his sisters nick name rather than her legal name, so they couldn't find her in their computers.

There is no reason to fear that he has relatives in the US, just be honest and prepared.