hi. i am Diane and i have been living in germany since Feb. 9th of 2008. My ex husband has two of my children living with him in ny. he recently however has broken his relationship with his current girlfriend and she is soon going to kick him out and he has to find an apartment ect. i want to leave to go home to america as i have domicile there, a home. and i feel my kids need a more stable life. my husband is a german citizen and was eventually planning on doing DCF in frankfort .. My aufentstitel in my passport is dated March 25th of 2008, however i went to the burgerburo in germany and filed in there computer system on feb. 11th , so since feb. 11th i have been considered a resident i believe or does the embassy go by the aufentstitel stamp in your passport? do they at the embassy consider this an emergency and could i file earlier DCF for my husband and go home or not?

You could go home today if you wanted to. You are the US citizen. As far your husband, you could file DCF through Frankfurt for him as long as your permit is valid. Make sure that you use your German address for the I-130. You would need a copy of your divorce decree to file. Your husband cannot go with you or at least would be forced to return for the medical and interview if he wasn't denied entry into the country based on the suspicion that he wants to immigrate before the visa is issued. Generally the DCF process takes 1-4 months depending. There is no emergency circumstances for USCIS in your situation. You need to make sure you can meet the I-864 obligations. If your intention is to return immediately and get a job that would meet poverty guidelines for your household size, you should be fine. Otherwise, you need to start looking for a co-sponsor.

Good luck!

forgive me for being dumb . this is all new to me! do you mean i could go home now and still file DCF in frankfort even if i am in the states?? because i have a resident permit until april of 2009?

Basically, you need to do it before your German residency would be terminated or revoked. Normally you should do this as soon as possible. When you file the I-130 application with Frankfurt, it is vital that you list your address as the petitioner as your German address. Otherwise they will reject the petition for processing and refer you to a US service center which generally takes much more time.

but i am correct in the assumption that you must be a resident of the country for 6 months before you can file DCF correct? and do you know what the embassy considers a resident for 6 months? do they go by the day you went in the computer system at the burgerburo or do they go by the thing in your passport or do they go by the day frankfort stamped my passport when i entered the country?

Not for Frankfurt. They are weird. I don't believe they have a residency time requirement. Call them to check to make sure, but other people here have filed within days of getting German residency.

ohhh. i didnt know. i was always told for almost all embassies you had to be a resident of that country for 6 months or more. someone one time sent me something about that but i dont know where she got it from.. i will have to go look on the frankfort website... thank you

Most consulates do have a time requirement, but I don't believe Frankfurt does. They just want a vaild Aufenhaltstitel/erlaubnis or military orders.

well i just emailed frankfort , hopefully they will answer so we know for sure. or maybe there are others here on this forum who have filed dcf in frankfort that know?

There is a whole thread of others. It should still be somewhere on the front page of the DCF subforum.

thanks so much!! i am sure i will be driving you crazy when i begin this process ugh! for filing dcf the first thing is the I130 right? i have to do that first right?

Is your experience with Frankfurt recent? The 6 mos. requirement was mandated by Condi for all consulates a little more than a year ago....

its strange because i went to the frankfort embassy and it states no where there that you must be a resident for 6 months. it states you must have a resident permit for proof but states nothing about how long. strange. oh well i emailed and we will see.

It may have to do with the fact that the USCIS has a field office in Frankfurt... or that the webpage has not been updated....

Yes, you will need to mail or file in person the I-130 petition with all the necessary documents, including the G325a and filing fee. What documents are necessary vary from couple to couple. You will need to see your instructions given with the I-130 for more information. Generally when you e-mail USCIS Frankfurt, they will send you a Word document with all the I-130 instructions specific to that field office.

After that your petition will be processed and either be approved or denied. Few petitions through Frankfurt are denied. Worst that can happen is an Request for Further Evidence, or RFE. It just means that you will have to send them whatever they want if if you want your petition to continue processing. Generally approval takes 6 weeks to 4 months. There is no real rhyme or reason for it.

When your petition is approved, your husband will recieve Packet 3 that includes instructions for the DS-230, medicial, document checklist, and the invitiation to set up an interview in Frankfurt. The checklist and DS-230 will need to be faxed back.

Generally, most people do the medical between Packet 3 and Packet 4.

After your husband has arranged a date for the interview, he will receive Packet 4 with instructions on how to get to the embassy and reminders of what to bring.

He will go for the interview with all of his documents requested in the checklist, including the I-864. All of these will be looked over and then the application will be approved or denied.

When approved, he will give a self-adressed and stamped envelope to the counsular officer and they will take his passport, place the visa in it, and send it back within a few days. What kind of visa he gets depends on how long you have been married. If less than two years, he will get a CR-1, which means shortly before the 2nd anniversary, he will have to file to remove conditions on his residency. If you have been married more than 2 years, he will receive an IR-1. This is an automatic 10 year green card.

Once he gets to the US, he goes to the SSA to apply for a social security number about two or three weeks after arrival. The green card usually arrives within a month or so. Until then he is allowed to travel out of the country on his I-551 stamp and has authorization to work.

now when they want copies can they just be copies or do they all have to be certified?? and all german things must be translated correct?

All things have to be translated...kind of. For processing of the I-130, it generally needs to come with translations. However, you can do these yourself if you have the ability. Most of them speak German there and are familiar with what things should look like. I did all self-translations at that level with zero problems. At the visa section level, I don't think my husband had anything translated. At least I don't remember doing his police certificate or anything like that. German birth certificates come in an international form with English on them. Your husband might want to request this one from the Standesamt of whatever city he was born in. They also tend to know German and I don't think they need German language translations so much as if you were petitioning from a third country like Romania or Ukraine.

Obvioiusly, you are more than welcome to translate everything. You have to attest to knowing what you are doing though and sign a document you create yourself to that effect. If you don't know what you are doing, best to leave that to another translator, particularly if some documents are complicated like foreign language divorce decrees.

i am going to begin doing the I130 for him and his daughter next week. if i need help can i write you?

It might be confusing because you have multiple governmental agencies located in the same building, each having there own set of "rules".

Would it be safe to say that even in Frankfurt, all evidence submitted to the USCIS in a language other than English requires an English translation.. (this would mean items associated with the I-130 petition).?

Once the petition is approved and it moves to the Consulate side of the Embassy that English and German documents are acceptable?

I would say you should translate all of it and you should only translate it yourself if you feel confident you can do it yourself at the I-130 USCIS level.

At the Embassy level, it says now that I look:

You can PM me whenever you have a question. There also a few other current DCF filers (I did this last year) on the DCF Germany thread. Hopefully they stick around to help support you too.