I-130 Evidence of Marriage and form question

[brentos 53]

Hello all,

I have a question about the required evidence for the I-130 petition for me (Canadian) that my wife will be filing (USC)....but I am the one doing all the research etc.

We were married on November 22nd, 2014. We are now trying to get everything sorted to send in the I-130 petition.

What sort of evidence should we include in the package? We have only been married a short time and as we are not in the same country, we currently don't really have anything that is joint in terms of lease or property, etc.

Should I be having her write a letter explaining our relationship? Should we send pictures of the wedding? How is it best to document these? There is also affidavits from people that attending our wedding that we could have them write. Do these need to just be a letter from them? Does it need to be notarized?

Her daughter and her came to visit me for this past Christmas for two weeks. Would the airline itinerary work? I was also the one that paid for the tickets, not sure if I can prove that some way and if that helps.

Any advice on the matter would be greatly appreciated.

As for the I-130 for itself, I had a few questions about the instructions. It says to fill out all fields and put N/A in ones that don't apply or none. Does this apply for every field, even ones that we don't need to fill out? For example 14 asks you to complete if you are a lawful permanent resident alien (which she is not, she is a USC) should we be putting "N/A". I just don't want to things in places I shouldn't or leave things blank that should have had something.

What about fields that are to short? There is one asking for my current employer and address, but I can only fit like half the address in on the I-130. And I never know if I should put the province or not on the form as they always say "State/Country). So we have been putting everything as "Canada".

For the G-325A form, there is a file number field, I guess I leave that blank? And who is supposed to sign these as the applicant? Do we each sign our own? Or is she signing both because she is the one applying?

I really appreciate and help and advice anyone can give. I already think the process will take so long and I really don't want to get denied or get a request for more info for making a mistake on a form, etc.

Thank you,

Brent

Thank you,

[Ryan H 3,865]

Answers:

• For evidence, what do you have from your relationship prior to getting married some examples include:
  • phone records
  • emails
  • chat transcripts
  • pictures
  • trips taken together
  • time spend with the other person's family (you alluded to this already)
  • Anything else from time spent together in person that you can come up with (any evidence of time spent together in-person is your strongest evidence)
• USCIS and the Consulate will not expect a couple living apart in separate countries to have joint accounts, property, leases, etc. Don't stress this.
• Affidavits carry little to zero weight in the overall evaluation of a file, skip them if you have plenty of other evidence. If you are light on other evidence or just want to include them anyway, they should come from people who have interacted with you both as a couple on some level. They do not have to be notarized.
• When I filled out the I-130, I left the LPR section blank.
• If the field on the form itself is insufficient to fill in completely, write "see attached" on the form and write out the complete information on a separate sheet of paper. Be sure to indicate the question on the form the answer is corresponding to.
• Include the province in addresses.
• You sign your own G-325A, your wife signs her G-325A (i.e. you sign your own form).

[shippingforecast 126]

We were in the same situation as yourself (married, but never lived together). We included the following as evidence;

Text/email/webchat transcripts - we had around 2,000 pages of these, but only submitted 30 pages from different periods of our relationship

Photographs - from the wedding, trips taken together, with different members of each other's family and friends, etc. We included a brief caption of where/when the picture was taken and who was in each photo

Travel documents - boarding passes for flights, car hire documents, etc

Sworn affidavits from family members and friends

Written correspondence to each other

Greetings cards received jointly

Receipts for wedding rings and gifts

A letter from my employer confirming my wife as my next of kin

That list isn't exhaustive by the way. Anything you can find that ties you together should be included. As Ryan H said above, they won't expect you to have any kind of joint finances or leases as you live in different countries.

Edited January 11, 2015 by shippingforecast

[Moustafa/Crystal 65]

When submitting evidence, I believe a wide variety of information is more important thatn a massive amount of any one kind....I submitted 12 pics on printed on four pages, 5 affidavits from his family is Egypt, copy of a couple of greetin cards, a brief summation of our story (less than a page typed), copies of e-tickets, receipts from hotel, USPS, western union, etc.

I did not submit chat logs or massive amounts of pictures....it seemed ridiculous. I did take a screen shot of our Facebook chat log that showed how many messages needed to be loaded and included this in the summation.

This was enough to get the I-130 approved without an RFE (request for evidence.) If you have any question about filling out the documents, you can call the helpline and they will actually help you fill out the documents. You can also insert a text box over the actual box and insert slightly longer answers if needed.

[NikLR 13,232]

Put the province and country. AB/Canada works for example. Just use the two letter abbreviation for your province.

You each sign your own g-325a.

[brentos 53]

Thank you everyone for replying.

So I believe that given what everyone has told me, we will send in a few things but not to much. I am thinking:

1) Some phone records from different periods from me showing me calling her)

2) Some airline tickets from me going to see her before the wedding, me going for the wedding and her and her daughter coming her for Christmas. I have the itinerary email from the airlines and I have some of the email boarding passes (not all of them because we didn't keep them all, they got destroyed, etc).

3) Some car rental email receipts from when I visited.

4) Some pictures with captions from before the wedding, at the wedding and over Christmas

Does everyone think that is enough, or should I be getting affidavits? We don't have much else to submit. All of our communication is mostly via text message (I send about 5000+ messages a month (99.99% to her) and we only use email mostly for sending info with no context (links to things we need, things for the wedding etc but with nothing else in the email).

Thanks again to everyone,

Brent

[NikLR 13,232]

You could print out a list of who you text, which would be pretty much only her number.

Also try and see if you can get on her bank account in the USA or if you can both be on an RBC USA account using form w8ben. When she files her taxes make sure she files "married filing jointly" which requires her to request a ITIN for you, or files "married filing separately" which she can do by paper filing vs e-filing (she would put NRA in the SSN spot)

[brentos 53]

Hello,

Does anyone have any advice on how best to assemble the I-130?

I see people saying you should use ACCO fasteners, that you should two hole punch it, that you shouldn't, use tabs, etc.

Is there a guide for this? My wife lives in Texas so we will be submitting to the Phoenix lockbox. Is it best to send it in using USPS or is UPS a better option (I know their is different addresses).

Also, is there any way to know which service center you will get? Is it based on the region that the USC lives? So we would get Texas? I am hoping not since they seem to currently be the most behind.

Thanks again everyone,

Brent

[Ryan H 3,865]

Don't bother with fasteners or hole punching. Just use large paperclips and clip everything together, USCIS will take the file apart and reassemble it to their own liking.

Makes no difference whether or not you use USPS or UPS; just make sure you can track the package from the time it is sent to the time it is delivered.

There is no way to know in advance which service center your file will be sent to. You won't know where it goes until you are informed of where it was sent.

[TwoChickies 105]

I had a lot of confusion over how to assemble our petition as well. I clipped each individual section together, then clipped the whole package together with massive binder clips. In the envelope it went, and off to USCIS. It worked perfectly and any last minute adjustments were easy to do.

[Ms Hogan 295]

Even though they don't care about the Canadian taxes if you are ready to do your taxes you could get that done and show that she is included in those documents.

I was able to open an RBC Bank account in the U.S. and add my husband to it over the phone. Then they sent a form later for us to sign. But it showed it as a joint account with both our names on it. That was pretty easy. But if you're trying to send your stuff in now this would create a delay. I would recommend doing it though so you have it standing by in case they request more evidence from you.

Another thing you may be able to do is be added to her American car insurance now. I was able to be added to my husband's even though I wasn't living here yet but it gave us another document with both our names on it.

I created all of my evidence in a large document in PowerPoint actually. Because you are not sending original items as evidence they are scanned or digital already. I inserted them onto a page and then put a comment on the page explaining what it was. I even included things like screen shots of FaceBook posts of our business partners announcing our marriage. So I put things like that as a photo-sized item with a typed comment beside it. Full-size documents I just made smaller slightly so they fit on the page and had room for a comment so everything was labeled nicely. Then at the end of creating it I printed the whole thing and put one large clip on it. Done! It worked out well for me. Everyone has their own opinion and style but there are many helpful guidelines here and also a lot of people who have helped a lot of others succeed in this process.

Good luck!

[brentos 53]

Hello all,

So I have one more probably stupid question about the G-325A form. Do you put the instruction page in the page? I know some goverment places are really strict if the form says there is 2 pages, they want all 2 pages, even if the second is useless.

Thanks again for all the advice everyone.

Brent

[Ryan H 3,865]

Hello all,

So I have one more probably stupid question about the G-325A form. Do you put the instruction page in the page? I know some goverment places are really strict if the form says there is 2 pages, they want all 2 pages, even if the second is useless.

Thanks again for all the advice everyone.

Brent

No