K1 RFIE: Two year meeting requirement

[Violet13 0]

Hello everyone!

I’m looking for advice on providing valid two-year meeting evidence to USCIS. We recently received a Request for Initial Evidence (RFIE) and are feeling a bit confused. 🙏 Thanks in advance for your help!

 

With the original submission, we did include screenshots of boarding passes, hotel reservations and pictures showing us together.

However, we've just received a RFIE, stating that we still must establish that we have been in each other's physical presence during the two years immediately preceding the filing of this petition, and we are not sure why the things that we have provided are not sufficient.

 

Here's what the letter from USCIS says:
 

Quote

 

As evidence to support the two-year personal meeting requirement, you submitted travel itineraries and photographs. You submitted a personal statement stating you met in [LOCATION].

The evidence is not sufficient because although travel itineraries indicate you have planned to travel to a specific destination, it does not establish the travel plans actually took place.

 

 

We are trying to figure out how to improve the way we submitted confirmations.

 

- How did you organize the photos? After checking a few YouTube tutorials, we inserted photos from a specific travel on one paper sheet, and added a short description with the dates at the top, and printed it.

Might it be our mistake? Should we have added a description to each photo even though they are from the same trip?

 

- Among tips shared in the letter it suggest to include photocopies of our passports including pages showing entry and exit stamps showing that youwehave both been present in a given location at the same time, but the thing is that I (beneficiary) live in Poland, and my passport isn't stamped when I travel In Europe. Also, my fiancee sometimes visited me here in Poland at my place.  

 

Any insights and tips would be very much appreciated.

 

 

[smilingstone 391]

The issue isn't with the format of how you presented evidence, it's to do with the quantity, or lack of, evidence.

 

What county did you both travel to? Hard to advise without knowing.

 

Photos are secondary evidence, as they can be dated any time. You need to focus on documents that proved you traveled to the same place and were together at that time.

 

 

[Violet13 0]

@smilingstone thank you for replying!

 

Our last trip before submission was to Portugal; he traveled from USA, myself - from Poland (where I live);

we included:

- screenshots of boarding passes

- screenshot of the emailed flight receipts

- screenshots of a bus ticket from Lisbon to Lagos (and it includes both our names)

- Booking.com Room Confirmation in Lagos, Portugal (has just his name, as he did the reservation)

 

Apart from that there were two other earlier trips he took from USA to Poland, and we also submitted his boarding passes. 

 

Looking through our package now, I think that we should have also included his passport stamps... right? 

But as for myself - my passport wasn't stamped as they don't do it if you fly from one EU country to another. 

[Lil bear 4,446]

1 minute ago, Violet13 said:

@smilingstone thank you for replying!

 

Our last trip before submission was to Portugal; he traveled from USA, myself - from Poland (where I live);

we included:

- screenshots of boarding passes

- screenshot of the emailed flight receipts

- screenshots of a bus ticket from Lisbon to Lagos (and it includes both our names)

- Booking.com Room Confirmation in Lagos, Portugal (has just his name, as he did the reservation)

 

Apart from that there were two other earlier trips he took from USA to Poland, and we also submitted his boarding passes. 

 

Looking through our package now, I think that we should have also included his passport stamps... right? 

But as for myself - my passport wasn't stamped as they don't do it if you fly from one EU country to another. 

Hotel receipts/ATM receipts/Credit /debit card statements for each of you showing in country expenses on the dates matching your itineraries , boarding passes etc  

[smilingstone 391]

Yes, include the USCs passport stamps, that will help.

 

The rest sounds like what me and my now-husband submitted. My passport stamps were hit and miss, and I neglected to include them, but did include my I94 as I traveled to the US. It doesn't look like there's an equivalent for USCs, and you do not get stamps as it's the EU, so USCs passport stamps are the best thing you have available.

 

Did you include messages? It's a small detail, but we included screenshots of messages that included that days I arrived in US, showing convos about him picking me up, and made a note that our texts paused during this time as we were together. This would also be secondary evidence, but it might help.

[Violet13 0]

@smilingstone that an interesting idea about messages during our time together! We did include screenshots of our communication in messengers, but focused more on those that were referring to our intentions to be together; we'll check if we have something solid to add. Thanks a lot!

 

@Lil bear appreciate your input as well, we'll look into that

[Theersink 34]

I would suggest making PDF scans of the actual documents too for anything you have hard paper copies of. In addition, most hotels and Airbnbs will give you a checkout receipt showing everything was paid for and put it side by side with the charge from the bank or CC statement. This shows you actually stayed there and not just a reservation confirmation. If the hotel had a restaurant include a receipt or charge from that. Use anything that establishes presence, we used some flyers from attractions we had visited along with pictures from those attractions. We basically established a picture and document timeline in chronological order of the trip. Arrival, recreation and sightseeing, departure.  Obviously ours being CR1 is slightly different due to having prove a marriage is legitimate but the premise is the same.
Think of USCIS as a 5 year old and you are answering questions related to your visit. Sounds funny I know but many will agree here I bet.

Edited Monday at 03:01 PM by Theersink