jdude

Thanks! =)

We had our interview today and she was accepted! Yay! We did it!!!!!!!!!!

So we applied at the end of November, followed up on the request for information in January, got the work authorization in February, and our interview was in today, followed by an email stating that the application was accepted and the green card is being sent!

We had our interview today and she was accepted! Yay! We did it!!!!!!!!!!

So we applied at the end of November, followed up on the request for information in January, got the work authorization in February, and our interview was in March, followed by an email stating that the application was accepted and the green card is being sent!

Hey good news,

We resubmitted the affidavit of support forms like they said (all of them), and now she has her employment authorization card AND we have an interview setup early in March! We're almost done with the visa process! Yay!

Hey good news,

We resubmitted the affidavit of support forms like they said (all of them), and now she has her employment authorization card AND we have an interview setup early in March! We're almost done with the visa process! Yay!

My pink slip has a box labeled F checked that looks very general and says "submit a completed and assigned for I-864 for the petitioner listed on the form I-130. Submit all required supporting document as indicated in the instructions". It then goes on to list that the tax return is a required supporting document and all that stuff.

Since there were two affidavits of support originally filed, I don't know which one they want me to resubmit, so maybe I should just submit both of them again. Mine was the one that did not have a tax return so I was thinking that it might have been the one that caused the trouble.

Hi,

I recently received a request for additional evidence for my petition for my wife. They said we need to include a completed affidavit of support and then go on to mention that it has to include an income tax return for each person who has filed an affidavit.

Now we already included two affidavits of support with the application, but I did not include a tax return for myself because I have been a "dependent" up until this year and I do not have a tax return from the previous years. As you have probably guessed, we have a family member filing an affidavit as well because I alone do not qualify to support her, since I am a graduate student.

Anyways, we were wondering how to follow up on this. I wrote a letter explaining why I do not have any previous tax returns and I let them know that I will have my 2006 tax return soon and can supply that when it is available if necessary. What I am wondering is: do I need to send the entire affidavit of support form to USCIS, or only the info on the tax return since we are pretty sure this is what they were missing. Since they don't specify too well what was missing from our application, we are unsure how to proceed now. Any other tips on how to follow up a request for additional evidence would be appreciated too.

thanks in advance!

Wow, I think you know more than the people who answer the phones over at USCIS!

Hi,

When I check on my wife's adjustment of status application online, it says that it is in the Missouri service center. When I click the button to check processing dates, it does not list any service center in Missouri (only Texas, Nebraska, Vermont, and California). What does that mean? Does that mean my application is in some non-existent service center? Did they move Missouri somewhere? Is this an error? Does anybody know?

I just got off the phone with a half hour conversation with a really annoying guy in a call center who couldn't tell me why my application said Missouri. He said maybe its in the Missouri local office but he couldn't even tell me what city that would be in (I think there is more than one local office in Missouri). We are living in Texas so does that even make sense?

One more question. I just received a notice online that they sent a request for additional information but we're about to leave for Christmas vacation. Does anybody know how long they give us before we have to reply? We do not have the notice yet and will not be back from Vacation for about 2 weeks. Thanks in advance.

RFE's remain open typically for 87 days from date of issuance.

Missouri is sometimes referred to as the National Benefits Center

Hi,

When I check on my wife's adjustment of status application online, it says that it is in the Missouri service center. When I click the button to check processing dates, it does not list any service center in Missouri (only Texas, Nebraska, Vermont, and California). What does that mean? Does that mean my application is in some non-existent service center? Did they move Missouri somewhere? Is this an error? Does anybody know?

I just got off the phone with a half hour conversation with a really annoying guy in a call center who couldn't tell me why my application said Missouri. He said maybe its in the Missouri local office but he couldn't even tell me what city that would be in (I think there is more than one local office in Missouri). We are living in Texas so does that even make sense?

One more question. I just received a notice online that they sent a request for additional information but we're about to leave for Christmas vacation. Does anybody know how long they give us before we have to reply? We do not have the notice yet and will not be back from Vacation for about 2 weeks. Thanks in advance.

We got the good news from first talking to a laywer/friend and he told us that she doesn't necessarily have to be paid to be in status. The official rules of H1B are as follows.

"As long as the employer/employee relationship exists, an H-1B alien is still in status. An H-1B alien may work in full or part-time employment and remain in status. An H-1B alien may also be on vacation, sick/maternity/paternity leave, on strike, or otherwise inactive without affecting his or her status."

So we were told to contact the employer. The employer (school district office) says she is still in status as an employee, even though the principal has suspended her employment. The principal is not the employer, the school district is. They are maintaining her status as "on leave" or "inactive" until they find another principal for her to work for, so that if they do they don't have to re-apply for the H1B (she signed the employment contract and all that). This will only last for a few more weeks though and the school district hinted that they are highly unlikely to find work for her at this time. So we know she's going to lose her status if we don't act soon...

That sounds good...

I have a small correction to make. I said "I would not describe our situation by saying that she currently has status..." but what I meant was "I would NOW describe our situation by saying that she currently has status..."

As long as you file for AOS while she is in status you won't have any issue.

Okay, i have some good news. She's not technically "out of status", as she still has a relationship with her employer (the school district has not withdrawn their petition for her yet, because they are waiting for her to find another principal to work for). The problem is that they even admitted that there are no job openings with other principals, and that in a few weeks, they would most likely withdraw the petition (they gave us no absolute time frame).

So anyways, this changes things a little. I would not describe our situation by saying that she currently has status, but she foresees herself getting laid off in the near future. In this case, we want to apply to change her status before her employment is officially terminated. It makes me feel a bit relieved to know that we're not breaking any rules! I guess that is why the lawyers told us that she "may" be out of status, but I feel like they should have known rather than making us do all the work to find out what the real story is.

Do you think they would be lenient towards a change of status immediately after she received her H1B, under these circumstances? She got her H1B, but now she knows that she will lose her job and so therefore she is going to apply for residency as my wife in order to not go out of status. It seems like a reasonable plan to me, and we have been living together for so long that it's only natural to get married. As I said before, that was always a part of the plan, we just thought she would be working with her H1B before we got married.

About the fees:

The way the school district here works is that they make you pay a most of it, equal to about $2250 and they pay the rest. They also have an agreement with a law firm, so you have no choice but to use that firm. I believe $1000 was for rapid processing (which was supposed to take 2 weeks but took 2 months, non refundable), and $1000 was the actual H1B fee, I think the $250 went towards the lawyers and the school district paid some other fees that were involved (I don't remember what but I know there was more). Also we just got a bill from the lawyer for $60 worth of photocopying (don't ask). There were about 50-100 international bilingual teachers who were hired by this district in this way, and all had to pay the same fees.

This wasn't a regular H1B but a "specialty worker" visa which was able to override the visa quota (due to the fact that the employer is non profit and government related), not sure if that makes a difference. You're lucky you didn't have to pay as much.

My complaint about the previous lawyer is this.

They did not tell us that if she went back home and entered the US on the H1B that she would be "out of status". They simply told her to go home, get the visa, and come back and try to find a job with the same school district that petitioned for her. Then when she got back, they told her that she was out of status and demanded that we pay them $150 if we wanted more information. That's when I started doing research online and posted here. I'm a poor grad student and we already payed a lot of money for the H1B, and besides the lawyers were rude to us so I didn't want to go in for their $150 consultation. I would consider seeing another lawyer, it's jut the cost that worries me.

We are researching our options now. Any additional insights would be appreciated.

Thanks for your replies everyone, thanks so much for the info

To answer your question, she is back in the USA. We had a mixture of bad advice from lawyers, and lack of commitment on the part of the school that petitioned for her. Basically, now she is back with me and she no longer has a job.

The lawyers acted like this would not be a problem until after she returned when they informed us about the "out of status" thing (talk about bad lawyers), which scares us both as we never wanted to be in violation of anything.

Yes, getting married initially would have been a lot faster, but when the employer offered to petitioned for her, we thought that was going to be the best option. We were sure proven wrong on that though.

No, she is not using the H1B for immigration purposes, she got the H1B with the intent of working as a teacher... although we were always planning on getting married (we have been together for 2 1/2 years now). It would have been much easier, as somebody said, to get married instead of applying for the H1B, so hopefully that makes it obvious that it's not visa fraud. We are getting married either way - I am just curious how the whole adjustment of status will work for her in the case that she does not get another job teaching soon. Nobody else seems to have ever been in the situation of having an H1B and losing their job before (including the lawyers) , so it's kind of a scary situation for us both. Any more information you could provide would be really appreciated. Thanks!

Where is the H-1B girlfriend now?

I've got a couple questions regarding marriage and immigration that I was hoping somebody could help me with. This situation is more complicated than the average, so unfortunately none of the standard FAQs mention my specific questions.

I am an American born and raised in Canada. I am now studying here in the USA (working on my Masters degree in Houston at Rice University). My girlfriend from Canada (now fiancé) has been living with me for the past 5 months. She came to visit me in Houston, applied for a job as a teacher and was hired. She then went through a rather complicated and drawn out process of getting an HB1 visa, which finally worked out. She had to go home to get her visa issued (something we Canadians have to do thanks to the visa waver program) but she has the visa now. Unfortunately, the whole visa process took so long that she no longer has a job (but she does have the HB1 visa). We are told that the visa can be used to work as a teacher still, as long as she gets a job with the same school district that the original visa was issued to. Unfortunately, we aren't sure how easy it will be for her to get a job now that the school year has started and most of the jobs in the Houston school district are filled.

Anyways, shortly before she left, we decided that we were going to get married soon!!!

My question is: If we get married this month, and she has trouble finding another teaching job on her HB1 visa, will it be possible for her to get a work authorization as my spouse and find another job? I ask this because we're no longer confident that she will be able to work on the HB1. She could apply to transfer the HB1 to a different employer but that is filled with restrictions and would cost thousands of dollars and take many more months. Besides, if we are going to get married anyways, can't she be authorized as my spouse and avoid all that tricky HB1 stuff?

I should add that when she came into the USA, she did not say she was going to get married, only that she was going to work using her HB1 Visa. Would that be an issue relating to her application for a work authorization after we are married?

If anybody has any advice for us, please let me know. Thanks in advance!

I've got a couple questions regarding marriage and immigration that I was hoping somebody could help me with. This situation is more complicated than the average, so unfortunately non of the standard FAQs mention my specific questions.

I am an American born and raised in Canada. I am now studying here in the USA (working on my Masters degree in Houston at Rice University). My girlfriend from Canada (now fiancé) has been living with me for the past 4 months. She came to visit me in Houston, applied for a job as a teacher and was hired. She then went through a rather complicated and drawn out process of getting an HB1 visa, which finally worked out. She had to go home to get her visa issued (something we Canadians have to do thanks to the visa waver program) but she has the visa now. Unfortunately, the whole visa process took so long that she no longer has a job (but she does have the HB1 visa). We are told that the visa can be used to work as a teacher still, as long as she gets a job with the same school district that the original visa was issued to. Unfortunately, we aren't sure how easy it will be for her to get a job now that the school year has started and most of the jobs in the Houston school district are filled.

Anyways, shortly before she left, we decided that we were going to get married soon!!!

My question is: If we get married this month, and she has trouble finding another teaching job on her HB1 visa, will it be possible for her to get a work authorization as my spouse and find another job? I ask this because we're no longer confident that she will be able to work on the HB1. She could apply to transfer the HB1 to a different employer but that is filled with restrictions and would cost thousands of dollars and take many more months. Besides, if we are going to get married anyways, can't she be authorized as my spouse and avoid all that tricky HB1 stuff?

The other issue I have is with my income. Since I'm a poor grad student, I don't have a large income and I heard that there might be issues with us marrying if my income is low. She was supposed to have an income as a teacher, but the visa took so long that she lost her job, so now we're kind of out of luck as far as income goes.

If anybody has any advice for us, please let me know. Thanks in advice!