US Immigration from Austria

Hi all,

We just had our case approved at USCIS and I'm now getting the final things ready for the NVC stage.

For that, I have a few questions about the I-864.

Our situation is as follows: My husband (USC petitioner) lived overseas with me until the middle of last year, then moved ahead of us and started working as an independent contractor (1099) for his brother's company. However, this only started around late August/September and was also interrupted for most of December, when he came to visit us. So the income on the upcoming tax return will be far below what is required. The AGI from previous years is 0 due to the Foreign Earned Income Exclusion, plus it would have been too low anyway. His brother is now willing to hire him as an employee (with W-2) with an annual salary that would meet/exceed the income requirements.

If he shows an employer letter and whatever paystubs he has by the time we can submit to NVC, would that be enough? Or do we need more, considering there is no past qualifying income?

I might be able to help show them that we will have enough income, but the question is if it makes sense and how exactly to do it. I started working as a self-employed virtual assistant this past November and have two clients - I am not their employee, but a truly independent contractor (able to work wherever I want, so this will continue once I move and they are aware of this move), so I invoice them for my work, rather than receiving a salary. I do not have any tax returns (not even foreign ones) to prove this, since it is so recent.

I could ask them for letters, stating our agreement (including how much I get paid approximately) and the intention of continuing our business relationship. Is this something that would be useful? Or does it complicate things and we risk an RFE? I could also provide the invoices I sent out so far, plus a copy of the bank account with the money coming in.

Thanks in advance for your advice!

Hello,

My I-130 has not been approved yet, but I'm trying to prepare what I can for the NVC stage.

I know that for paying the NVC fee you need a US checking or savings account. My husband (petitioner) has an account with a local credit union, however it uses another credit union to process the payments through. So he would have to enter first the routing number of the secondary CU, then the account number which I guess refers to his local CU, and then another account number, which is then his account number at his local CU.

Does anyone know, if this setup will be possible or are there only two fields (one for the routing nr, one for the account nr)?

Alternatively, is a transfer through TransferWise possible (using that dedicated US account, we previously used it for IRS purposes)?

I appreciate any advice.

Thank you!

Hello everyone,

My husband filed an I-130 petition for me on March 31st and since then there has been no movement on the case (it immediately said "active review", but that is clearly a lie). The waiting has been driving me crazy and so I started reading through lots of things in the IR1 forum.

This lead me to the discovery of the K3 visa and that apparently it can help speed things up. Now the thing is that we are already 7.5 months into the process, with an estimated 4 months to go according to USCIS. Since it's going to take us a little minute to compile everything needed for the petition, plus mailing it in, we may be getting closer to 3 months until a potential approval of the I-130. It seems almost not worth going through the trouble of trying this now, but what are your thoughts on this? I know it is free, the only cost would be the postage and the new passport pictures.

Maybe for some context: The main reason why I am getting antsy is that we have two young children and we used to all live together here in Austria, but my husband had to go ahead of us because of better work prospects in the US (unfortunately not one of those expedite/DCF kind of cases). Since this is taking longer than I hoped it would and the older daughter is missing her dad so much, I'm again looking into what I can possibly do to speed things up.

On the other hand, I'm also trying to get things ready for the NVC stage, so once we are approved, we can upload everything quickly. There's actually quite a lot of things to work on, like police certificates (in my case from a total of 4 countries, 3 of which seem to have a slightly complicated procedure), figuring out details for the Affidavit of Support etc. Am I better off spending my time on that?

I appreciate your advice/thoughts!

Another day, another problem. I am trying to take college classes for spring 2023. My extension letter expires December 2022. I have an unrestricted social security card. Has anyone tried going to school in this scenario or do I need to get the stamp, and would uscis even give me a stamp in this scenario?

Hello,

I wanted to ask a question regarding if I would need a police certificate from my country of nationality. My parents are Romanian citizens, so I am as well. I was born in Austria and have lived there my whole life. However, I did have extended visits to Romania when I was a young child, and my parents own a house there. I have no official record of residency there, but I am considering if I should apply for a PC anyways because I have a Romanian passport and my parents own a house there. I am wondering if a CO might assume I lived there at some point. I would appreciate any feedback on this. Thank you!