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Hi, all. My wife (Filipina) and I (US citizen) embarked on the Filipino name change rigmarole just recently. I have an I-130 petition in progress, FWIW. Tomorrow, my wife was scheduled to visit the DFA to change her name on her passport to her married name, which would be the first of several name change efforts. Unfortunately, after booking the non-refundable DFA appointment and hostel stay (she's traveling to Dumaguete from the Cebu area as the Cebu DFA is completely booked out several months), she learned a surprise requirement that isn't found on the DFA website: she has to have attended the CFO PDOS seminar! Now here's the problem: the CFO's scheduling website requires visa number and visa expiration date! She doesn't have her visa yet, so we don't know what to do. We did some additional research and found several non-DFA online references to having to complete the CFO seminar before the DFA allows passport name changes. Has anyone run into this problem? How do we proceed?

An additional question is will she have to attend the PDOS again later on when her visa is approved, or can she just go back to the CFO office to get a sticker on her then-changed passport (although I remember reading that CFO doesn't issue stickers anymore)?

Gripe: Please, DFA. Please update your requirements to be accurate for spouses of foreigners. We could've saved PHP 1000 plus the hostel booking if you just better documented your own processes.

Hi members,

I got my I-751 approved and received a 10-year green card. I applied for N-400 in March 2025 and finally have my interview scheduled in a few days.

I want to get advice on what to prepare for:

1. Is the civics test still the 2008 version?
2. Are there any moral character documents I should bring?
3. Should I bring originals of all documents submitted with my N-400?
4. My husband will accompany me will he be asked questions or interviewed along with me?
5. Any tips for the English and civics test or typical interview questions?
6. Any recent experiences or changes in USCIS procedures that I should be aware of?

Any advice or guidance from anyone with recent experience would be greatly appreciated.

TIA

My wife and i only recently jointed our bank accounts together this past April. She's the immigrant spouse (petitioner for I-751). By the time we submit her ROC, we would've only had 6 months of joint bank statements. In addition, i also only recently added her as "authorized user" on my credit in in March of this year...the CC statements only show my name though...but we use my CC to pay nearly EVERYTHING just to get the rewards points!

I'm deliberating how to go about doing this as far as what i'm going to submit. I've been told that i'll be ok with just the recent 6 months of bank statements because everything else that i have is pretty strong like: co-deed on my condo, co-named on my condo HOA ledger (6months of statements of paying our HOA), co-homeowners insurance for the condo, co-registered and co-titled on my car, my company 401k and my wife's company 401k has each others names as beneficiary, wife listed as beneficiary to my IRA, me listed on my wife's investing account with Robinhood, i have her on my company group life insurance and company group Accidental Death and Dismemberment beneficiary, she is listed on my company health and dental insurance, i'll be sending in a record our health and dental claims going back two years, 2 years of joint tax transcripts, we'll send in 3 months of our energy bill (NOT jointed, only has us both as mailing correspondence), 2 affidavits from my uncle and a friend of hers who is a naturalized US citizen, and then a whole lot of pictures because we went on a whole lot of trips which includes pics, hotel and airbnb bookings, flight bookings and venues. We're both listed as emergency contacts on each other's work portals and we're both listed as emergency contacts on our healthcare provider charts. and i'm sure there's more stuff.

Given that info, my big thing is, i'm concerned about showing "co-mingling" of finances for the full 2 years that we've been married...and this falls back on our bank accounts only being joint since April of this year.

So please help me decide. I'm thinking of going one of two routes:

1. should i just go with the 6 months of joint bank statements along with all the other stuff i just listed?

or

2. in addition to everything in option 1, i was thinking of adding a letter of explanation why we didnt "co-mingle" our banks. Even though those weren't JOINT until 6 months ago, we did "co-mingle" to a degree. In the first year that she's been here, i pretty much paid all the expenses and bills and just kept a seperate account for her to keep her money that that she brought from abroad. i pretty much just told her to save that money until she got settled with a job (which she has now and actually makes more money than me now). It was our intention to get our accounts JOINTED sooner than we did, but we just didnt get around to doing it until this April. So i was thinking of adding bank statements from her bank account (before we jointed them together) showing where she did voluntarily pay for groceries here and there from Walmart and from Harris Teeter (local grocery chain). She also did help pay for one of our trips entirely (flight, hotel, venue) when we went to Disney from the money she was saving (knowing that she would be working soon). She also, on occasion help pay my credit card that we both use that's in my name.

Please help me decide. Choose one of the two and why you think so. Thanks

Hello everyone !

I filed for AOS in june 5th, and i recievd an RFE on 13th june ( I forgot to include form i-864 along side biometric appointment ) the RFE was responded to on july 2nd the same day my biometric Appointment was, I havent heard anything back from the USCIS since, No EAD or interview schaduled,
My question here is the RFE holding back my EAD approval and the interview? the RFE was responded to 80 days ago.
Based on your obersevation how long it takes the USCIS to generally process form I-864 RFE, is there any standarized timeline ?
Thank you all!

is it ok to ask the officer to repeat the sentence several times, including in the middle of writing the answer?

also how strict are they on spelling?, my wife often forgets to pluralize words

thanks