chikaka

If my US spouse applies for food stamp, will it affect our ROC in the future?

I am married to a USC for more than 2 years. When we applied for AOS (I was on student visa at first), we weren't married for more than 2 years, so I, the beneficiary, got a conditional green card. I have to remove the condition next year. 

when we applied for AOS, my US spouse wasn't making more than enough income to pass the poverty guideline, but I was making a pretty decent income on OPT, so I was able to use my income for I864 purposes, and I got my conditional green card.

Unfortunately, my spouse lost his job because of frequent tardiness, and he was jobless for 5 months. He recently found a job that pays the minimum wage, and he is going to start working at the end of this month. Since he has a bad habit of overspending, he has no saving, so I was always paying all the bills and groceries etc after he lost his job.

To make matters worse, I got fired too and we both became jobless. Luckily, I was saving money, so we have been able to survive on my saving, but every time I saw my balance going down, it got me worried.  Luckily, I got a job too and I am starting at the end of this month as well.

My husband suggested he should apply for food stamp. 

1) Can he even apply for food stamp when we both got a job, and we are going to start working soon? He will be making minimum wage in his new job, and I will be making about twice as much.

2) If he ever does apply for food stamp, and gets accepted, will it affect our future ROC situation negatively?

Just now, Ash.1101 said:

 

You only need a recipt number if you have a pending case. If you don’t you just need your basic info and address info.

 

where it says “Is this change of address for an application or petition currently in progress” towards the bottom just click no and it’ll take you to where you need to go.

I was able to proceed!　Thank you.

I submitted my new address info online. Since this is for aliens, I don't need to do the same for my US spouse, correct?

I am confused with the change of address form AR-11.

I am a conditional green card holder, and I don't have any pending petition. I have not applied for removal of condition yet.

A few days ago I moved to a new place within the US, and I was about to do change of address (AR-11).

I thought I could file AR-11 online, but it says Note: If you do not have a receipt number, you cannot update your address online. on this page ( https://egov.uscis.gov/coa/displayCOAInitForm.do;jsessionid=FE1FCF4B175B869A9972F4719CAE459A ).

What is a receipt number? Is it talking about I-797c receipt notices you get when you have recently applied for something?

Since I don't have anything like that, is paper form the only option for me to file the address of change?

I made a huge mistake then... After I entered all information on Turbotax, I selected "married and filing jointly" because all this time, I was thinking what USCIS wants to see is "joint tax return". Like "Married and filing jointly".

then the software showed a small refund.

Hoping there might be something wrong, I went to H&R Block and they did everything for us. They showed us about the same small refund... We told them that we need to file the tax "jointly".

I already submitted everything, and it has been more than a week. I think it is too late now...

Just now, Roel said:

As long as you filed as married, you're fine. It doesn't matter if you filed jointly or separate.

Is there such an option as filing as married but separately?

How important is filing a joint tax return for Removal of Condition on your green card?

I really feel like filing a joint tax return gives us a much smaller refund.... than filing it separately, for some couples. Being married and having double income means we have to pay more taxes?

I am married, and I have filed a tax return for 2018 with my spouse. What was sad was that our refund was very little (less than $500). 

We both worked the entire 12 months in 2018, and we both had income. Since having a joint tax return is a strong evidence that the marriage is bona fide, even though it is not mandatory, I still didn't wanna risk the chance of success, and so we filed it jointly. However, it resulted in a very small refund. I first tried entering W2 information for both of us jointly on one of the major tax websites, and it showed me the small refund.

Being very disappointed, I tried entering my W2 information only. to see how much refund I would get if I were single, and it resulted in a refund of more than $1000!!

After that, I tried entering my spouse's W2 information only as well, and it also resulted in a refund of more than $1000!!

This result is very disappointing. If we filed the tax return separately, we could have gotten a refund of more than $2000 together. But because of the joint tax return, it resulted in less than 1/4 of it!

I know joint tax returns are not mandatory for ROC, but USCIS and many websites strongly recommend having that as a proof of bona fide marriage.

Is this just how it is, and there is nothing we can do about this? This is very frustrating. Like, if we were both US citizens and married, we could file tax returns separately to get a bigger refund. 

Is there anyone who can share the same experience?

Anyone, please help

Do you have to report the change of address regardless of how long you are going to stay in that place? 

I am a conditional GC holder, and I am planning to move out of my current place with my US spouse because the place we currently live in does not have many job opportunities. 

We are planning to move to another state, where there are so many more job opportunities, and where my close friend lives, and she said she could offer her place for both of us until we can get a job. She already spoke to her landlord and they were so kind that they allowed us to live there for some time, without being on the lease.

Now my question is, at this point, I have no idea how long I will stay in her place. Should I still report the change of address, even if we won't be on the lease? 

A related question would be, in an expensive area such as Los Angeles, San Francisco, or New York, I know some people who don't own a house, nor rent, but just live in a hotel room because that can be cheaper than owning or renting.

In cases like that, do they just have to report the hotel address and room number? 

What length of stay is too short to have to report the change of address?

Thanks all. But getting COBRA is just an option, correct?

As I thought COBRA would be an expensive option for me considering how much my former employer was paying for my insurance plan when I was still working for them, and you also confirmed it, I would rather go with cheaper options, even if I get less coverage as long as I pay less.

I don't really see the point of applying for COBRA if I would have to pay the same amount of money I was paying when I was at my former employer. We were paying $1000+ a month just for the insurance.. and I can't afford that much money when I am jobless..

1 minute ago, junkmart said:

I’m in Texas. When I was let go a few years ago I went on Cobra. It was exactly the same policy I had at my job, but I paid the premium instead of my former employer. I would write my former employer a check each month to cover the premium, they took care of the rest (paperwork and forwarding my payment to their insurer BCBSTX) I did that for about 9 months until they hired me back. I would start by talking with your former employer about Cobra.

How soon after you lost your job did you get your COBRA? What kind of procedures did you take? like paperwork ?

6 hours ago, Mike E said:

Sorry about your work situation. 

 

You can sign up for COBRA through your former employer.  It can be retroactive up to 60 days. For example. Joe loses his job on Feb 1. Joe doesn’t need any medical attention for next 60 days and finds another job 60 days later. He doesn’t pay another insurance premiums for those 60 days. 

 

Steve  also lost his job on Feb 1 and is healthy through the end of February. On March 15 he gets sick and has to go to the hospital. Faced with a $100,000 hospital bill he activates COBRA retroactively, sends two insurance premiums of about $1000 each for February and March, and ends up with net hospital bill of $500 because he was covered by insurance. 

 

Monica lost her job on Feb 1.  59 days later she still has no job. She sends three COBRA payments to cover Feb, Mar, and Apr.  

 

Under the old Obama care rules all three people (and their families) would be considered covered and would pay zero penalty.  

 

Ihder Trumo, starting Jan 1, it doesn’t matter because there is no penalty. 

 

You should have or will receive a cobra packet within a few weeks after losing your job.  If not call the benefits department at your old company.  

 

As for your immigration benefits, if you end up purchasing an ACA plan, as long as it isn’t Medicaid you are fine. 

 

 

Wait so does ACA plan include Medicaid? Like when I purchase ACA plan, I have to tell them I want Medicaid to be excluded from ACA? Sorry I am not understanding the health care plans..

Also, I heard COBRA is very expensive. My former company had a pretty good (but pretty expensive) health care plan. most of whose fee was paid by them. If I am not mistaken, COBRA can offer the same or similar type of health insurance that you had through your former employer. Correct? In which case, do I have to pay more to get COBRA because the plan I had with my employer was expensive... 

And when you said I should receive a cobra packet within a few weeks, but will it be sent from the insurance company, or the former employer? It have been about 2 weeks since I lost my job, and I am scared I might be late to apply..

11 hours ago, Visitor User said:

90 days is true too. It just depends on the employer. 

Yup.

The company I lost my job from, had a 3-month probationary period at the beginning of employment, and I was only given the health insurance at exactly 3 month mark.

American medical bills are just ridiculous. It is not even too much to say that is a fraud. 

8 minutes ago, Boiler said:

That was an Obama thing, Trump got rid of it.

I did not know that!

So basically, having no insurance for any length of time won't affect my immigration status, nor do we have to worry about any penalty associated with it. The only thing that we should understand is, when we actually need to visit hospitals for some reason, having no insurance will cost us a ton. But other than that, there is really nothing to worry about.

Is this the point you are trying to make, correct?

1 minute ago, Boiler said:

No fine

Really? About two years ago, we did not have insurance for 4 consecutive months. When we filed a tax return, we got penalized for not having insurance for more than 3 consecutive months, and that fine was deducted from the tax refund. 

Does having no insurance at all affect immigration status? I know we have a fine for having no insurance for some consecutive months, but will it also NOT affect immigration status?

3 minutes ago, Khallaf said:

your spouse doesn't have a job where they are given health insurance?

 

its a life even when one spouse losses their health insurance the other can enroll with their company

 

My US spouse is currently jobless as well. We are both jobless at the same time and we live on our saving.

My US spouse has always had a hard time getting a job that offers health insurance. Even when he was hired, the company he worked for did not offer any insurance.

Luckily the company I worked for offered insurance for me and him, but I lost my job and the insurance.

Will I lose my conditional green card if I don't get health insurance within a certain amount of time? Like I know Obama has made it mandatory for everyone to have some insurance.

I wanna get a cheapest plan, but i dont know if that will consider me to be a public charge and I am so at a loss.

I am married to a US citizen and I have a conditional green card. Unfortunately, I lost my job and the health insurance I had through my employer, which was covering myself (the immigrant) and my US spouse.

Now we are both not covered by any insurance, and I know this is bad. Since we need to look for and get a job, and most likely have to wait for the first 3 months after getting a job for employer-based insurance to kick in, we have to purchase a plan on our own.

But my concern is, does buying a cheap insurance (ACA???) affect my immigration status? I am aware that USCIS doesn't want immigrants to rely on the governmental aid, like they dont want us to be a public  charge. So I am lost.

I don't know what kind of insurance is considered governmental aid. 

I don't want to spend a lot of money on insurance because I am jobless now, and I want to keep the saving I have for as long as possible until I can get a new job and the employer-based insurance. 

My another question is, do I have to get the same insurance plan that I had through my employer? I read about COBRA, and it was very confusing too. 

Will losing a job affect my conditional green card status, if my income was used for I-864 purposes?

I was an international student, and I was working with the OPT program. My US spouse's income was low, and did not meet 125% of the poverty guideline, but I was making a few times more alone, so my lawyer said I could use my income for I-864 purposes. We did not get questioned at all during the interview, and I got a conditional green card last year.  Unfortunately, I lost my job a few months AFTER I got my conditional green card. My US spouse still does not make enough income to meet 125% poverty guideline. 

Will me losing my job after I used my income for I-864 purposes affect my immigration status negatively? I ask because the instruction of I-864 says:

If certain conditions are met, an intending immigrant’s income can help you meet the income requirement. If the intending immigrant is your spouse, his or her income can be included if it will continue from the same source after he or she obtains lawful permanent resident status.

What does this mean? Since my income has stopped after losing my job, and it is not continuing from the same source, will I lose my conditional green card??

Okay, I get that it is low priority because you can still keep your permanent resident status while your case is pending.

But what if the couple who filed jointly to remove condition ended up divorce while the case is pending? I feel like there is a lot more burden/time/money/energy on the couple who received conditional green card, than those who rather waited for 2 years before applying for AOS and receiving a 10 year green card in the first place. 

Can such people still switch to a divorce waiver and apply alone? (well technically it has already been applied, if the case is pending. What will happen? Do the international person have to reapply all alone, from scratch?)

I know this varies greatly from place to place, and from applicant to applicant, but how long does ROC take to complete? (From filing the application, till receiving the permanent green card)

Does an application with a divorce waiver take longer than a jointly filed one?

Also, https://egov.uscis.gov/processing-times/ this website is really stressing me out. I checked the estimate time for I-751 processing time under "All Field Offices", and it returns the result 22.5 months to 41.5 months.

Can a ROC take up to almost 3.5 years?????  Why does it take so long? Even the shortest is 22.5 months, which is almost 2 years. 

Why do we need to wait sooooo long? And it is normal to take this long? How long did you all take?

I am planning to apply for ROC by myself because I am getting  a divorce from my spouse.

I've been collecting documents to prove our bona-fide marriage, and I would like to ask what the difference is between joint insurance and one person's insurance with the other person as the beneficiary. I have seen both descriptions and I don't know if they are the same or different.

My spouse and I both worked, but my spouse didn't have insurance from the company worked for, but I have from my job. I have life, vision, dental, and health insurance from my company, and I have added my spouse as the beneficiary for all these insurances.. I am going to submit this as a proof of bona fide marriage, but is this the same as joint insurance?

Or does joint insurance mean both parties have an insurance and they list each other as the beneficiary?

If that's the case, are all my insurances with my spouse as the beneficiary considered "weak" proof? because my spouse doesn't have insurance and I am not the beneficiary of it. That is to say, it looks like it is one-sided from me to my spouse. 

Or does it still serve as a strong evidence? 

Btw, if you can get a chance, it would be greatly appreciated if you could take a look at my previous post and tell me whether I have enough evidence to show that our marriage was bona-fide.

Thank you very much.

I am in process of divorce with my US spouse within 2 years of receiving my conditional green card, and I would like to know if it is extremely difficult to prove bona-fide marriage without a joint bank account. 

Summary of our relationship:

• We are both lesbians where I am the beneficiary and my spouse is a USC.
• We were in a relationship for 2 years, and we have been married for 2 years. 
• I got my conditional green card about half a year ago and it wont expire until 2020.
• Unfortunately, things didn't turn out well, and we started realizing that we are too different and we keep fighting almost every day. We have agreed to divorce for each other

I read that you can still remove the condition by yourself if you divorced your USC spouse (and have it finalized), with whom you had a bona-fide marriage. However, I also read that ROC with divorce waiver requires stronger evidence of bona-fide marriage, and this has me concerned because almost all websites state that a joint bank account is extremely important, but we never had one. 

Reason why we never had a joint bank account:

1) We spend money very differently. I am very stingy and save every penny, while my spouse doesn't care much about saving, and she lives paycheck to paycheck. We both work and have our own income. We could prove my own, and her saving amount, if necessary, to USCIS. 

2) Not only does my spouse not care about saving, she is actually an over-spender, and to her, money is more to use, than to save. If there is even $10 left and still has to survive a week before the next paycheck, I always tell her to keep that $10, but she always uses it till it gets less than $1. She has an automatic payment every month, and she often goes negative. I always send her money to make it positive when that happens.

3) I have a strong reason to have to save a lot of money. My mom paid over $100,000 for my education in the US (I used to be an F-1 student), and I used up her retirement saving. I need to save a lot as much as I can, so I can start sending her money as she retires.

★ When we got married, we actually opened a joint bank account into which we decided to put money every month. However, I realized that she kept spending all her own money from the paycheck, and started spending the money from the joint bank account. And it is not even for our life together, but more for her own personal stuff and hobbies.  

I came to a conclusion that if I put money in it for our life, it will end up being spent on her own stuff, and I cannot let my saving to pay my mom back, be spent on her personal stuff. So we simply stopped using that account, and it has been over a year. 

Now, the evidence of bona-fide marriage I think I can submit are: 

1) Photos of us from the relationship, marriage, marriage life (before and after conditional green card was obtained).

2) Photos of me and her family members when we visited them together. (Unfortunately, my spouse has never met my family for many reasons. (They live overseas, it costs a lot, we don't get to take times off together, and more importantly, my family hates homosexuality, and I haven't been able to fully come out to my family.) 

3) Plane tickets of both of us with our seats next to each other when we flew to her hometown to see her family.

4) My job's life insurance listing my spouse as the beneficiary 100%.  (She doesnt have insurance from her job)

5) My job's health/vision/dental insurance listing her name under the beneficiary/spouse. (She doesn't have insurance from her job)

6) My job's emergency contact sheet listing her as the spouse and emergency contact.

7) My car insurance listing her name under my spouse. (She does not have a car, nor driver's license)

😎 2 jointly-filed tax returns as a married couple.

9) Receipts from our dates to restaurants/movies etc from relationship, marriage life (before and after conditional GC was obtained)

10) Receipts from random grocery shopping we did together. We often both paid, so I have collected both receipts showing each of us's card #, date/time, proving we shopped together.

11) Utility bills (Water/Sewer/Electricity) sent to our address with both of our names.

12) Rent payment receipts online showing we both have been contributing to the rent payment.

13) Our apartment lease showing both of our names as the residents.

14) My medical record from a nearby medical clinic listing her as my spouse and emergency contact

15) Our old and recent text messages

16) Texts between me and her mother 

We do not have a credit card, nor any loan.

Affidavit, I might be able to ask my friends who know our relationship and marriage. Do they have to be US citizens? Most of my close friends are international. Can a friend on DACA write me an affidavit? 

Do you think these are considered "enough" to cover the lack of joint bank account? I cannot think of anything else...