Proving Legitimacy of Relationship

[sosco 0]

Hello. My boyfriend lives in Sweden and we plan on marrying here in the US towards the end of this year. We've only met in person once before as our entire relationship was mainly just online for the past two years. What proof will we need to provide later on next year once I apply for him? He won't be in the US when I apply to sponsor him, he will still be residing in his country. He will come to live with me once everything is approved.. if everything is approved. I'm just so worried about it all because we only met once and I don't know what evidence we need to provide. 

[ASMS 86]

23 minutes ago, sosco said:

Hello. My boyfriend lives in Sweden and we plan on marrying here in the US towards the end of this year. We've only met in person once before as our entire relationship was mainly just online for the past two years. What proof will we need to provide later on next year once I apply for him? He won't be in the US when I apply to sponsor him, he will still be residing in his country. He will come to live with me once everything is approved.. if everything is approved. I'm just so worried about it all because we only met once and I don't know what evidence we need to provide. 

Don't worry, you are not the first one either the last one with few visits to your finance before getting married.

Also, you have plenty of time to try to make more trips to visit him, or him going to the US.

 

Make sure to start gathering evidence of your relationship, you can screenshot your call logs, facetine, Facebook, Skype, WhatsApp, telegram, or any other app that you use for communicate.

Organize the pictures of you together in each visit, make sure to have the ones of your wedding, since they will be very important.

You can take pictures or scan hotel receipts, passport stamps of each trip.

 

There are other type of documents that can be used as proof of bona fide relationship, such as lease contract, joint bank accounts, adding each one of you as the beneficiary of life insurance.

Affidavits letter of each one families stating they are aware of the relationship or they were at the wedding for example. However, affidavits doesn't carry too much weight.

 

 

[sosco 0]

Thank you.  Are things like that necessary from the start or are they suggestions to send if they later get suspicious and ask to provide proof? What are the basic required evidence we need? I know marriage certificate is one.

[ASMS 86]

It works in both ways. By you sending all this information in your first package (I-130A) you prevent receiving an RFE (request for additional evidence) by the moment your file receive the first review. But many people still get them if USCIS still want something else, or even something that you already sent.

Always send copies, never send the originals if they aren't requested. Make sure to make copies of everything you send, since your fiance will need to take with him all this documentation (originals) for the interview.

 

Marriage certificate is part of the documents to prove family relationship, in this case a spouse.

Proof of bona fide relationship is what I mentioned in my previous comment.

Basically any relevant documentation to stablish that there is an ongoing marital union that is bona fide.

[ASMS 86]

This is stated in the instructions for the application:

[mallafri76 1,012]

The US Embassy in Sweden wants the evidence with the package. They usually don’t accept evidence at the interview except for photos, so make sure you put all evidence you want to use with the I-130.

 

I would try and get some more visits in. Visits are strong evidence of a bona fida relationship and when you live in Scandinavia, there’s no real excuse not to have more visits as you don’t need a visa and there a cheap flights available. I’m just telling it from the CO’s point of view. Especially since they’re used to seeing people coming through the embassy in Sweden with many visits or having lived together.

 

Good luck on your visa journey.