What was the weight of your application packet (I-751) you sent to USCIS?

Why is this important?

It's not important.

dont know the weight, but it was 110 pages,...
But being military and no utility bills, or rental agreements and the like, I had to make up for proof in lots of other ways,..therfore the excess,..

JOdee

We are getting ours together now (to send the beginning of April). Right now, if I have to guess, it has to weigh at least two pounds -- we are well over 150 pages as of today.

Anal -- you betcha!!!!

Seriously....it is over 150 pages and we will be trimming it down consideralby before sending. Maybe down to at least 140 pages

my package wasn't all that big.. it fit into one of those standard letter size envelopes...

I just included the pages that had our names and address on them...

like I didn't include the whole tax return , just the page that showed we filed jointly....

I also didn't include all the utility bills from the last year, just the most recent ones.. but you could always send in a bill for each year or one for every 3 or 4 months ....

mine was pretty fat, at least 3/4 inch thick

We must have had at least 150 pages too...we included all the crap we could find.

Mine is being submitted next week. I just have to type up the cover letter. Currently it is 3 1/2 pounds! We have been married nearly 4 years though and I have samples of evidence from all four of those years. I haven't counted the number of pages yet - I am just not looking forward to photocopying it for our copy!

(It was substantially larger than that when I started putting it together - I literally set aside a box right after submitting the AOS application and anything I thought that would be useful to remove conditions went into that box. It was full:-). )

Ok - just counted - 263 pages - although that also includes the section dividers. I two hole punched everything and put it in an acco holder with tabs separating sections at the bottom.

Poor Mr. postman

I realize that you all just want to be approved, but the excessiveness of your I-751s is rather uncalled for - and I say this with the kindest of hearts, but the keenest of minds. Take yourself back 3+ years, it was your initial visa that required photos and such - remember, they wanted to see you had a valid relationship with your significant other. Now that you've got to this point, what CIS really wants to see is proof and validity of your marriage. Remember marriage, although a sacred bond, is really a contractual relationship between two parties. So what they want to see now is how well you have done at comingling your lives. They want to see your financial documents that you have together: tax returns, insurance, rent, mortgages, deeds, wills, bills - your names and addresses should match. Highlight with a highlighter what you want them to notice on your documents - this will help the officer to pinpoint what is truly important. This is really when it gets down to the "brass tax" of your lives together. Think about it, this is what makes a marriage for love different than one of greencard convenience - if it was for convenience, people wouldn't intermingle their lives or change their names. Now, I know that there will be people who will say, "we don't have anything to show them because of this or that" - not true. We all should have something. For those in the military, you probably have the best documentation: your spouse has you named allover the place - all the insurance documents, etc, etc. - just make copies of the documents where you're named as his beneficiary - easy peasy - and they're all government documents at that!

For us, we sent in pertinent papers and kept copies of them to resubmit again for citizenship (yes, you will need them again) - our list included joint tax returns, insurance policies, mortgage bills, property tax bill, household bills, 2 affidavits from family and banking statements - needless to say we are thoroughly comingled. Also, we didn't send one picture as my husband said he didn't want to share our personal lives with USCIS anymore!
We were approved, although it took 11 months as we were TSC Losers, but approved and no RFEs!

So, enough of my diatribe, I wish you all much success. You can do this - but remember less is more when you have the truly pertinent things.

Weight does not matter.

I hear what you are saying, and agree with a vast majority of it. However, I preferred to send in very specific information covering a wide range of bases, concentrating heavily on the financials. It weighed quite a bit, but I don't regret what I submitted at all. I based my packet on the experience of one of my best friends, who had a bit of trouble at her interview and was sent home to collect more evidence. More often than not I see people sending in the "minimum" amount of evidence getting RFE's, and I wanted to minimize that possibility. When you have people reporting that their RFE asks for bank account statements over the life of their marriage, it's hard to reconcile that with the idea of sending in the bare minimum. JMHO of course.

I too am sending in more than the bare minimum and definitely showing a co-mingling of our lives. The majority of our file is financial - bills paid, taxes, joint accounts, investments, credit cards, loans, joint property, insurance, wills, etc. We have been married for 4 years - you accumulate a lot of financial documents over 4 years and we are including information from each of those 4 years. We do not have a joint mortgage, nor is my name on the deed for practical reasons. Nor did I include affidavits from friends. I don't want an RFE or an interview. I have been going through this process since June 2003 and i am tired of dealing with USCIS. I want to make it as easy as possible for them to say - Yep, valid marriage, approved - and get it over and done with. Hopefully this application will take less than the time it took to process the K-1 and the AOS - heck, if they had just delayed processing the AOS another 3 weeks I would have received a 10 year card nearly 2 years ago instead of having to provide proof of 4 years of marriage.

If you don't mind my asking, what were your sections?

I'm getting my packet ready and I'm not sure how best to divide my evidence into sections. I will have a tab for the I-751 itself and a tab for the copy of my husband's passport and permanent resident card. But other than that, I'm not sure what else would warrant its own tab and what else should just be lumped together. So far I'm sending 19 different documents and I obviously don't want 19 tabs!

Any advice from anyone would be appreciated.

Thanks!

Of course I don't mind:-).

Ok - here are the divisions (and the reasons why if not self-evident):

1. 1-751 petition
2. Identification (green card, Drivers Licenses, Military ID)
3. Tax Documents
4. Wills
5. Financial Documents - Joint Accounts (3 joint accounts, IRAs and CDs)
6. AMEX Credit Card statements (joint account)
7. Expenses paid by Kathryn for home (Joe pays our ongoing utilities, etc. on-line but household maintenance or one time expense I pay and the invoices are addressed to me so showing my involvement in household financial responsibilities)
8. Sprint Family Plan Phone invoices
9. Car Ownership (including joint loan payments, registration, insurance, maintenance, and AAA cards)
10. Life Insurance Policies
11. Pension Information (showing each other as beneficiaries)
12. Health Insurance Documents (including joint health cards, benefits statements, invoices)
13. Cats (I moved my 6 cats - now 5 - with me so evidence related to their move and living here)
14. Travel evidence (5 trips to both our families including photos with each other's families)
15. Kathryn's Employment
16. Correspondence (personal from friends and family to both of us and mentioning joint activities or visits, etc.)
17. Miscellaneous (address change notification, moving van delivery of belongings, online HOA listing for our address and names, magazine subscriptions)

Since we have been married nearly 4 years I included samples from each year to show an ongoing and continual relationship. Be sure to include documentation that covers the span of your marriage, not just the earliest or the most recent. Hehehe, if you haven't been married as long as we have your application certainly won't be as heavy so don't worry!

Itemize what you include either in the cover letter or in a separate table of contents if you think that warranted:-).

I also went through and used yellow highlighter to highlight my husband's and my names and the dates on the documents so they could make the connections more quickly.

Good luck!

263 pages?!?!?!?!?

I'm doomed...

But seriously, if I didn't have enough evidence, after wiaitng nearly a year what would be the chances of getting an RFE? That's what I worry about more than anything.

I think the phrase is "brass tacks" .......... I haven't heard the other one and can't quite figure out what it might stand for.

(I'm just trying to lighten it up!)

Weight has no bearing.
Mine was only 58 pages, of which 34 were 2005 & 2006's tax returns and 15 of which were leases for 2004 to 2005, 2005 to 2006 and 2007 to 2008. (our copy from the accountant)

I included:
What I think was "required"
Application, 2 pages
Copy of green card, back and front and son's birth certificate, all on 1 page
Property lease in both our names for 3 years, 15 pages
2005 & 2006 tax returns, 34 pages
State Farm insurance statement, showing both our names, I circled his truck and put "Norm's truck" next to it, and the same with my car, 1 page
Humana (health insurance) quarterly statement, I circled my name, his name and our son's name on it, 1 page

"Other"
Front page of recent bank statement, showing statement date and both our names, 1 page
Recent Nicor (gas) bill in his name, 1 page
Recent ComEd (electric) bill in my name, 1 page
Affidavit from our mutual friend, it was not notarized, 1 page

I don't know how many pages I sent in or the weight but it all fit into one of those letter size envelope things...

I didn't include all the pages of the tax returns or all the pages of the bills just the pages that showed a joint account and the address....