Has anyone side loaded a CR1 RFE?

[Daron and Honey 6]

On 1/13/2017 at 3:36 AM, amul said:

Sure, here you go.

You need a marriage certificate...at your Marriage certificate office.  Dont have one ?  You need to get one.

[Daron and Honey 6]

You can submit pictures all day long, but if you do not submit the correct marriage certificate, then they will not even need to look at your pictures.  Make sure you get the correct paperwork you need.  I had the same issue before trying to get a tourist visa for my wife and learned a good lesson doing it. Correct paperwork is always good.

 

I hope this helps.

[amul 229]

3 minutes ago, Daron and Honey said:

You need a marriage certificate...at your Marriage certificate office.  Dont have one ?  You need to get one.

The courthouse gave us what is called a "certificate of registration of marriage" *after* we got married at the temple and brought our religious marriage document given to us by the Pandit. That is all we have at this point, two documents.

[amul 229]

2 minutes ago, Daron and Honey said:

You can submit pictures all day long, but if you do not submit the correct marriage certificate, then they will not even need to look at your pictures.  Make sure you get the correct paperwork you need.  I had the same issue before trying to get a tourist visa for my wife and learned a good lesson doing it. Correct paperwork is always good.

 

I hope this helps.

We were told the document we submitted is what is considered a marriage certificate in India, but now I see that we should have also submitted the document we got from the temple. Will send that out next week 

[Daron and Honey 6]

10 minutes ago, Daron and Honey said:

You need a marriage certificate...at your Marriage certificate office.  Dont have one ?  You need to get one.

The last paragraph of your RFI explains it good.  You need to take your temple certificate back to the government office for a religious certificate of marriage.

 

anyways..thats how i read it

[Jaanu2017 1]

7 minutes ago, amul said:

We were told the document we submitted is what is considered a marriage certificate in India, but now I see that we should have also submitted the document we got from the temple. Will send that out next week 

 

Adjudication officer in USCIS made a mistake either by overlooking your marriage certificate as some documents do get lost some time while in transit from one department to another, OR officer just made a mistake because in India all people could get is a Marriage Certificate from the civil court. There is no such document called- "Memorandum of Marriage". So please just submit both marriage certificates, one from the court and another one given from Pandit from Arya Samaj Mandir. You would be just fine. Trust me....

Edited January 16, 2017 by Jaanu2017

[amul 229]

Just now, Daron and Honey said:

The last paragraph of your RFI explains it good.  You need to take your temple certificate back to the government office for a religious certificate of marriage.

 

anyways..thats how i read it

Which government office would that be?

[amul 229]

1 minute ago, Jaanu2017 said:

 

Adjudication officer in USCIS made a mistake either by overlooking your marriage certificate as some documents do get lost some time while in transit from one department to another, OR officer just made a mistake because in India all people get is Marriage Certificate from the register. So please just submit both certificate, one from the court and another one given from Pandit from Arya Samaj Mandir. You would be just fine. Trust me....

That is exactly what we will do. I will post an update as soon as we hear back as it might help future India/US filers.

[KierenHby 897]

5 hours ago, Daron and Honey said:

The last paragraph of your RFI explains it good.  You need to take your temple certificate back to the government office for a religious certificate of marriage.

 

anyways..thats how i read it

Something along these lines might be key..

 

I got married in India, and this is what we did that worked. 

Got married in a temple; witnesses and us signed the temple register, and were issued a bilingual marriage certificate. Took that certificate to the local Municipality, where, being a foreign national, I had to have an affirmation certifying I was free to marry. I subsequently did so at the US embassy.. where I collected a notarized Affidavit that I took back to the municipality. My marriage was thus registered.

 

Submitted the Marriage Certificate and the Registration of Marriage with the i130 package, which was approved without any RFEs. 

[KierenHby 897]

Came upon this upon research, might be useful, dunno. 

[agripa 100]

Thanks for the information KierenHby. This thread is absolutely scaring the living daylights out of me. My wife and I had a huge traditional Hindu Indian wedding. We had a priest and everything, but he didn't sign any document or anything like that. In fact, none of my many many Indian relatives who have gotten married ever received a certificate from the priest itself. Rather, you then take some proof of your wedding (pictures, wedding invitation) and register your marriage at a Registrar's office. In fact, this is exactly what the Embassy website is saying --

 

Quote

In India, a religious marriage ceremony is generally considered a legal marriage. However, for marriages registered under the Hindu Marriage Act (affecting Hindus, Jains, Sikhs and Buddhists), the certificate issued by the temple or gurudwara may not be legally sufficient for all purposes. Individuals married under the Hindu Marriage Act may seek a formal marriage certificate from the Registrar of Marriages. If one of the parties is not Indian, the registrar may request a “no objection letter” (see above) and proof of termination of any prior marriages.

See even they admit the certificate for a religious institution isn't legally binding and you need to go seek a certificate from the Registrar of Marriages. This is EXACTLY the certificate the OP sent in and yet they've sent him an RFE simply because the certificate says "Registration of Hindu Marriage" as opposed to "Marriage Certificate"; yet both the US State Department and the US Embassy website says you have to obtain a formal certificate form the Registrar of Marriage. It seems like someone at USCIS simply doesn't know what's going on.

 

In my I-130 packet I've included --

1. The Marriage Registration Certificate.
2. Affidavits from multiple people saying they attended the wedding.
3. Numerous pictures of our huge Indian wedding.
4. Copies of Wedding Invitations.

In any case, after freaking out about this thread, I've asked my wife to try and collect the following --

1. A sworn affidavit from the priest who performed our wedding.
2. A copy of our application we filled out to obtain our marriage certificate (the "Memorandum of Marriage"). It's unclear if the Marriage Registration office saves this or not. I sincerely hope they did.
3. Any other possible documentation from the Marriage Registration office that attests to the fact that our Marriage Registration certificate is a legitimate wedding certificate. 

This whole thing seems infuriating since we've done everything by the book.

[agripa 100]

18 minutes ago, KierenHby said:

Got married in a temple; witnesses and us signed the temple register, and were issued a bilingual marriage certificate. Took that certificate to the local Municipality, where, being a foreign national, I had to have an affirmation certifying I was free to marry. I subsequently did so at the US embassy.. where I collected a notarized Affidavit that I took back to the municipality. My marriage was thus registered.

At least in Karnataka (state where we performed our wedding), we hired our own family priest to perform the wedding. There's no register or anything like that. The marriage registration office simply asked for photos of our wedding and a copy of the wedding invitation. They then issued this certificate. Regarding the "no objection letter", the embassy website even says that the registrar "may require". Ours did not.

[KierenHby 897]

I found out later there was a (not-so-legal) way to avoid a USemb trip.. pay the Muni officials to look the other way for them to sign off on the registration. We went the legal route, to the point of missing our India honeymoon. 

[amul 229]

2 hours ago, KierenHby said:

Something along these lines might be key..

 

I got married in India, and this is what we did that worked. 

Got married in a temple; witnesses and us signed the temple register, and were issued a bilingual marriage certificate. Took that certificate to the local Municipality, where, being a foreign national, I had to have an affirmation certifying I was free to marry. I subsequently did so at the US embassy.. where I collected a notarized Affidavit that I took back to the municipality. My marriage was thus registered.

 

Submitted the Marriage Certificate and the Registration of Marriage with the i130 package, which was approved without any RFEs. 

Thank you KierenHby 

 

We first made an appointment and went to the US Embassy in New Delhi, paid $50 and got my free to marry notice and then we went to the temple where we had the religious marriage, got our religious marriage document from Arya Samaj Mandir and then we went to the courthouse and registered our marriage. We were handed the Certification of Registration of Marriage from the courthouse and this is the document we included in the CR1 application.

 

Can you point out where we went wrong, perhaps besides not including the religious marriage document from Arya Samaj? 

 

 

[amul 229]

2 hours ago, agripa said:

Thanks for the information KierenHby. This thread is absolutely scaring the living daylights out of me. My wife and I had a huge traditional Hindu Indian wedding. We had a priest and everything, but he didn't sign any document or anything like that. In fact, none of my many many Indian relatives who have gotten married ever received a certificate from the priest itself. Rather, you then take some proof of your wedding (pictures, wedding invitation) and register your marriage at a Registrar's office. In fact, this is exactly what the Embassy website is saying --

 

See even they admit the certificate for a religious institution isn't legally binding and you need to go seek a certificate from the Registrar of Marriages. This is EXACTLY the certificate the OP sent in and yet they've sent him an RFE simply because the certificate says "Registration of Hindu Marriage" as opposed to "Marriage Certificate"; yet both the US State Department and the US Embassy website says you have to obtain a formal certificate form the Registrar of Marriage. It seems like someone at USCIS simply doesn't know what's going on.

 

In my I-130 packet I've included --

1. The Marriage Registration Certificate.
2. Affidavits from multiple people saying they attended the wedding.
3. Numerous pictures of our huge Indian wedding.
4. Copies of Wedding Invitations.

In any case, after freaking out about this thread, I've asked my wife to try and collect the following --

1. A sworn affidavit from the priest who performed our wedding.
2. A copy of our application we filled out to obtain our marriage certificate (the "Memorandum of Marriage"). It's unclear if the Marriage Registration office saves this or not. I sincerely hope they did.
3. Any other possible documentation from the Marriage Registration office that attests to the fact that our Marriage Registration certificate is a legitimate wedding certificate. 

This whole thing seems infuriating since we've done everything by the book.

Agripa -- you had a huge wedding and lots to show, but our case already has flags and I was so thorough that I tried to include enough to show our intent, yet I failed on this certificate mertificate thing!

 

Anyhow,  I think  (and hope) you are going to be fine -- try not to stress out.  

 

P.S: We spent hours getting things done the right way as well