Formatting Evidence of meeting

[JulieandDanny 7]

I am formatting the pages I am sending in as evidence of our meeting...

They include boarding passes, hotel and atm receipts, photos etc. for our several meetings/periods of living together.

I am trying to edit as much as possible to avoid bombarding them with way too many pages of evidence.

I have organised four trips/periods living together and labeled all pages associated with them 'a' 'b' 'c' 'd'... And then put the evidence for each of all kinds together for that trip (with the primary evidence like boarding passes first!)

99% of these images/documents are jpgs or tiffs and good quality... and to save space and make connections between the images I have resized many of them so they can fit on a page together.

I.e. -a trip with three boarding passes I made all three images slightly smaller so they fit on one page- stil legible.

I was very proud of myself in thinking it cut down on paper and allowed me to type notes explaining each image if necessary.

Now I am thinking- will having resized receipts, tickets, boarding passes slightly smaller and cutting and pasting be 'too creative' i.e. would they rather everything be actual size to avoid suspicion of them being fraudulent?

I would have to be a pretty talented fraudster to have this much primary evidence but... ???

Perhaps it would be better to redo- less clever, everything actual size (and kill more trees, be less clear...)

Julie (overthinking perhaps but please help!)

[KayDeeCee 4,902]

As long as they are clear, legible images, then it does not matter if they are resized to fit the paper.

[LibCampFireClub 635]

For initially filing the I-129F they request evidence of having met within the previous two years. You're on the right track, but to what do you associate it? I suggest you use the space provided on question 34a of the I-129F to write: "See attachments 1-6, a-d, or whatever name you wish to give them. Use the first attachment to create a short timeline like:

11-12-2010 -- Met online and became friends. (see attachment 2 to view copies of communication)

11-13-2010 - 4-5-2011 -- Continued communication and planned trip for face to face visit. (see attachment 3)

4-12-2011 -- Met face to face in timbuktu. (see attachment 4 for copies of boarding passes, receipts, and various photos)

Suggest you also create a master cover letter that also explains the various attachments. Make sure you keep everything in order as you list it in the cover letter.

Edited March 1, 2014 by ExExpat

[JulieandDanny 7]

For initially filing the I-129F they request evidence of having met within the previous two years. You're on the right track, but to what do you associate it? I suggest you use the space provided on question 34a of the I-129F to write: "See attachments 1-6, a-d, or whatever name you wish to give them. Use the first attachment to create a short timeline like:

11-12-2010 -- Met online and became friends. (see attachment 2 to view copies of communication)

11-13-2010 - 4-5-2011 -- Continued communication and planned trip for face to face visit. (see attachment 3)

4-12-2011 -- Met face to face in timbuktu. (see attachment 4 for copies of boarding passes, receipts, and various photos)

Suggest you also create a master cover letter that also explains the various attachments. Make sure you keep everything in order as you list it in the cover letter.

Such was my master plan-- thanks exexp

[Nich-Nick 3,354]

Keep in mind that the cover letter is probably discarded in the mail room by the contractors who reassemble all you send. A b c d may not end up together in your same order. The actual USCIS adjudicator will not see it as you submitted it.

I organized mine by trips but just laid small things out on the copier like a collage instead of scanning and resizing...boarding passes, a photo, an ATM receipt...whatever. (I like your scanning idea). I used a very light yellow highlighter to highlight my name and the dates on the various pieces. Then I wrote in red Sharpie in the margin at the bottom what that page showed. "Nich visits Nick in England Jan 2-12, 2013". "Nich and Nick visit France April 3-7, 2013". (Ferry tickets and my passport stamp). So instead of a table of contents, I was kinda in their face with red writing on each page pointing out what I wanted them to see, but kept it brief and didn't write a story. I pretty much did that for everything through citizenship and nobody complained. Just go with what suits your sense of logic and don't worry about the resizing. I had to resize my husband's UK birth certificate for a submission because it was huge.

I didn't document with evidence anything but meeting in person. Did not document the progression of talking online first or becoming facebook friends or screenshots of video chats. Still got approved easily. I wrote a short couple of paragraphs as an additional page to the I-129F saying we became acquainted like this and first met in person on [date] when I went to England. He first visited me [date]. We have made subsequent visits [long list of dates and location]. We decided in [month, year] to get married. Just a very brief summary of us. Never said "love" or "engaged". They see all kinds of submissions so pick what pleases you.

It's not as hard as you imagine when you are first starting out. They aren't like the FBI at a crime scene going over everything with a microscope.

[JulieandDanny 7]

Thanks for the detailed reply Nich-Nick!

So glad that my sense of logic as you say finally seems of use.

What you describe ('team uscis' separating and mixing up all) had already crossed my mind as a possibility...

So my 'plan' includes not only listing things on an index for that section and having page numbers/cover letter etc, paper clipped sections etc...

but ALSO having a heading on each and every page which clearly states what the collected scanned stuff on that page is 'evidencing'

i.e. something like this example at the top of every evidence page:

'EVIDENCE OF MEETING IN LAST TWO YEARS

1/6/2014-1/23/2014 ‘Visit A’- JULIE HILL (Petitioner) visits DANIEL HAYES (Beneficiary) LIVERPOOL, UK'

similar to your red pen idea (i like it)... an in your face label on each page that means even if everything is all mixed up and moved around... well then there is no mistaking what the purpose of that particular page of evidence is and it could pretty much stand alone as to its reason for inclusion.

Doing my best not to editorialise too much with the labels, only typing relevant data bits found in each piece of evidence next to it for extra legibility rather than highlighting, some circling in pencil.

We met in person while I was living in UK and almost all of our good evidence is in person visit stuff so i'm losing no sleep over including a lot of online evidence.

The only thing I was gonna include for ongoing relationship was a page or two of Skype logs and maybe one card from fiance since i moved back US...

But that's if the packet isn't already too fat!

[baron555 934]

Only one meeting needs to be disclosed.

You don't get extra credit for extra meetings.

Some have received RFEs for poor evidence for multiple meetings

[JulieandDanny 7]

Only one meeting needs to be disclosed.

You don't get extra credit for extra meetings.

Some have received RFEs for poor evidence for multiple meetings

I had thought this, but feel more comfortable disclosing a small handful-

as we have been together awhile and this selection shows a decent variety of types of evidence

without going overboard.

Each meeting shown has very clear PRIMARY evidence associated with it

(passport stamps and/or boarding passes)

so don't see how it could be seen as 'poor evidence'...

And i'm sure I am not the only person to include more than one meeting in the interest of feeling confident in the evidence!

Not trying to get 'extra credit' just trying to do my best and feel that evidence is totally sound...

As I'm sure you felt with your petition.

Thanks for your input.

I would be interested to hear or see about the RFEs you mentioned-- they did not come up in my searches of the site or in perusal of the pinned RFE list.