Request For Evidence

[waner21 0]

Hi everyone,

Last Saturday I received a Request for Evidence (RFE) form. Per the RFE, USCIS is requesting for evidence that can establish that my fiance and I have met in person. According to the form, the evidence must include:

1. Circumstances of Meeting - Submit information regarding the circumstances under which the petitioner and beneficiary met to establish the relationship.

2. Last Personal Meeting - Submit evidence of meeting the beneficiary in person within the two-year period preceding the filing of the petition. Primary evidence may include airline ticket stubs and receipts (that indicate month, day, and year), copies of passport pages that show the identification page and admission stamps, military order(s), letter from Commanding Officer, or any evidence that will help the USCIS to determine that the petitioner has met the beneficiary within the two years. Secondary evidence may include film-dated photographs of the petitioner and beneficiary together. The following DOES NOT constitute evidence of meeting: disc, videos, emails, letters, phone bills, and greeting cards

In my initial package I included the following evidence to show that my fiance and I have met in person twice preceding the issuance of the fiance visa package:

1. a ticket stub from March 2012 (includes date)

2. Flight itineraries from November 2011 and March 2012

3. Scanned colored copies of stamps in passport showing entrance/exiting with dates, however, I did not scan all of my passport, just the pages that applied to showing I was where my fiance was.

4. Pictures of us together (however, they were not printed with the date) - And if I were to include pictures with dates, does it have to be the original picture or can I issue a copy of the photos showing the film dates?

5. Receipt from the hotel I stayed at that included address of location and date of my stay.

6. Select emails/messages dating back to 2008 showing our relationship (we were friends from 2008-2011, then started being serious) from Facebook and Skype and that we maintain an on-going relationship.

I do not know what else I should do. I really thought I covered my bases in showing that my fiance and I have met in person per USCIS's guidelines. If anyone has any comments, please help if you can. Thanks in advance.

[chris and laura 7]

hello!! i think shoving a letter of how you met with her!! the pictures always help!!! but if you alredy sent them!! you should call the USCIS are you from Utah??

[madison925 2]

Hi from my point of view you have to go ahead, scan an print each page of the passport including the bio part this should help them determine that the passport really belongs to you and for additional requirement you can also send them some debit/credit card receipts or statements that you spent money in your fiance's country.

[waner21 0]

hello!! i think shoving a letter of how you met with her!! the pictures always help!!! but if you alredy sent them!! you should call the USCIS are you from Utah??

I did attach a letter to the I-129F form in the initial package that described how the two us met, and it was approximately 1 page in length. It was required for one of the questions on the I-129F.

And yes, I am from Utah.

[Heysofia 6]

You should scan up ALL of your passport, front to back in colour copies and send to them. Also see if you have any receipts from the places you visited. Like for example, me and my fiance went to the Portland Zoo, so we had a photo together there out the front of it, labelled on the back who was in the photo, location and what date, then paper-clipped to the front of the photo 2 copies of the admission tickets we got from the zoo. We then were also at the Santa Monica Pier in LA, so we had a photo there, labelled it on the back and then paper-clipped to the front a receipt from a gift store at the pier.

Your meant to label each photo you have. So say like on the back "John Smith and Mary Smith at The White House, Washington D.C. 23-09-2012" etc.

If you have any bank statements from your cards showing you were there that could also be proof. Maybe a letter or two from people who were with you on the trip to back up and confirm that you meet.

Boarding passes from your plane flights. I also included with mine photocopies of the tags that they stick to your luggage to check you through to your destination.

Flight itineries aren't going to be much proof because you can book a flight and just not board the flight, so a full colour copy of every page in your passport and also photcopies of the boarding passes would be good. Emails are good to include too, BUT they are secondary evidence, and that's not what they're asking for from your RFE.

Hopefully more VJ'ers will have some more suggestions

ALSO, please update your timeline to say California or Vermont Service Center, not Texas as this makes the data on the timeline feature irrelevant

Edited September 19, 2012 by Heysofia

[sassy222 5]

I did attach a letter to the I-129F form in the initial package that described how the two us met, and it was approximately 1 page in length. It was required for one of the questions on the I-129F.

And yes, I am from Utah.

[JimVaPhuong 4,863]

Stamps in passports mean nothing without at least the bio page. You need to prove you have the actual passport in your hands, and didn't just download some pictures of entry/exit stamps from the internet. If you copy the entire passport then that should satisfy the primary evidence requirement, in addition to what you've already sent.

Primary evidence establishes you and your fiancee were in the same place at the same time. The next thing you need to prove is that you were actually together during that time. Secondary evidence like photographs help to prove this. "Film dated" photographs are a reference to a time long ago when cameras actually used film, and they were capable of burning an image of date onto the photo. USCIS is satisfied if you simply write the date on the back of each photo. You should also write where the photo was taken, and who appears in the photo. They won't automatically recognize you in the photos (they don't know you) so you have to tell them who each person in the photo is. People milling around in the background are, of course, not relevant.

[Moomin 292]

I did attach a letter to the I-129F form in the initial package that described how the two us met, and it was approximately 1 page in length. It was required for one of the questions on the I-129F.

And yes, I am from Utah.

The letter wasn't a requirement, only if you ran out of space in the box. A page(unless the circumstanes really needed to be explained for whichever reason, or it was a timeline of when you met face-to-face) is IMO too much information. The question is pretty basic; when, where, who. I'm thinking you might have added the time you spent skyping and too many details about that rather than when you physically met, where you met, who you met. Date, time, year, location, name of your fiancee. This story is backed up by your primary evidence.

E.g. ours was something along the lines of "met online 2010, xy visited xx march 2010 using VWP for a duration of 9 days. Met physically the first time in xx airport on xx date, 2010." I mean, not that coldhearted but the facts were there.

Anyways, there are different approaches on the passport/passport stamp issue. Some advise to only send copy of passport stamp and then a birth certificate to prove you being a US citizen, others will advise to send bio-page and passport stamp(and birth certificate), and then some say the entire passport. I belong to the "whole passport" idea because it eliminates any doubt of who the passport stamp/single passport page belongs to, and that way you already prove you've met and you're a US citizen. 2 flies with one smack, less misc. documents to keep track of.

Concentrate on the primary evidence first. Your petition will not be approved without it. Primary evidence is from 3rd party angencies who aren't interested in benefitting from your situation, and agencies who are easily trusted. That includes credit card statement(transcript) showing you used your credit card in your fiancee's country. You had to have been physically there, and together with passport stamps(in entire passport!) the primary evidence speaks for itself. To support that evidence, it's ok to add pictures with handwritten dates/location/who-is-on-the-picture on them but don't add 200 pictures when the RFE is only asking for proof of having met, not circumstances of meeting.

Do not send emails, mails or skype pictures with your RFE. It does not prove you have met each other because you basically were sitting in 2 different countries. Not only that, but you want to have your primary evidence be the most noticable in that RFE response. Keep it simple, yet thorough.