I-134 Financial eligibility K1 visa petition

[Beth & Chard 8]

I am on disability, have been for many years. According to the 2009 Poverty Guidelines I am $1,611.00 annually, over the 125% amount for my family size.

I have no other assets as everything I owned was destroyed in Hurricane Katrina in 2005.

Our K1 Visa petition is going through the US Embassy in Manila, Philippines.

Does anyone have any experience with this? What I want to know is, since I am over the amount, am I good to go? or is this to close and will we have a problem?

What was your experience with this?

I do understand that the guidelines are only "guidelines" and that the decision is at the discretion of the Consular Officer (CO), but hopefully someone out there

has been through a similar situation.

2009 Poverty Guidelines link:

http://travel.state.gov/visa/laws/telegrams/telegrams_4437.html

Thanks again to all of you for your help in all this. I couldn't do it without you!

[payxibka 10,044]

moving to consulate forum where topics regarding the I-134 are suggested to be posted

[Beth & Chard 8]

Ah OK, sorry for that. Still learning my way around, thank you for your work, help and efforts!

[JimVaPhuong 4,863]

I am on disability, have been for many years. According to the 2009 Poverty Guidelines I am $1,611.00 annually, over the 125% amount for my family size.

I have no other assets as everything I owned was destroyed in Hurricane Katrina in 2005.

Our K1 Visa petition is going through the US Embassy in Manila, Philippines.

Does anyone have any experience with this? What I want to know is, since I am over the amount, am I good to go? or is this to close and will we have a problem?

What was your experience with this?

I do understand that the guidelines are only "guidelines" and that the decision is at the discretion of the Consular Officer (CO), but hopefully someone out there

has been through a similar situation.

2009 Poverty Guidelines link:

http://travel.state.gov/visa/laws/telegrams/telegrams_4437.html

Thanks again to all of you for your help in all this. I couldn't do it without you!

Anyone's guess is going to be about as accurate as a game of darts in a dark room. As you yourself noted, the consular officer has discretion.

Presuming you're getting SSDI and not SSI, then it's not a means tested benefit. It is usually presumed around here to be qualifying income. However, there have been a few reports of some consular officers not accepting it because it's usually not taxable. Now, there isn't anything in immigration law that says income must be taxable in order to be considered qualifying income for an affidavit of support. In reality, someone who had $19K per year of taxable income wouldn't end up paying much (if any) taxes, so it should be irrelevant. The truth is that there is practically no guidance at all in immigration law for what a consular officer should consider to be qualifying income for a non-immigrant visa. The State Department has general guidance for the I-134, but consulates usually don't follow that guidance for fiancee visas because it's presumed that the visa holder is eventually going to become an immigrant.

Many consulates, including Manila, seem to weigh the petitioner's affidavit of support against the presumption that they will have to qualify as a sponsor for adjustment of status. Several consulates, including Manila, also seem reluctant to presume anyone other than the petitioner is definitely going to be available to sign an I-864 when it comes time to submit the AOS application. Those consulates usually don't accept joint sponsors for a K1 visa application.

Now, presuming again that the SSDI is qualifying income, and that your household size is only you and your fiancee (who will be your wife at the time), you should qualify as the sole sponsor for the I-864. However, there have again been some reports here on VJ that people have gotten RFE's from USCIS for a sufficient affidavit of support when the primary sponsor had income from SSDI. The only thing people here could do was speculate why USCIS was apparently ignoring the SSDI income. Some guessed it was because the income wasn't documented well enough. I can't say for sure because many of them don't come back and post the results after they've resolved it. I know that some ended up getting joint sponsors just so they didn't risk getting denied after the RFE.

I know this doesn't pin down the answer like you'd hoped, but the truth is that nobody can say for sure. You're in a gray area where everything depends on the consular officer's discretion. If they look at your tax return alone (which they often do), and don't like what they see, they may reject the affidavit as insufficient.