serpico1

Thanks for the responses, a lot of good insights. I agree with Darnell that there are a lot of facts that are still missing, most notably the immigration status of the father and his 2nd wife. Problem is this poor girl has no idea what the difference between K-1, K-3, and any other visa issues and has little means to find out the history of his father's USCIS file. Just from what she's told me, I infer that they did a K-3. The father immigrated to the US, then married his 2nd wife who was in Pakistan OVER THE PHONE (how romantic), which I've found is not uncommon here. Therefore, the 2nd marriage was technically in Pakistan. He then sponsored her to go to the US somehow.

As for whether or not the father actually divorced the 1st wife, my co-worker is understandably confident that he didn't. She says that there is no record of a divorce within the legal system. The triple talaq thing is not legal in Pakistan but I'm not entirely sure what the full divorce process entails. Also, she says that they have documents that the father signed after his marriage to the 2nd wife such as property documents and a power of attorney identifying the 1st wife as his wife.

I did a K-1 visa for my wife a few years ago and remember having to answer a bunch of questions about whether I was currently or previously married and they required proof of divorce if married before. Not sure how it works for K-3, but I assume that having multiple wives should be a disqualifying factor and lying about it doesn't fly after the fact either.

Based on these comments, I think the best thing for my co-worker to do is to just get all the facts and documentation together, figure out what kind of immigration status her father and the 2nd wife have, and make a clear case that something illegal happened. Once the father knows that the jig is up, maybe he becomes more cooperative.

I am an American working in Pakistan and have an inquiry on behalf of one of my local co-workers. She is a young woman whose father left her and her mother, immigrated to the US, married another Pakistani woman, and sponsored this second wife for a visa and residence permit for the US. He never divorced his first wife and is not providing the first wife and daughters (including my co-worker) any financial support. Given the economic status of women in Pakistan, this puts them in a difficult position and my co-worker is trying to get some recourse to force her father to provide support. The reason I am posting this question here is to see if anyone has advice on whether there is any potential recourse through immigration law given that the father did not properly disclose the continuing existence of his first marriage when sponsoring the immigration of his second wife. Other options may be to try to sue him for child support or even get him prosecuted under bigamy laws, but those require legal resources that my co-worker cannot afford or be able to handle from Pakistan.

We are in a similar situation. The last touch shown online was 4 days BEFORE our interview. When I asked USCIS whether this seemed strange, the Boston office said that they do not update status online. This might be the policy at other field offices as well, so thought I'd share.

You need more information about the nature of you job and employer--PR status can be protected while overseas in some situations.

How long you plan on being gone is another factor.

Basically, you don't have enough info here to even say what will happen.

It is a full time job with a private sector company on an indefinite contract (ie not temporary). We do plan on eventually coming back to the US, but that would be at least one or two years down the road. Couldn't she just keep her greencard by making a few trips back to the US each year? This might not in line with the spirit of the law, but it seems to conform with the rules.

what's more important, getting your wife a green card, or living together somewhere?

That is really the question I guess. The problem is that we would want to come back to the US eventually and since we have gone through all of the AOS process besides the name check, it would be a pity to have to start over. We just figure that spending a couple of months apart is worth avoiding the hassle of getting another visa and reapplying for AOS.

My wife's AOS application is pending name check but I just got a job outside of the US. I would like to take it, but am concerned about the effect my/our moving abroad would have on the AOS application. We are considering having me relocate first with her joining me after she gets her AP or greencard. If I leave the country, I figure that I would have to report that to USCIS and I am concerned that it would be viewed poorly in regards to our application. Worse, if she comes with me on an AP, would USCIS consider that an abandoning of the application? I guess the way around this is to maintain a US mailing address. This would be easy to do, but I don't want to get in trouble for not actually living there. What should we do?

Thank you, I didn't realize that is what that date means. This leads to a follow up question: Our interview was on October 11 and the last touch they show is October 7. Isn't this weird? When the rest of you had interviews, did it show a touch on that day or a day closely thereafter?

This may be a stupid question, but how do you see whether your case has been touched? I check my status on the USCIS website, but the message hasn't been updated in months (meanwhile we've had our interview and are awaiting the namecheck). I only assume that there is another way to check for touches?

Yes, I mean the I-129F brown/yellow envelope. It says something about the US Foreign Service and had the torn corner. It had all of the information we had submitted in the I-129F application in it. For some reason I wasn't that curious about what else was in there so didn't take too careful of a look at the contents. Judging from the reaction of the USCIS officer, there is information in there that weren't supposed to see.

When my wife and I entered the US together, the customs agent looked through her I-129 file packet and returned it to us. We were exhausted from the flight and didn't think that this was strange. Only recently did we realize that he was supposed to have kept it. We had our AOS interview yesterday and were told that our case had not yet been approved pending background investigation. It was at this point that I mentioned that I still had our I-129 file and handed it to him. He was shocked that I had it and seemed suspicious of why it was in our possession. I doubt that this has happened to many other people, but I just want to see if anyone has heard of this problem and can speculate on whether this will further delay our case. I am just puzzled that if the file is so important, why didn't they know that they didn't have it?

Our interview is scheduled for October 11 in Boston but something just came up for work and I have to be out of the country then. Does anyone know if it is possible for us to get an earlier date? If we ask to postpone it, how long will we have to wait to get a new one scheduled?

The I-485 asks for the nonimmigrant visa number. Is this the "control number" or the red number in the bottom right?

Thanks.

Has anyone had an experience with changing addresses (out of state move) while the AOS is pending? Does the case get transfered?

Thanks.