A little help with i130 application proof of marriage

[JeanneAdil 6,291]

2 hours ago, arken said:

All mistakes are not lying that's why there are amended returns. For immigration purpose, there is no rush to amend. For irs purpose, he has three years to amend. No big deal.

3 years but he filed as single and is married and Immigration uses that as proof of a  real relationship

not so important for some countries but very important for others

[RO_AH 1,626]

31 minutes ago, Stiliyan said:

Hello! Thanks for answering! Honestly, it's a little bit of relief to hear that other people have had fewer evidences as well. What did you end up providing as evidence? Photos and friend affidavits? Thanks!

Photos, passport stamps, chat logs, just enough to show that we talk every day. That's about it.

 

[Stiliyan 0]

Just now, RO_AH said:

Photos, passport stamps, chat logs, just enough to show that we talk every day. That's about it.

 

Gotcha. Now the chat logs that we have are all in Bulgarian. I can take millions of screenshots, dating back way before we even got married, but do I need to translate them? I guess I'll screenshot that we've texted every day for a month or two and add all that in a pdf so it's scrollable. I will also restructure all my photo proof as well to be chronologically arranged so it's easy to see and follow.

[RO_AH 1,626]

1 minute ago, Stiliyan said:

Gotcha. Now the chat logs that we have are all in Bulgarian. I can take millions of screenshots, dating back way before we even got married, but do I need to translate them? I guess I'll screenshot that we've texted every day for a month or two and add all that in a pdf so it's scrollable. I will also restructure all my photo proof as well to be chronologically arranged so it's easy to see and follow.

I just went back and looked. What I submitted was the Skype log history. It showed all of our calls, usually 2 a day so there wasn't much chatting. But it di show that we were in video calls about 2+ hours a day every day. Whatever you submit, I would not think that you should translate.

[Stiliyan 0]

1 minute ago, RO_AH said:

I just went back and looked. What I submitted was the Skype log history. It showed all of our calls, usually 2 a day so there wasn't much chatting. But it di show that we were in video calls about 2+ hours a day every day. Whatever you submit, I would not think that you should translate.

Yeah, got it. I was thinking of the call log as well but we communicate over facetime and only keeps track over the last 30 days. I'll check to see if there's any way for me to extract data from further back. Thanks!

[Chancy 6,233]

On 6/28/2022 at 12:03 PM, Stiliyan said:

I have the feeling we're a little shy on proof of marriage, as we haven't really lived together, aside from our visits to each other. We do not own anything in both of our names and our finances are not combined, as she uses Bulgarian banks and I - American.

 

Joint finances are not expected if you live in different countries.  Focus on evidence of your time spent together in person, like passport stamps, boarding passes, photos together.  No need for too many photos.  Submit maybe around 20, from across the months/years of your relationship.

 

At the time of petition filing, my spouse and I also had barely any joint financial documents because his banks/insurance refused to add me to his accounts if I don't have SSN.  But we had several trips/vacations together, which added up to several months together in person, before and after we got married.  Our I-130 petition was approved without any RFE.  We submitted just 12 pages of bona fide relationship evidence consisting of --

• passport stamps, beneficiary's I-94 US travel history
• photos from our wedding and vacations, including touristy selfies and photos with family/friends
• petitioner's phone bill listing both of our names in the family plan
• petitioner's employee profile listing beneficiary as emergency contact

No need for chat/call logs, unless you have not seen each other for an extended time (say, more than 1 year) after your most recent in-person meeting.  If that is the case, maybe include some excerpts of your chat messages (with certified English translations), to show continuing communication.  But if you are filing the I-130 soon after a visit, chat/call logs would just clutter your evidence.

 

Edited June 29, 2022 by Chancy
clarification

[Stiliyan 0]

3 minutes ago, Chancy said:

 

Joint finances are not expected if you live in different countries.  Focus on evidence of your time spent together in person, like passport stamps, boarding passes, photos together.  No need for too many photos.  Submit maybe around 20, from across the months/years of your relationship.

 

At the time of petition filing, my spouse and I also had barely any joint financial documents because his banks/insurance refused to add me to his accounts if I don't have SSN.  But we had several trips/vacations together, which added up to several months together in person, before and after we got married.  Our I-130 petition was approved without any RFE.  We submitted just 12 pages of bona fide relationship evidence consisting of --

• passport stamps, beneficiary's I-94 US travel history
• photos from our wedding and vacations, including touristy selfies and photos with family/friends
• petitioner's phone bill listing both of our names in the family plan
• petitioner's employee profile listing beneficiary as emergency contact

No need for chat logs, unless you have not seen each other for an extended time (say, more than 1 year) after your most recent in-person meeting.  If that is the case, maybe include some excerpts of your chat messages (with certified English translations), to show continuing communication.  But if you are filing the I-130 soon after a visit, chat/call logs would just clutter your evidence.

 

Very interesting. I'll definitely look into that. I hope I'll find a way to recover just facetime call logs for more than the last 30 days to show constant contact, as we speak on the phone at least once a day, almost every day. Thanks a lot!

[Alex&Nayden 91]

59 minutes ago, Stiliyan said:

Здрасти! (Hello! in Bulgarian)

 

To answer your questions, I'm filing online right now on the USCIS website and have selected to have the case be dealt with by the embassy, as it works better for my wife's job as it stands. I know it's lengthy, but I guess I'm going to be visiting her more often, and that means more vacay. (Yay!) 

On the tax question - I doubt it's a big deal. My only worry is how long will it take for the amendment to take place. That's why I'm going to get that done asap, as I don't want to have that be an issue once our case starts moving.

Yeah the wait is about 1.5 years, which is not terribly long but not short either. The first phase (USCIS) seems to take the longest so I encourage you to file asap and then gather everything else while you wait. 

 

If you have any "Bulgaria" specific questions, feel free to ask. I know there are not many of us here, but it's a plus bc the embassy doesn't have a backlog for interviews so at least that's fast.  

 

Also for self employment, do some digging in the forum because there are some helpful threads on it. For self employment taxes, they will look at "gross income." That's the income after you take out your deductions. Just make sure that's above the poverty level. 

Edited June 29, 2022 by Alex&Nayden

[Stiliyan 0]

4 minutes ago, Alex&Nayden said:

Yeah the wait is about 1.5 years, which is not terribly long but not short either. The first phase (USCIS) seems to take the longest so I encourage you to file asap and then gather everything else while you wait. 

 

If you have any "Bulgaria" specific questions, feel free to ask. I know there are not many of us here, but it's a plus bc the embassy doesn't have a backlog for interviews so at least that's fast.  

That's what I'm trying to do, really. I thought I had it narrowed down to just the proof of marriage and we're ready to file. Turned out I have more things to take care of haha. It's fine tho, we gotta do what we gotta do. 

As for the embassy, absolutely. That's my happy thought, that as soon as we get everything done on US side, it should move faster with the embassy as I suppose they don't deal with thousands of these applications a month haha. Thank you for your help! I'll keep you posted.

 

Edit: I'll check on that. I haven't been self employed for long. A little over half a year. But either way, I'll do the math beforehand to make sure it's all good. Thanks for bringing this to my attention, as I completely overlooked it. haha

Edited June 29, 2022 by Stiliyan

[Alex&Nayden 91]

1 minute ago, Stiliyan said:

That's what I'm trying to do, really. I thought I had it narrowed down to just the proof of marriage and we're ready to file. Turned out I have more things to take care of haha. It's fine tho, we gotta do what we gotta do. 

As for the embassy, absolutely. That's my happy thought, that as soon as we get everything done on US side, it should move faster with the embassy as I suppose they don't deal with thousands of these applications a month haha. Thank you for your help! I'll keep you posted.

With the proof of marriage, here is what we sent:

 

- I think like 10 -15 photos (some just the 2 of us but we made sure we included photos with our families and friends to show that our families know about us)

- a bunch of travel tickets and hotel reservations with both of our names

- screenshots of social media posts we've made throughout the years (we put them in chronological order to show our relationship started back in 2017)

- a joint bank account (our BG bank, I didn't even think to do my US bank lol)

- our joint apartment lease (we have 5 but we only included our current one bc we didn't want to translate all of them)

- 3 affidavits (2 friends, and my sister)

- we also each wrote our own affidavit about how we met and what we love about each other and our plans for the future together

- marriage certificate (obviously)

 

Don't forget to get everything translated. But yeah that's pretty much it. 

 

[Stiliyan 0]

3 minutes ago, Alex&Nayden said:

With the proof of marriage, here is what we sent:

 

- I think like 10 -15 photos (some just the 2 of us but we made sure we included photos with our families and friends to show that our families know about us)

- a bunch of travel tickets and hotel reservations with both of our names

- screenshots of social media posts we've made throughout the years (we put them in chronological order to show our relationship started back in 2017)

- a joint bank account (our BG bank, I didn't even think to do my US bank lol)

- our joint apartment lease (we have 5 but we only included our current one bc we didn't want to translate all of them)

- 3 affidavits (2 friends, and my sister)

- we also each wrote our own affidavit about how we met and what we love about each other and our plans for the future together

- marriage certificate (obviously)

 

Don't forget to get everything translated. But yeah that's pretty much it. 

 

Thank you, dear! Super helpful. Too bad we don't have most of that. To be honest, I didn't even know that we can provide our own affidavits, but I'll probably get that done as well. This is great help, thanks a million!

[BLC 112]

5 hours ago, mam521 said:

OP is self employed and is his own HR.  

Ok, then research how to do these things on his IRA/insurance, etc. same thing.