My Experience with I-130

[BlueEagle 0]

My wife (a Taiwan national) has been approved for her I-130 in late October. The last remaining step is for her to come to the United States using her Immigrant Visa. The flight has already been scheduled for mid-January. Although I am happy she was able to gain approval in a short time, I've still been nervous the last few days about her entry to the U.S.

For one thing, the flight from Taipei to Los Angeles usually takes more than 12 hours, and flights are usually fully booked. Going through the passport check and customs is always a drag, and even more so as a new immigrant, since they need to go through more paperwork.

The AIT allowed me to use Direct Consular Filing because I lived there for more than 6 months. I began the process in mid-July and it completed in late October, taking a little over 3 months. However, it was a rough ride, especially because I needed to file my tax returns from the last 3 years. Before that time, I didn't know about income tax exclusion, so when I heard I needed to file taxes I got a little scared. Only after some searching on the Web did I realize I could use the income tax exclusion to reduce my owed amount to 0.

Now that my income taxes are out of the way, I can look back and say that had I been fully prepared, I could easily have completed the process in 2 months. However, there won't be a next time for me. This is for 2 reasons: 1) Once my wife enters the U.S., she will get a green card and we won't need to worry about all this anymore. 2) In the unlikely event that we need to file again for the I-130 (because of some unfortunate loss of her documents), I might not be allowed to use Direct Consular Filing, since I have already been in the United States since July.

I really have a lot of sympathy for those who cannot use Direct Consular Filing, because I have read many stories already about how long USCIS has taken to process cases, especially in the last year.