Bill Hamze

Had biometrics today. LPR was in and out in 5 minutes.

Our beneficiary stuff doesn’t have dates, just my spouse’s full name on my financial accounts. Sent it in.

Appt date is may 29

same, bio was scheduled according to egov. Which was fast. Don’t know the date, will have to log into myuscis and check. It does say if we haven’t received the mailed notice by june 8, request it online. So it must be soon after that date

Error is gone, read the receipt notice. Seems they will not reuse biometrics Excerpt from the receipt notice: We will schedule you for an appointment at a USCIS Application Support Center (ASC) for you to provide your fingerprints, photograph and/or signature. We will mail you a separate biometrics appointment notice with the specific date, time, and ASC location. Please wait until you receive your appointment notice before going to the ASC. I also see an "Upload Evidence" button under unsolicited evidence that seems to allow us to upload additional files to the application. Maybe we can upload our corrected deed there when we get it.

Let's get the May 2025 party started! LPR wife just filed her N-400 application and I fed her all the evidence docs. On USCIS we got the receipt number and oddly it says "error retrieving case status" (its ALWAYS something, lol) Checked egov.uscis and it says "case was received and receipt notice was sent" Hopefully the error resolves on their end tomorrow... and that biometrics gets reused.

Gotcha. We do have other docs with name variants like her bank and CC statements, and property tax bills, which I think can be explained by using the Other Names Used section. But the majority of our docs has her full legal name.

Ok so leave the current deed out and bring the corrected one to interview? My understanding is that once we submit the application, we can't add any more docs up until the interview. (unless they RFE)

Update - corrected deed with wife's full name was only filed today, and it won't come back from the court until 3-4 weeks from now. I was hoping to get it today, but I don't want to wait any longer. Could I just submit the deed I have with my wife's partial name and just bring the corrected deed to the interview, or as a response to any RFE (if any)?

I think your list is strong. I have a similar set except my wife and I don’t have a joint account. So I’m including CC statements where we comingle finances on my account with her as an authorized user. I’m going to send 3-4 statements per year, so that’s quarterly.

Divorce decree is from different state, already requested a copy from their vital records years ago because I had to for the i-130 petition anyway. It's what they sent me, and it's what I have. Will just resubmit that again. My experience so far with immigration aligns more with what @OldUser is saying. I frontloaded the initial petition and also beefed it up even more during NVC. Never got RFE. Visa interview lasted 30 seconds. I didn't even get a chance to organize my evidence at the desk when IO said "visa approved, congrats"

Hi all, good evening! I've been helping my wife gather our documents for her naturalization application. She is the applicant, I am the USC. So far we have the following, other than the application form itself: REQUIRED DOCS - Her green card + her acceptance letter - Our marriage certificate - My birth certificate (proving my citizenship) - My divorce decree BEST SUPPORTING EVIDENCE - Tax return transcripts from the last 3 years, we filed MFJ - Utility bills with both names on it - Health insurance with both names on it - Auto insurance with both names on it - Homeowner insurance with both names on it - Property tax bills with both names on it (hers was a shortened version of her legal name) - Beneficiary designations with her name on it - Her own bank and credit card statements (not joint, but shows the same address we lived at for 3 years, and she is an authorized CC user) - Birth certificate and CRBA for our child (both names are on both docs) - My driver’s license and her REAL ID learner’s permit (both show the same address) - Mortgage deed with both of our names on it (waiting for the corrected deed with her full legal name, it should be ready in a week or so) - Preschool enrollment papers for our child, both names on it - Plane tickets for POE in June 2022 as proof we came here together as a family - Change of address form submissions and confirmation receipts (both AR-11 from her and I-865 from me) - About 10 photos of our life together in a single pdf OTHER EVIDENCE (that I'm leaning on not submitting) - shared cell phone plan - shared Amazon Prime family account - a work order/receipt for a home appliance purchase that I let her take the lead on… I mention this only because it shows a paper trail that helps link her finances to mine. Now here are my questions: 1a) Is it a bad that we don't have a joint bank account? We honestly never felt the need for one. But we have everything else. Is that enough to overcome not having a joint account? 1b) Should we bolster the case for our financial co-mingling by submitting our shared consumer stuff? Thinking stuff like shared Amazon Prime, family cell phone plan, etc. But at the same time it feels like overkill to me. 1c) Is a Will and Power of Attorney helpful in the absence of a joint bank account, or is it not going to add much to what we already have? 2) Are we required to submit passport style photos? Some places say you do, but other places say only if we're applying from outside the U.S. which we're not. We plan to file online if that helps. 3) We have NOT been out of the U.S. for longer than 6 months at any time since we all came here in 2022, but we DID take a 3-week trip to her home country to visit her family last year. The N-400 form does ask if we have taken any trips, so should we attach plane tickets showing a round trip along with our supporting evidence? Just to make sure there is no question that we weren’t out of the country longer than 3 weeks. 4) Last thing, we just found out my wife is pregnant and we're expecting our second child sometime early December. That's a little over 7 months away so there's a non-zero chance that they might schedule an interview or oath ceremony at the same time she would give birth. Generally how lenient is USCIS on rescheduling for reasons around giving birth? THANK YOU for getting this far, I know it's a lot but I'm very grateful you read all this and I hope to hear from you if you have any insights!

If they don't reuse biometrics, do they also give 1 month notice before bio?

We went with 'Thi Thu Trang Nguyen' as far as name order. Just moved the last name to the end to keep her passport consistent with all other legal docs. But some of other docs like bank statements just have 'Trang Nguyen' (dropping the 'Thi Thu' part).

We could do that... our field office will be Washington or maybe Baltimore. Both are at 5.5-7 months overall. Maybe tack on an extra month or two, if we apply in May that gets us to February with a month or so to get the passport before our next trip overseas. We can wait to book that until we get the oath ceremony scheduled. Thank you both.

We're already eligible to apply as our POE was in the beginning of June 2022. Been getting our ducks in a row to help my wife apply for naturalization, and our document package is about 90% there. Just need a couple of updates to our insurance docs. My question is whether we should apply ASAP or wait until after our upcoming vacation in mid-May. We'll be out of town for a week, and I don't want anything to be scheduled in THAT week. This trip is already booked with flights, etc. Cannot be changed. Another reason to wait until May is we will have a corrected deed with both of our full legal names on it. On the other hand, we're planning to go to my wife's sister's wedding next March in Vietnam and she wants to make it an extended trip (like 2 months). We haven't booked anything yet, so there's still flexibility... but I'm also concerned if we wait until late May to apply, the case could get dragged out in the current climate and worst case, get an interview or oath ceremony scheduled while she's out of the country. Thoughts? Apply ASAP or wait until after our May trip and hope the whole case takes 7 months or less?

Quick update - Talked to a lawyer, and we may actually create a trust and while we're at it, they'll do a corrective deed to put my wife's full legal name on it. Process will take a couple of months, and we'll be ready to file in May (give or take). I did not know about the 90 day early filing rule until this week, and in theory, we could file today... but I'm/we're not ready yet.

Thanks. I can probably ask an attorney to do a quit claim deed to fix the name or something. Probably better than affidavit anyhow.

That's probably something I'm gonna have to work through with a lawyer. But that's probably outside the scope of filing N-400?

So we're coming up on my wife's 3 year anniversary since she entered the country in June 2022, and we're starting to prepare to file N-400. One thing we have together is a mortgage deed, but on closing, they didn't put down her full legal name, only part of it. For example (I'm making up a fictional name), her full legal name is "Thi Kim Hoa Nguyen" where the first name portion is "Thi Kim Hoa" and the last name is "Nguyen". On most of our legal documents, we have her full legal name. But our mortgage deed only has "Hoa Nguyen". I wish I had the foresight to catch that on our home purchase closing, but we were too excited, and what's done is done. I don't want to change the title or otherwise mess with the mortgage deed, so that's a nonstarter. So that leaves two options: 1) Fill out an identity / "same person" affidavit to say that "Hoa Nguyen" and "Thi Kim Hoa Nguyen" are the same person, and get it notarized. Submit along with existing mortgage deed as part of our evidence. 2) Just write "Hoa Nguyen" in the "Other Names Used" portion of the N-400 form if it's there. Skip the affidavit. Which one should I do?

I'm assuming none of this affects LPRs/green card holders when they file N-400 for naturalization and getting their citizenships? Maybe minor delays due to staffing? Asking because my wife is coming up on 3 years the summer of 2025, when she'll be eligible to file.