About to start our visa journey, and got a few questions

[ILikeBread 43]

Hello all,

We are about to start our CR1 journey and are currently assembling the package, I have some questions I'd like to ask the community.

First a little bit about us:

We met while my wife was working as an au pair in my town here in France, we had been dating for about 8 months when her visa was up and she had to fly back to the U.S. then started 8 months of long distance relationship where I visited her twice for a total of 3 weeks. On my last visit in December I proposed and she said yes! We decided we would get married and live in France so we prepared for her arrival and the wedding.

She came on a tourist visa in March, we got married in May and she then flew back to the US to apply for a spouse visa at the French consulate. She is now here on this visa.

We are assembling the package and are wondering about the proofs of the bona fide mariage, we have lots of pics, past travel tickets, future travel tickets (visiting friends in Europe and such) her name is on the lease agreement, we are gonna open a joint bank account soon too. We were also thinking of getting some statement from friends and her family.

My first concern is my family is not fully on board, will it be a problem not having statements from them?

I wonder what can be added to the petition to make it stronger.

I wanted to add some of the French spouse visa paperwork bc it shows I sponsored her too (will have it translated)

Also, I got the i130 form from the Uscis website but it says it expired at the end of 2015, it got us confused, can we still use it?

Anyways, the journey is about to start and many questions will arise throughout the process.

We will start the timeline when the packet is sent

[A'n'L 735]

Sounds like you have a pretty solid case so far. Proof of joint residency is good. Are you beneficiaries of each other's insurances? Get a joint account if you're planning too. They will acknowledge that a newlywed couple has less financial co-mingling than an established one, so don't fret too much.

Statements from third parties are usually taken with a grain of salt anyway, so don't worry too.much about that.

Use the forms fresh off the USCIS website and you'll be fine. The expiration dates are some internal thing, nothing for us to worry about.

[Penguin_ie 5,994]

In your case, living in France, no, family not being on board is not a problem. It does help if they know of the marriage, even if they do not approve.

It sounds like you have a very strong case; living together, and the USC moving abroad to do so for several months, is great evidence.

[ILikeBread 43]

Thanks for your answers guys!

As far as insurance the state health insurance is on one person's name only in France, you can't have adult beneficiary any more (new law) but I will add her on my work sponsored complementary policy.

As she only works part time she hasn't worked enough yet to "earn" her coverage.

And because of the previous reason I'm not gonna benefit from her policy anyways. Well if asked why we are not each other beneficiary we have a good reason haha.

My family knows of the wedding, they helped out and were there on the big day. They had their tense moments with my wife which led me to not want them to write an affidavit.

But given the answers in this thread we will skip the affidavits I think.

Just pics and proofs of travels past and future (as in already booked) and the few paper work mentioned in the first post.

[JenniferNangel 137]

Thanks for your answers guys!

As far as insurance the state health insurance is on one person's name only in France, you can't have adult beneficiary any more (new law) but I will add her on my work sponsored complementary policy.

As she only works part time she hasn't worked enough yet to "earn" her coverage.

And because of the previous reason I'm not gonna benefit from her policy anyways. Well if asked why we are not each other beneficiary we have a good reason haha.

My family knows of the wedding, they helped out and were there on the big day. They had their tense moments with my wife which led me to not want them to write an affidavit.

But given the answers in this thread we will skip the affidavits I think.

Just pics and proofs of travels past and future (as in already booked) and the few paper work mentioned in the first post.

I only had 1 affidavit from my mother and my husbands petition was approved last month. I asked my father to write one but he said because my mother did he had no reason to(they're divorced) however I did provide screenshots of conversations between my family informing them I got married. It seems like my husband family is more excepting of our marriage than mine is but I think they'll come around so just give it some time.

It sounds like you have everything in order for your petition

Good luck