Tylosand

Right, I forgot to mention that I am aware of the rules stating that you should get a CA license basically right away. However due to COVID limiting DMV operations, as well as due to other factors, I have missed this "deadline" by a lot. I guess I should get it ASAP then, and then go back to the DMV once my GC is extended to also get the validity of my DL extended.

Hello!

I recently moved from Arizona to California. I have a GC but have not removed conditions yet. I've got a DL from Arizona, which expires at the same time as my GC - November 15th this year. I haven't gotten around to getting my CA license yet, but I'm obviously planning to. With a valid DL from another state I just need to redo the written test. 

My question is, does it matter if I do it before or after I remove GC conditions? My window to apply to remove conditions opens in August (90 days before GC expires), so in a way it feels like I could process that first and get conditions removed, which would also make any new DLs I get valid for a longer time. At the same time, I would not want my AZ license to expire, because then I have to redo the behind-the-wheel test as well. I'd like to make this as easy for myself as well as for the DMV which I know don't always deal with GC situations correctly. Anyone else who was in a similar situation with any advice? Thanks!

Thanks for the reply! You're right, I totally did not consider that the things that have changed on my Personbevis should only help our case. Now I just need to check if the moving-out date on the Personbevis matches the I-94, but I'm fairly certain it does.

I have my AoS interview scheduled for the 15th of November, and have almost everything I need in order. Feeling good about in general!

The one thing I am unsure about is concerning the Swedish birth certificate, i.e. Personbevis. I forgot to take a copy of the personbevis I last used, so I ordered a new one - should arrive before the interview, hopefully. However, some things will have changed between the personbevis that they already have and this new one that I'm bringing - it will show a different address (here in the US), and that I am now married, both of which we have informed Folkbokföringen about. But obviously nothing has changed concerning where and when I was born, which I assume really is the part of the Personbevis that constitutes the birth certificate. So even if there are some differences, it should be fine, right? Has anyone done the same thing, and if so, did it cause any problems or confusion at the interview? I did find a page on Skatteverkets webpage with an explanation for foreign governments about how Swedish "birth certificates" work, which I printed, so maybe that will be helpful if any questions arise.

@K1visaHopeful Ok, thank you for the comprehensive answer! I think I got it now. So what we'll do is probably that we'll use the most recent income (i.e. projecting the income for 2019) in part 6 question 7, and we'll support that with 6 months of pay stubs + contract. Then for 24a-24c we'll put in the total income for the household for the years 2018, 2017 and 2016, and also provide an IRS transcript for each year, which should reflect my MIL's individual portion of the income. We'll also add in the tax extension document (again) to show why the 2018 taxes were finalized after the deadline.

So if I understood you correctly, question 24a-24c purpose is not really to support a co-sponsor's ability to currently support an intending immigrant - it just shows if the co-sponsor has been paying taxes correctly previously. Although, it is in fact possible to use income stated on the latest tax return as the "current" income in part 6 question 7. In those cases, the tax return obviously acts as a piece of evidence for this number.

Did I get that right? Then, just out of curiosity, what else would work as evidence for this "current" income? Old pay stubs, predating the income amount stated on the most recent tax return, and perhaps contracts from that time? If the answer to that is "yes", then it seems like you could actually have been laid off from your job in the current year, without this being reflected anywhere in I-864. If that happened to you as a sponsor or a co-sponsor, just use the most recent tax return and you've solved that problem... Surely that is not a possibility? Again, just asking out of curiosity

3 hours ago, Tylosand said:

I guess one of my confusions is concerning the link between question 7 and question 24a. If we put the predicted income for 2019, we can definitely back it up with pay stubs, but not with a W2 or any tax documents. Feels like we'd end up in a similar situation as the one that seems to have given us an RFE in the first place - i.e., the tax documents we included in the original submission (from 2017-2015) do not support the income stated (from 2018). Isn't it better to still use the income from 2018 in question 7 in our response to the RFE, as we can now back that number up with the W2 plus the actual tax documentation from 2018 which we will soon receive from my PIL's accountant?

Another way to put my question here, would be by asking a hypothetical question.

Let's pretend I did not have a co-sponsor, and I only used my wife's income for my AoS. Let's further say that she had made 0$ in 2016, 2017 and 2018. And let's say we're sending in our application on July 30th, 2019. Because of that, we would put the most recent tax years (question 24a-24c) as 2018 to 2016, and the income would be 0 on all of them. No tax documents would be submitted - maybe we'd include a statement saying that my wife was unemployed and therefore she did not pay any taxes.

Then, let's say that she was hired at the start of 2019. She starts making a ton of money. So we would put the projected annual income in question 7 - let's just pretend its 1,200,000$. We have pay slips and contracts to back this number up beyond doubt. For argument's sake, let's say we my wife has worked for exactly 6 months when we submit the application, so we have the required 6 months worth of pay slips. But we do not have any tax documents to back that number up yet - not until next year. 

Would USCIS (probably) approve of the petition?

• If yes, why is it even important to submit anything regarding taxes? In this scenario, taxes (or the lack of taxes) show exactly 0$ in income, but the pay slips show 1,200,000$ over the current year (or 100,000$ a month).
• If no, how could we (in the actual scenarion where my MIL is my co-sponsor) get away with putting my MIL's projected income for 2019 in question 7, when we won't have any tax documents to support that number? Sure, her past finances will still look really solid and the required tax documentation to back that up would be included, but that was also the case in our original petition. Still, we received an RFE complaining about a lack of documentation.

25 minutes ago, K1visaHopeful said:

Like I said, it depends what income amounts you input in Question 7. Whatever you input there would need to be backed up by the specific document where that amount came from plus the most recent tax return as that is required for question 24.

 

If you used the amount from her most recent tax return transcript which would be 2018 you would need to submit that 2018 W2 to differentiate her income from his on their MFJ tax return Transcript. 

If you used an Employment Verification letter predicted income amount for 2019, then you would input that amount in Question 7 and support it with 6 months of recent paystubs.

 

It's really hard to follow your post.

Sorry, I didn't really answer your question in the previous post. We only put my MIL's income in question 7. And that income was from 2018. But because they had filed for a tax extension, we didn't have anything to show tax-wise for 2018 (other than the extension itself, tax form 4868, which we attached in our original submission). So the W2 we submitted was from the year before, 2017, and all transcripts were from 2017, 2016 and 2015, respectively. So probably the W2 should have been from 2018 just as you are saying, even though we did not have any returns from that year yet.

I guess one of my confusions is concerning the link between question 7 and question 24a. If we put the predicted income for 2019, we can definitely back it up with pay stubs, but not with a W2 or any tax documents. Feels like we'd end up in a similar situation as the one that seems to have given us an RFE in the first place - i.e., the tax documents we included in the original submission (from 2017-2015) do not support the income stated (from 2018). Isn't it better to still use the income from 2018 in question 7 in our response to the RFE, as we can now back that number up with the W2 plus the actual tax documentation from 2018 which we will soon receive from my PIL's accountant?

27 minutes ago, K1visaHopeful said:

Okay then your problem may be this then:

What income did you report in Part 6, Question 7 of your MILs I864?

Did you input her individual income from her earnings statement or did you input their (MIL plus FIL) income from their joint taxes?

 

If you are only using MILs income you would have had to input her individual income in that question and then supported it by submitting her individual earnings statement to distinguish her income from her husband's on their joint tax return. 

If you are using their combined income (MIL and FIL), you still would have had to input her individual income in Question 7 and then her husband's individual income in Question 10. 

He would then be required to file an I864a as a co-sponsor to her household and you would have had to submit both of their individual earnings statement as evidence of what you input in Question 7 and Question 10 as well as their joint tax return.

What is the situation?

We're only using my MIL's income since it is enough. So we submitted her W2, I think we used a W2 from 2017 to match the most recent tax returns that we could submit at that point, which was for 2017 since they had filed for an extension. This is probably one of the issues that USCIS had with our application, perhaps we should have used a W2 for 2018 instead even though it wouldn't match the rest of the tax transcripts.

On top of the W2 we submitted a end-of-year compensation statement (for 2018) and a contract to further prove her employment and income. We are speculating that they did not like the end-of-year compensation statement, since they are asking specifically for pay stubs for the last 6 months in the RFE, so this time we are going to send in individual pay stubs for the previous six months. She's paid bi-weekly so I guess that should amount to 12 pay stubs.

Again, I don't think there is an issue with the joint taxes or living in the same household, since I haven't read anywhere that it is a requirement to reflect that in your submission. I certainly hope they would use a much clearer language in the RFE if they indeed wanted us to use the form I-864a.

Reading through what I've written in this thread, I'm starting to see that we have kind of mixed numbers from 2018 and 2017 because of the tax extension. The latest tax returns we've submitted are from 2017, but the income we stated as "current income" in part 6, question 7, is from 2018 and the end-of-year compensation statement is also from 2018. Even though the tax extension form that we included in the original submission *should* have made the situation clear, I can see how this could have tripped up our application.

The way I have understood it, is that it is optional to do the combination of incomes if you happen to live together with your co-sponsor, using form I-864a. We chose not to do that because it was definitely not necessary finance-wise - my MIL's income is way, way above the poverty level. So we thought we'd just keep it as simple as possible, and for that reason we are not listing any assets either. We're just using her income. My wife doesn't currently have any income or any assets in the US, so we thought it should not matter whether we declare her finances in the form of an independent I-864 or in the form of an I-864a.

There is no mention about having to combine our incomes because we live together with the intended co-sponsor in the RFE, so I hope that is not the problem.

@arken Yeah, we spent some time reading through the RFE again and again. The language is confusing, and sometimes seemingly contradicting, as always with migration agencies. But we feel fairly confident that we interpreted it correctly. We did submit two I-864s, one for my wife (largely empty because she moved to the US with me from Sweden and does not have a job yet) and one for my mother-in-law, as the joint sponsor.

@K1visaHopeful They do, or more correctly my wife and I live with them.

Hi!

I'm in the process of adjusting my status. My mother-in-law is acting as a sponsor - she makes many times the income requirement. My submission was received by USCIS on May 3rd, 2019 - which is after you are supposed to have filed taxes for the previous year. But because of a big (positive) change in my parents-in-law's economy last year, they needed to file for a tax extension. In our original submission, in form I-864, we therefore listed 2017, 2016, and 2015 as the three most recent years (field 24a-24c, page 5) - since she did not have a tax return for 2018 yet. We attached transcripts for each of these years, along with a W2 for 2017. And naturally, we attached the form 4868 for Tax Extension that my parents-in-law filed to support that part.

I received an RFE on this, which was not completely unexpected. USCIS claims we did not provide enough support for our sponsor's finances. I think the tax extension part was too much in combination with a sponsor, and that we should wait for the tax returns for 2018 before we respond to the RFE. We should have the papers that we need from my parents-in-law's accountant this week or next week, so still well before the deadline of my RFE (September 22nd).

Now, my question is if we should also include a new I-864 form, since the years won't be correct anymore. With the new taxes, we could change the years to 2018, 2017 and 2016 instead of 2017, 2016 and 2015 as it was in the original submission and enter in the new amounts in the total income column. I guess the answer is yes, but I'd like to get some opinions from the knowledgeable people on here first  

BTW I hope I didn't confuse any tax terms here, I'm trying to learn how it all works but there is a lot. Please let me know if it looks like I used the wrong terminology somewhere.

1 hour ago, Scandi said:

No, the DS-3025 is only for foreigners abroad, it's not used within the US at all. Those who complete their vaccinations within the US get a completely different from, called i-693. That form is handed over to USCIS in a sealed envelope, and it's the original. A regular copy in an un-sealed envelope won't do much good. USCIS might require you to get a i-693 considering your DS-3025 isn't filled out correctly. But no way of knowing for sure until they (if ever) ask you for it, so don't waste any money on that now.

Aha, I think I'm slowly starting to understand this. So there's really no way for Dr. Einar to rectify his mistake. But I take it I would only have to get the part of the I-693 that concerns vaccinations (part 9)? And since I already have the necessary vaccinations, all I would be asking the doctor to do here is really to copy the information from my DS-3025 + put a check mark on the appropriate option in the "results" section. I hope that is not too expensive if it comes to it...

And just to double check, I won't be needing the I-693 until the interview (if at all), is that right?

8 minutes ago, Scandi said:

No, you don't bring anything to the embassy in regards to the medical, the doctor sends your FULL medical report to the embassy, that one includes everything, even the original DS-3025. So it's important that the embassy has the correct version as that's the one you hand over at POE, the one that is sent straight to USCIS.

 

EDIT, I missed that you already have your visa and is in the US now. Not sure what will happen in your case considering your copy of the DS-3025 doesn't match the original that USCIS has.

Is it not a fairly common situation that people take any vaccines they might be missing and complete their DS-3025 once they are stateside? i.e., the DS-3025 that USCIS receives at first from the PoE package will be different from the one that is later used for AoS.

Hopefully the new certificate that Dr. Einar sends looks legit enough that they'll accept it :p By the way, is it necessary to include the DS-3025 in the AoS application or is it enough to bring it to the interview? Thinking if I will have to wait for it before filing or not, I have almost all the other documents ready.

50 minutes ago, Scandi said:

Important that the embassy has the correct version too.

Could you expand on that a little? I was thinking that I just simply include this updated DS-3025 in my AoS application (since the medical exam package that I handed over at POE had the vaccination form without the check mark in part 2) and I should be all set when it comes to the medical stuff. But you are saying I need to distribute the new form to the American embassy in Stockholm?

On 4/6/2019 at 6:05 PM, Scandi said:

I brought proof of every single vaccination I had ever had. The dates were included on each one of them but he still only put check marks without dates on my DS-3025. It was never an issue for me.

 

I don't know about part 2 since my medical report (I have the whole thing, including the X-ray results etc) doesn't have that part. So the DS-3025 must've changed a bit since I had my medical in 2016. 

 

I don't think you need to worry about anything if your DS-3025 is marked "US vaccination requirements COMPLETE (requesting a Blanket Waiver)". That's number 2 on my DS-3025 btw (called "2. Summary for Immigrant Visa Applicants), not the list of categories that you have on yours.

I checked with Dr. Einar, and he confirmed just now that a check in part 2 is indeed necessary and it was just a case of him forgetting to mark it. He's gonna send a fixed version to me so it's all good. Just though I'd post the update in case anyone else ends up with a vaccination record with the same mistake 

Ok, so the lack of dates are probably nothing to worry about then, that's reassuring to hear

Yeah they probably changed that section, though, from how you describe it, it sounds like the general idea of the part has stayed roughly the same, i.e. it summarises whether or not you met the vaccination requirements. But possibly, there is something in the wording that makes putting a check there incorrect - e.g., the top left one, which contains the term "immigrant visa" which I guess is not how a K1 is categorised normally, and the bottom one saying "K Visa applicant voluntarily completed vaccination requirements" might not apply for a K1 medical done abroad either for some reason - although it sounds spot on 😛 

Einar certainly seemed to know what he was doing in general, so I hope he didn't just simply miss something here.

Hej gott folk!

My wife and I are in the process of gathering everything needed for AoS. I have a question about the DS-3025 form. The doctor (went to Einar in Gothenburg) put a check mark on all the necessary vaccines - no dates though. He said that since the vaccine dates were unknown to both of us for the most part, and he didn't want to make them up, he'd just put check marks in. He sounded confident that it would pose no problem, so I went with it. One thing I just noticed though, is that he didn't fill anything in in part 2, so it looks like the picture below (minus the red marking). I might well be misunderstanding some of the wording for the options, and maybe this is the way it should be, but I feel like ideally he would have checked one of the two left-most boxes which confirms everything is in order - although that much can of course be gathered by just tallying the checks in part 1.

Did anyone here get a similar DS-3025? Did you try to send it in for AoS or did you take it to a doctor to fix it?

I also wanna double check so that I've understood it correctly - if the DS-3025 can be deemed to be OK even without the check in part 2, does that mean that I don't have to include anything relating to my medical in the AoS application, since USCIS will already have all the documents from POE?

Hej everyone!

Glad to join the group of knowledgeable Swedish/American couples discussing the K1 visa process  We got our petition approved on the 14th of September, and we are now starting to figure out what to do next. I've got a few questions about the various steps and forms that we are gonna deal with in the near future:

• We have a co-sponsor, the petitioner's mom. She makes several times the minimum requirement. Is it enough to state the income and leave the assets/property fields blank?
• How many years of the sponsor's tax returns do we need?
• Will we need proof of the sponsor's citizenship? If yes, will a copy of the birth certificate and/or passport bio page be enough, or are originals required?
• Should I (the beneficiary) wait until I receive packet 3 to schedule my medical? Or should I do it when I've got our case number from the NVC (we're gonna start calling next week)?
• We live together in Sweden and have done so for 2 years. We don't have both our names on the apartment contract, but could a "folkbokföringsutdrag" for each of us, showing that we are registered on the same address, be used as proof of that we live together?
• Should I bring a copy of our approved I-129f? Or is that redundant?
• Is it a bad idea to book the interview before I actually have all the required documents? I'm waiting to receive a police certificate from Taiwan where I lived for a year. But, I'm not sure I will have it when I can book an interview appointment. I might get it in the time between the booking and the interview, or shortly after. But I've also read that someone could not get ahold of police certificates from Timor Leste and that was OK. So I was thinking maybe I can get approved directly or I will have to send it in later. Would you chance it and book an interview slot, or wait for the certificate to arrive?

Grateful for any input!

Does anyone know if there is a way to contact USCIS online about issues other than those listed in their online contact portal? The category that comes closest to our situation there is "Did not receive notice by mail", only we DID receive the notice, and instead there is a problem with the displayed case status, still stuck on that they got the notice returned the first time they tried sending it out. Is there an email address for other categories of issues I could write to? Would be nice if I could compose an email with pictures of how the case status looks on our end and a picture of the received notice. It feels like that would just be a lot more clear than trying to explain this over the phone, which we have tried twice already. If I'd then get an email back stating that they know that we have the notice and they have just not bothered with updating the case status, I'd feel a lot more reassured.

Could it be RFE-worthy if I did disclose that we met "through a dating app", but did not specify that it was Tinder? Everything depends on how you define things, and perhaps it would be strange to consider "a dating app/service" to also possibly include IMBs, but maybe it would still have been good to mention Tinder since it is so well known. Although, as has been pointed out here before, it does not say in the instructions that you need to prove that you did not meet through an IMB, and obviously I checked "no" for that specific question. I guess we'll just have to wait and see...

1 hour ago, Naes said:

Did you try checking the new website?

 

as they seem to move most of the recent action to their new myUSCIS website which you can use by creating an account:

https://myaccount.uscis.dhs.gov

 

 

Yeah we created an account and checked how it looks there, but it's displaying the same message. The case history just says they received the petition, sent out the notice and then got the notice returned to them. So the confusion remains 😛 I guess the only way to sort it out for sure is to call them again.

Hello!

We initially had some problems with mail delivery from the USCIS, because we both live in Sweden and put our Swedish address as the mailing address. We think that when they sent out the I-797C notice, it didn't make it here, and instead was returned to the USCIC. So we got the message displayed in the attached image. We called about it, and changed our mailing address to the petitioner's parent's address. They mailed out the I-797C again, this time to the new address, and it arrived just fine. The issue, though, is that they did not update the message - we are still told they will destroy the petition unless we request the document again. We were actually told by the USCIS when we called them later that the status "won't update" even in the case that we successfully receive the notice.

So we are just worried that it's not a "generally known fact" within the USCIS that we actually successfully received mail from them, and that they might proceed to destroy the petition. We are actually supposed to get a NOA2 in just a few weeks, and have not worried about the message because of what we were told over the phone. But recently it started to make us feel uneasy again. Why, for example, would they not display the message that they have tried to send the I-797C out again? They displayed a message of that kind the first time around. Maybe because we "ordered" a new notice over the phone and not through the web service? If it has indeed been looking like we never received the I-797C when a case worker looks at our case, will that lead to a delay of some kind until we notify them that we actually got the I-797C?

We tried calling just now but the line was too long for us to get a call-back, so we will try again tomorrow. In the meantime, I thought I could check here if anyone recognizes this issue or has any idea whether this might be a problem. Thanks!

Hello!

When filing the I-129f, I misinterpreted the requirement about the police certifications and when you need it, and put it together with our petition. But as I have learned now (through another recent thread I made here about obtaining police records from a country (other than your native country) where you have lived in for more than a year), it is really for the interview that you need to present it.

My question is, should I order new police certificates that are more up to date before going to the interview? If the interview takes place around the statistically predicted time, the certificates that I currently have will be around 10 months old.

Thanks!

6 minutes ago, geowrian said:

The K-1 visa requires it. The I-129F petition does not. I think that's the confusion...?

Ah, that's surely it. Thanks for claryfing