midwinterrose

File ASAP, don't overstay waiting to accumulate evidence. USCIS doesn't expect you to have a bunch of evidence of living together if you just got married. Send whatever evidence you have of your long distance relationship. When we applied for AOS, we had like one joint bank statement, and one water bill in both our names. You can also immediately be added to her credit cards as an authorized user--that's quick easy evidence.

I did this for my husband. I listed myself as interpreter and as preparer, and had no problem.

First of all, they haven't cashed the check yet. That means they haven't even looked at your application yet. You said it arrived 1 week ago, so 5 business days. Give it some time, USCIS processes an ungodly amount of paperwork and it takes them a while to get around to even opening the envelope. Also don't be surprised if you never get a text even if you sent in the G-1445 form. Text messages were always hit or miss on our applications. Think of this as the practice run for all of the patient waiting you must do throughout the whole process.

When you apply for the passport, you have to provide evidence of your citizenship. In the case of a naturalized citizen, you provide the Naturalization certificate to the passport office along with the application. It normally takes the passport office a few weeks to process your application and return your naturalization certificate back to you. But if you do a same-day passport application, they give you back the naturalization certificate the same day that you apply, along with your new passport.

My husband got same-day passport because we had travel already booked. You can call within 14 days of your booked travel and get an appointment to go into the passport office and they issue your passport the same day. The other bonus of this method is we got his Naturalization certificate back in hand the same day.

This is the exact document we signed and sent along with our tax return, just change the generic info to your own. We had to paper-file (mailed it in) our return because I couldn't find any tax software that would allow me to upload this extra document. I used TurboTax or something similar, and then selected the mail-in option at the end and printed out the return. I then added this page, signed by both my husband and I, and mailed the whole thing to the IRS. That was at the beginning of COVID, so it took MONTHS to process our return. It took so long that the IRS paid us a few dollars in interest, that I then had to report as income on our next year's return. 🤷‍♀️ TaxResidencyStatement_Sample (1).pdf

I simply believe that the Tier 1 and Tier 2 officers who operate the 1-800 help line have a very different role than the officers who review the cases, and the officers at the field offices who conduct the interview. I imagine it within the realm of possibility that some officer later down the line may have the authority to contradict/override what other USCIS agents may have told you. I'm not saying this will happen, but I imagine it's possible. I hope for your sake all goes well, but if I were you, I would be prepared for the worst--having to argue against a wrongful denial--and hope for the best, just in case.

If I were in your shoes, my concern would be that you wait however many months for the I-751 interview to be rescheduled, and then when an officer finally picks up your file to schedule your interview, says, "What doofus put this in the queue to be scheduled for an interview; it already has a denial notice? I can't schedule an interview for a case that has been denied." And then at that stage you will have to argue that it was denied in error due to USCIS never sending the interview notice, or sending it to the wrong address. Hence why you should gather as much proof as you can that you were in the right, and USCIS in the wrong. I may be proven wrong, but I can't imagine USCIS just glossing over the fact that you missed your original interview.

Dude, it literally says "TERMINATION OF CONDITIONAL RESIDENCE STATUS" at the top. You can believe whatever you want about how official or final it is, but you can't deny what it says in plain English. Still, it was addressed to the wrong address. I would bet anything that if an interview notice was mailed out, that it was addressed to your old address as well. The key question, which I have asked three times now and you seem reluctant to answer, is, WHAT DATE DID YOU FILE THE AR-11 CHANGE OF ADDRESS?. If it was before the March 2021 interview, then you're golden. If not, then you're probably screwed.

This seems to only be a snippet of the letter, but it looks like USCIS is stating here that they did not receive a change of address from you. When did you submit your change of address form? They definitely referenced your I-751 here when they state that "You filed a Joint Petition to Remove the Conditional Basis [...]". The joint petition is your I-751.

If USCIS cannot produce an interview notice that they sent to you, then things are looking good for you. I think the fact that they have accepted your request for reschedule of the interview is a good sign. At this point you're basically trying to get out in front of any accusations USCIS might try to make of negligence on your part. Use the FOIA to the best of your ability as a window into what evidence USCIS has for their version of events so that you are properly prepared to make your counter arguments.

It appears that the only change of address for the case occurred on January 10, 2022. What date did you move, and what date did you submit the AR-11 change of address form? Double-check what exactly your FOIA request encompassed. If it did not explicitly ask for interview notices, or all communications and records pertaining to your case, I would recommend that you submit another FOIA request specifically requesting all records. If you can prove that you correctly submitted the AR-11 before November 3rd, 2020, when they scheduled the interview, and FOIA turns up an interview notice addressed to your old address, then you have the smoking gun that USCIS is at fault. If it turns up an interview notice with your new address, then you're probably dead in the water, as USCIS can then shift the blame to you. If it turns up no interview notice at all, then that will be in your favor. I notice that the online notification states that on March 8th, 2021, USCIS cancelled the interview that was scheduled on November 3rd, 2020. I'm curious if that cancellation letter will turn up in the FOIA request, and what address it will have on it. I am assuming that you never received that letter either.

It was removed because you didn't black out your personal information on the letter before posting.

I am talking about the interview letter, which @IandI100 says was not included in the documents from the FOIA request. There is obviously a denial letter, apparently addressed to their old address. I would assume that an interview notice would be part of their file, and would appear in the FOIA docs. @IandI100, I would not be so certain that the stamped-date letters are not sent to applicants. Right here on VJ there is an example of an applicant having received the exact same type of letter as you see in your FOIA docs:

What leads you to believe this? If there is no copy of an interview letter in the FOIA documents, I would think that would be in your favor. If USCIS doesn't even have evidence of having sent the letter, how can they claim that you received it?

Just chiming in to say that my husband's ceremony was hosted at a university. The notification we received from USCIS about the ceremony did not indicate that he could bring guests; actually it said you may be limited in who you may bring with you, but it looked like a standard form letter. I contacted the university and they told me it was an event open to the public and there was no limit on the number of guests that could come. Including myself we had a total of 12 guests. The ceremony was actually quite special, and worth attending. If your ceremony is at a USCIS field office, it's probably a different story.

Yes, I-751 must be approved before N400, but there is a belief around here that if you haven't seen any movement on I-751 in many months, if you apply for N400, then that will force USCIS to move on the I-751, so some people apply for N400 just to hurry the i-751 along. Or some people apply for N400 who otherwise wouldn't because they had such a terrible time with the i-751 that they want to be free of USCIS for good, so they naturalize. I'm not saying it's true, but it's crossed my mind before.

May be a tad conspiratorial, but it has crossed my mind that maybe they de-prioritize the I-751 and allow it to take so long in order to encourage more immigrants to naturalize and gain the right to vote.... I have seen may here mention applying for N400 just to hopefully resolve their I-751.

In my opinion, the answer to this is pretty obvious: you were travelling as a British citizen named "Mrs. Y", and when they scanned your fingerprints, their system showed that those fingerprints belong to an eastern European citizen, "Ms. X". Of course they are going to take you to secondary inspection to figure out what is going on. Whether you will be taken to secondary inspection in future is only speculation until you travel again, but my guess is that you will be scrutinized more thoroughly than before.

Got the passport yesterday. We ended up using his full middle name on the application. The instructions said the name should be "consistent with your proof of citizenship and identification". We purchased airline tickets before we even had the naturalization certificate in hand, and I wasn't sure how his name would appear on the certificate; his green card only had his middle initial, not the full name, but correspondence from USCIS contained his middle name. So I took a guess that the nat cert would have his full middle name, and booked his flight that way. The naturalization certificate did contain his full middle name, the same as his driver's license, so that is what we used on the passport application, and that is what his new passport shows. He has to renew his foreign passport next year, so maybe it will be possible to add his middle name to his foreign passport so that they match exactly in the future.

It's worth a shot. Take the instructions for the passport application with you. If one post office won't allow it, try a different one. If you've gone to two or three and they won't let you do it, then just renew your ID. I can't imagine an ID renewal will take more than two or three weeks. You're not traveling until March, so there's plenty of time to get the ID and the passport, and the documents you send in with the passport application back in that timeframe.

In my opinion, meeting technical requirements to qualify to receive assistance (currently having $0 income), is different than actually needing the assistance. In my opinion, if you have enough money in savings to act as the sole sponsor for your wife, you are nowhere near "needing" assistance. I wouldn't feel comfortable taking tax-payer money simply because I didn't feel like dipping into my savings, but that's just me. You are free to do as you like. As far as immigration goes, never having received public assistance looks better for sponsorship than having been on food stamps during the immigration process does, but only the immigration officer handling your case will be able to tell you if it will affect your case or not.

Why would you rely on public (tax-payer) assistance if your savings are sufficient to support yourself and your wife, and fund your wife's immigration, even if your current income is zero? If you are accepting publicly-funded financial assistance, then you are a public charge; aka a burden on the public. Let alone the morality aspect of receiving unnecessary funding--why would you ever possibly open the "public charge" can of worms when you are trying to go through the immigration process? How can you expect to argue that you have enough money to support your wife and at the same time accept money/assistance that is intended for those who are unable to support themselves? Is a sufficient Form I-864 the only consideration for meeting any public charge issues at the time of the visa interview? No, consular officers also look at other public charge factors affecting the financial situation of both the financial sponsor(s) and the applicant. Age, health, education, skills, financial resources and family status of the applicant and the sponsor are factors. Consular officers will verify to the extent possible that applicants have adequate financial support to prevent them becoming a public charge in the United States. Public charge means that someone is likely to be primarily dependent on the U.S. government for subsistence. Only the officer who handles your case can say whether this will affect your ability to sponsor, but it seems to me to be a foolish choice all around, especially considering that your reasoning for it seems to be, "eh, why not?"

My husband took an entire briefcase packed with marriage evidence; bank statements, bills, taxes, photos, etc. He never even had to open the case, they didn't ask him for anything. His I-751 had been approved without interview about a month prior. We also front loaded the N400 application with marriage evidence when we filed, so those factors may have contributed to the IO not asking for any documents. Regardless, it was better to have everything prepared and not need it, than to be caught off guard without it.

This is what is currently on the USCIS website for I-485: Edition Date 07/15/22. You can find the edition date at the bottom of the page on the form and instructions. Dates are listed in mm/dd/yy format. If your edition date on the form you submitted is 07/15/22, then it is the current edition, and USCIS made a mistake in returning it to you, and you should be able to simply re-submit the entire package. I do recommend carefully re-reading the letter they sent you stating the reason for return of your packet (and possibly even posting it here with your personal info redacted), because sometimes the letters list several possible reasons for returning your packet, and it's not immediately clear which one applies to you.