weliveyoung

I'm freaking out. When I sent my I-130 in to the USCIS, my husband and I had not been married an entire month. We married overseas while I was on a business trip. He went back to Northern Ireland and I came home to the US. We sent all the "required" documentation with the I-130 and none of the documentation they said we "should" send. My husband insisted that we should only send in the supporting documentation if our required documentation wasn't good enough, and if we sent in any supporting documentation it would just be confusing, like saying something was wrong with our required documentation. Well, we send NO supporting documentation. I'm having a panic attack.

We now have an apartment lease in both our names, a joint bank account, he's mentioned on my car insurance as a non-driver (since he does not drive), and he's on my life insurance as a beneficiary. We have chat logs for several months and boarding passes showing we went to Northern Ireland for a weekend to meet his family right after we married. We have some photographs for Christmas and New Year that we took ourselves, a couple of wedding pics taken by the registrar (seriously with my phone), and he came to visit me on the VWP.

Is that enough evidence in case they send us an RFE? Please help, I'm really in a bad way and shaking. Thanks.

That sounds like a good bit of evidence to me, I think they would accept it no problem! My husband and I have been married and living together 2 years and don't have any joint accounts or leases or bills for various reasons. I'm hoping the 2 year` UK marriage visa granted to me will make up for it though...

So reading through this thread is making me super paranoid. It seems like documents go missing a lot. Is it a good idea to send two photocopies of documents where you can? Or will that just create more problems?

I'm filing in London and they specifically said one of their letters not to send duplicates, not sure how it is in other places though. I make sure to keep a full copy of each packet I send them just in case.

Thanks for clarifying mindthegap. I noticed that the page I was directed to was a bit old but couldn't remember when the fee revision was, that's a bit of a relief. We're planning on taking our cat as well so things are getting majorly expensive...the cat's flight actually costs more than ours.

And all the best with your interview FlorRosa!

I've just gotten my interview appointment letter (3 weeks from now hurray!) and followed the internet link written on it about what to expect at the interview. According to the link I'll be paying $330 at the embassy, plus $45 for "security"!??, plus extra for the courier service (I'm doing DCF in London). And I just found out about this $165 charge as well, it's effective from feb. 1st and our interview is on the 11th . I thought that the embassy fee was still only $230? And is there really a security fee as well? Anyone been to their interview recently?

I understand if you have been working that it's negligible whether you should have filed....but I haven't actually worked in the past 3 years so I'm assuming a letter stating that this is why I haven't filed along with my I864 will be fine? I sure hope so as my interview is in a month

I can't believe your at your interview already Holly2234 - good luck to everyone

If any of you a step ahead of me could clarify a few things I'll be eternally grateful. As I'm reading all my instructions very literally I'm confusing things a bit...

I received my NOA2, which directed me to http://london.usembassy.gov/ds2001.html. This says to initially send in just DS-230-Part 1, but my NOA2 says to send in Part 2 at the same time as well.

In addition to that my NOA2 says not to send anything to the office unless requested to do so, but I assume they mean besides the DS-230 and Form 2001?

And a bit confusingly step 2 is to send in Form 2001 with the date of the medical exam, but step 3 is to schedule the medical.

For some reason I thought I would receive a packet of paperwork at some point, but now it seems I send in DS-230, gather my paperwork, then send in Form 2001 when ready and schedule my medical without hearing back until I receive the interview date? And the I-864 doesn't get submitted until the interview?

One more question, my dad is going to be the sponsor and is sending over his papers from America. Do I need to ask him to send the original copies of his birth certificate and W-2s?

Nice post - thanks for that! I can delete my millions of bookmarks now.

Congratulations on getting yours started Holly! I did end up filing DCF - last week we received the NOA1. So it does seem LLR is fine

Thanks for the help everyone!

I was reading this post http://www.visajourney.com/forums/topic/357465-usc-petitioner-living-abroad/page__st__45 . hjones applied earlier this year

- had been here 5 years and on a temporary work visa - and the London embassy told them they weren't eligible.

Interesting to hear that it had been changed from ILR to LLR at one point, so that's probably good news. I'm going to send in my application this week and try for DCF. I've decided to take the embassies webpage at face value (they really should make it clearer) and post back when I find out what happens.

Good luck on yours Holly!

Thanks for your answers everyone - this site is such a huge help! Everytime I think I know what I'm doing I find out I don't

Maybe some of you could give me your opinion or experience on this.

I've been in the UK for two years consecutively, and am currently staying on my leave to remain spouse visa (good for two years but expires in 4 months). I had planned on filing DCF and the field office's website says I am eligible as long as I have permission to legally reside here and have been here longer than 6 months. Yet I've read other posts with people saying they've been denied because they didn't have indefinite leave to remain.

Contacting them has been useless, they just repeat what the webpage says.

Maybe someone here knows better than I do?

And if I do send it to them, would they wait until they got around to processing it to tell me I can't? and then take the payment anyway (that would be really mean)

Thanks everyone!

Thanks for your reply.

We live a very simple life you could say, and don't have bills since all utilities are in the relatives name. I can provide emails from when we were dating but we literally have nothing else. I'm in the UK on a marriage visa so surely this would count as evidence?

In the instructions pages it says affidavits from people who know us would be evidence? Who would it be best to get affidavits from then?

If all of that isn't enough then we're stuck. Can somebody make some suggestions?

Proof of marriage is the certificate obtained from the appropriate government agency. No affidavits needed to confirm the marriage.

You ought to prepare/gather evidence of a bona fide relationship. 4 photos and a couple of pieces of mail is likely not enough. Personal affidavits are typically seen as weak evidence.

You do not need a job to have a bank account.

Time to get serious and study up on the process. Minimum effort often results in delays and frustrations.

I tried emailing them about whether or not I can DCF , they just copy pasted me a webpage....

I'm here on a "leave to remain spouse visa" good for two years (it expires in 4 months), I was about to send my I-130 away this weekend for DCF with London. Now I'm not so sure. Do you think I would be eligible for DCF or should I just go straight for filing in the US?

I know, I phoned the London embassy twice to see if I got a different answer to whether I could file DCF, but got the same answer both times. Both people I spoke to sounded like they were just reading from a book though. Hardly worth the £1.23/min phone call! But my husband and I decided just to send the I-130 to Chicago lockbox and hope we got into this 'auto expedite' queue. Hopefully it has worked for us, and perhaps it means that the fast queue is applicable to people from countries where DCF still exists. I'll let everyone know if and when the NOA2 hard copy arrives!

Hi everyone,

I'm about to send in my I-130 to the London office and have a question about affidavits proving our marriage. My husband's parents have both written and signed one, but does anyone know if they need to be stamped/notarized? I can't find anything that says they do but I thought I should check.

Also, how much evidence does the London office like to see? We don't have joint bank accounts since I don't work, and we live with relatives so have no bills in our name. We're sending in 4 pictures, doctors letters sent to the same address, and the 2 affidavits.

Any help is appreciated - thanks!

Thanks for all your help. We've decided to go with the CR-1 option, we're very lucky to have found all this out before booking our flights.

Sorry - to clarify we intended to go over on a visa waiver and have him adjust status in the US, and not return to the UK. We thought it was a perfectly legal way to do it until a few weeks ago. I would much rather do it with the CR-1 but our current living/financial situation in the UK would make it difficult, so I was wondering how much of a gamble it would be to just go to the US and apply anyway. We had our bags packed and everything!

I would really appreciate it if anyone has advice or experience about adjusting status while in the US.

I'm a US citizen residing in the UK with my UK citizen spouse, we've been living here 3 years now. About two years ago we decided to move back to america and were informed by a relative that my husband could simply come over on a tourist visa and go through the whole process over there. We've been saving for the big move ever since, and were about to book our plane tickets a few weeks ago when I decided to double check all the info. Good thing I did because although the USCIS site technically says he's allowed to change status and nothing more....I've found a few other sites saying he may be deported for visa fraud.

There are two points which they could catch us out on .... we will have return tickets for two weeks time and my husband is on vacation from his job. After the two weeks he would lose his job. We're also bringing a cat, I don't know if they'd find out about that later on...

But we're also booking viewings for rental properties here in the UK and he will be applying for new jobs, since he was going to get one if we stayed in the UK anyway. So we would have some evidence we planned to return.

We really don't know which way to go now, does anyone know how harsh they are on catching out people out?

Thanks!!