HikkoshiShitai

Thank you for your welcomes.
We're obtaining the money order from the regional post office (a bigger one) and mailing out our I-130 today.

Thank you very much for your answer and welcomes.

It's a relief to hear.

Onward we go!

Hello everyone,

I am an American Citizen (probably, but I'll get to that later) in his early thirties living in Japan for my sixth year.

I met my wife (Japanese national) some years ago and we finally got married this month.

We'd like to move to the good ol' US of A and start a new life and tackle the challenges therein together there. Buuuut, unbeknownst to us there was an entire, daunting multi-faceted set of steps one must go through before even starting said next step in life.

We are in the pre-beginning stage of it all.

The Embassy website has a nice introduction and guide to get to the I-130 so that wasn't so bad.
http://japan.usembassy.gov/e/acs/tacs-7114.html

But information after that starts getting a little complicated and a myriad of questions arose.

That's when we found the community on VJ which; it seems to be the best resource on the web for this kinda stuff.

So here we are, happy joining, hoping to get some help along the way and if possible give it, too.

Obtaining necessary paperwork to officially get married over here, we've done a fair amount of document hunting, government office hopping and all-around stressing. Now, we are about ready to submit the I-130 but we have a couple points we're not quite sure about.

Still here? Here comes the question I alluded to earlier.

On the I-130 form, the left "Information about you" side,

questions #13

"If you are a U.S. citizen, complete the following:"

"My citizenship was acquired through (check one):"

There are 3 options:

[ ] Birth in the U.S.

[ ] Naturalization.

[x] Parents. Have you obtained a certificate of citizenship in your own name?

Under "Parents", there are 2 sub check-boxes:

[ ] Yes. Give certificate number, date and place of issuance.

[x] No.

Herein lies one of our concerns.

Now, I am certainly a US citizen. I have an SS# and an American passport, a voter registration card but I don't have a "certificate of citizenship". Not sure I ever had one. Pretty sure I never needed one up to this point.

My mother was naturalized when I was 17 and she got me my passport then. Since then, I've renewed it, voted in elections and have never had any issues. So, I THINK I'm a citizen but don't have a certificate to provide.
Thus, for question #13, I check PARENTS > NO.

Will this be a problem?

I have looked into getting a "certificate of citizenship". It's no easy task. I would have to submit a FORM N-600 [Application for Certificate of Citizenship], another boat-load of supporting documents and pay a $600 fee. I don't know how long this could take, if it's necessary or not and worry if it might hurt our visa chances down the line but if possible, I'd rather not do this. Really, we will need those $600 and more for the whole visa process. Not to mention starting a new life in the US. I could submit a "Fee Waiver Request" form but I worry that that too would hurt our visa chances down the line.

Anyway, this has been my HELLO to VJ and a brief update on where we're at.

We would love to hear your thoughts.

What do you guys think?

- D. & R.

TL;DR Is marking PARENTS > NO on form I-130, Question #13 "If you are a U.S. citizen..." a problem?