Chinese name on I-130A and help with evidence of bonafide marriage

[tinygalaxies 0]

Hi there, so I'm currently filling in the I-130A form which is all going fine except for one thing: 

I'm from Singapore and I'm Chinese, so I have two names -- an English first name that I typically go by and a Chinese name. How our passports/IDs are formatted is that there's no difference in your last name or first names. For example:

 

Betty Lee Yi Min

 

Betty is the first name, Lee is the last name and Yi Min is the chinese name. On the form, it states that there's a first name, last name and middle name. Should I fill in the first name as 'Betty', middle name as 'Yi Min' and last name as 'Lee' or is that the wrong formatting to follow? I'm unsure because then it'd be showing the name as Betty Yi Min Lee, which differs from the passport/ID format. I plan on taking my husband's last name when I'm in the US and dropping my last and Chinese name entirely, if that matters.

 

For evidence of a bonafide marriage: we have plenty of chat logs, screencaps of calls, etc. I worry because we don't have a lot of photos together since we both don't like taking photos. We have maybe 4-5 at most with his friends and some of us alone.

Here's what I do have:

- Photos of the places we went together 
- Pictures of each other that match up with where we claimed to go together (e.g. I did take a photo of a football game going on that we went to and he has a photo of me at the game, but not of us together because it was so crowded)
- Boarding passes/plane tickets from Singapore to the US, possibly boarding passes and/or tickets from US to Singapore and us travelling within the country 
- Ticket stubs to places we've been to together
- A money transfer from my account on my bank statement to his when I was in the US so we could use his credit card without me getting charged an overseas usage fee 
- Bank statements of using my own card in the US 

- A few photos sent to each other online while we were apart

- Call logs of when we called each other and how long the duration was
- A video of us when we first met / short clips of him on Instagram (which I don't think will help any)

- Possibly the airbnb/hotel reservations we've stayed in

- Chat logs of all our chats/interactions

- Receipts of gifts I've bought for him online, sent to his address and addressed to him

Would that be a detriment to us despite all of the things we have because of the small amount of photos together? I can basically give all the evidence listed above that this is not a bonafide marriage, but I'm worried about the photos. Thanks in advance for any answers/help! 

Edited March 25, 2019 by tinygalaxies

[ediali09 69]

I was a K1 filer, (now in the midst of AOS) but I think it should apply. Hopefully you've already gotten your answer somewhere else as well. 

- I called the US embassy and someone there told me to file it like how my name appears in my passport. For example's sake, my passport name is: Lee Minyi Betty. According to the officer, no middle name is needed. I would recommend you calling up the embassy to find out if this remains accurate. For me:

• Last name/ Surname: Lee
• First name: Minyi Betty (or Betty Minyi - depending on how it appears on your passport)

I did this for all my documents, maintaining consistency. 

 

Not sure about CR filers, but I'm guessing it should be pretty similar to K1 in terms of proving a relationship, though it might very well be more stringent since you guys have already gotten married. In my fiance package I had 3 photos of us together and a copy of our boarding passes to Thailand. I do think you should put in photos of you guys together, 2-3 should be sufficient. Other things like boarding passes, hotel reservations, chat logs (just 1-2), finances should also come in handy. I wouldn't worry about videos or photos of places. 

[tinygalaxies 0]

7 hours ago, toocold said:

I was a K1 filer, (now in the midst of AOS) but I think it should apply. Hopefully you've already gotten your answer somewhere else as well. 

- I called the US embassy and someone there told me to file it like how my name appears in my passport. For example's sake, my passport name is: Lee Minyi Betty. According to the officer, no middle name is needed. I would recommend you calling up the embassy to find out if this remains accurate. For me:

• Last name/ Surname: Lee
• First name: Minyi Betty (or Betty Minyi - depending on how it appears on your passport)

I did this for all my documents, maintaining consistency. 

 

Not sure about CR filers, but I'm guessing it should be pretty similar to K1 in terms of proving a relationship, though it might very well be more stringent since you guys have already gotten married. In my fiance package I had 3 photos of us together and a copy of our boarding passes to Thailand. I do think you should put in photos of you guys together, 2-3 should be sufficient. Other things like boarding passes, hotel reservations, chat logs (just 1-2), finances should also come in handy. I wouldn't worry about videos or photos of places. 

Thanks for your response! I actually tried to call the us embassy and I couldn't get through, everything is done through email now. so what I did was email them and they said everything had to appear on the application form, and it was up to me which part is my first name and which is my middle name, so I decided to put my chinese name as my middle name since no one uses that anyway. 

 

For evidence, I was planning on basically compiling everything you said as evidence, so I'll just leave the photos of places we've been out and focus on pictures of us together. Thanks again! 

 

[pushbrk 12,085]

On 3/24/2019 at 10:37 PM, tinygalaxies said:

Hi there, so I'm currently filling in the I-130A form which is all going fine except for one thing: 

I'm from Singapore and I'm Chinese, so I have two names -- an English first name that I typically go by and a Chinese name. How our passports/IDs are formatted is that there's no difference in your last name or first names. For example:

 

Betty Lee Yi Min

 

Betty is the first name, Lee is the last name and Yi Min is the chinese name. On the form, it states that there's a first name, last name and middle name. Should I fill in the first name as 'Betty', middle name as 'Yi Min' and last name as 'Lee' or is that the wrong formatting to follow? I'm unsure because then it'd be showing the name as Betty Yi Min Lee, which differs from the passport/ID format. I plan on taking my husband's last name when I'm in the US and dropping my last and Chinese name entirely, if that matters.

 

 

You have a couple choices.  You can start using the married name now and complete the forms (all of them) with the name you'll use going forward and that will be in you NEW passport you'll need to obtain before the visa interview.

 

For Chinese in mainland China it would be "Yimin" not Yi Min, even though it takes two characters to write it.  If those characters are in your passport as well as the Roman Alphabet representation, you'll need those characters pasted into the I-130 where they are asked for, even though your address is not in those characters.

 

If you really want to wait until you are in the US, to change the name you use and that is in your passport, you can do that.  In that case, your name is 

 

Family Name- Lee

First Name - Betty 

Middle Name - Yimin or Yi Min  (However it is represented in your passport)

 

Note that changing names in passports is far more convenient in your home country, and applying in that name and getting the visa in that name, means all your ID, Passport AND Green Card will be in the same name, once you are in the US, without further complication.