W199

If your spouse has no income, why would you want to file as married filing seperately, instead of jointly? You'll end up paying a lot more taxes in most cases if you do that

Why don't you file as married jointly, it is usually less total taxes that way unless your spouse that is abroad has a high income and a low tax rate in her country

You could: - Ask court for a certified letter simply saying "there are no court documents available for this case". Then hope for the best and wait for an RFE before sending any other info. - Or ask your lawyer to file a motion to dismiss the case due to lack of prosecution and pray they don't decide to prosecute. - Or file for a CR1 instead of a K-1.

You can also ship it to the local LBC office for forwarding to the Philippines.

Please clarify exactly what your Wife does. For example, does she buy the plane ticket in her maiden name and use a passport in her maiden name? Or for example, does she buy the plane ticket in her married name, and use the marriage certificate in along with her maiden name passport when flying? etc..??

True, you can get the passport very quickly if you pay the fee for expedited service. Yeah, you can just buy the plane tickets in her maiden name and fly with the current passport. Actually, I wonder if you would have a problem flying back since the new passport name would not match the name in the round-trip ticket, or vice versa. For myself, I wouldn't risk it, I will just book the ticket in her maiden name and fly with her old passport.

Why don't you update the passport before she goes back to the Philippines? I would imagine that would be a lot safer and avoid delays.

Be careful, London's rules are probably very different from Vietnam.

Good point about the forever disclosure. Note, even when applying for a visa to other Countries, not just USA, for example Canada, you will need to disclose the USA visa denial and explain why (we had to do that with the F-1 denial we got

Your best bet, or really your only bet, will be either for him to meet you in the Philippines or meet in a 3rd Country such as Canada (that;s what we did), or Costa Rica, Mexico, etc..

Just to give you a brief idea on how difficult this will be, my Filipina gf had just received her BSED and then got into a Masters Degree program in the USA. The immigration officer was very happy and smiling and just about to approve her student visa when he asked her who will be paying for the school. She was totally honest because we knew in the future we may do a K-1 and didn;t want to misrepresent. She explained her bf from usa but then added all the extra info about how she bought a house and land in the Philippines and will be returning to the Philippines. The officer mood changed to very sad, ... her full answer was perfect as it perfected by a former consular officer. That perfect answer led to several more good questions with perfect answers, such as how many times I have visited her, and our future plans ..as well as "why don't we file for a K-1" .... In the end she got denied. Manila is just too strict when it comes ot haveing a usa bf. Nothing else will matters, my high salary an ability to visit her often, her house and land she now owns, her status, her large family and connections .... only if I was retired in the Philippines would she have had a chance. She could have got the visa if we lied, but that would have been very stupid. Shortly after that, we did the K-1 and had no issues.

The USA embassy knows very well that a young 22 year old female with no assets, no house, no previous international travel, and so forth would easily give up their job in the Philippines (can make a much higher salary in the USA), and not return back to the Philippines if their bf in usa asked them to get married and stay. Therefore, you have an extremely low to zero chance of getting approved. The ticket price an all your expenses will be a large part of your salary too. That is a lot of money just for a quick visit without intent to marry or stay if asked. But of course, if you are honest, then it is harmless to try, except for the fee's and time involved. But don't expect success. And your bf's bank statement is useless for this, they won't even look at it. You will need to somehow prove in 2 minutes with your words and status, after they ask you a few simple questions, and convince them you will return to the Philippines. As soon as they hear you have a bf who will be sharing your expenses and staying with him, I am sure they will say "sorry, you are not eligible" .. I hope you can prove me wrong ..

The day after my Wife got her SSN, we got her an unsecured credit card in her own name, without any credit score. This was done by applying for a student Discover card. You just need to submit some sort of "proof", such as an admission letter within the past year from a school. We tried adding her SSN to my Amex (she is an authorized user), but they refused without a State ID because they said they couldn't verify the SSN ... Note: Amex will accept a foreign passport in lieu of an SSN for an authorized user. Will try again now that we updated her SSN after getting the EAD last week, Note, I know that Discover did an automatic SSN validation as it initially failed with married name, had to change it to the maiden name, same as her SSN, it then passed the validation test. I don't know why it failed with AMEX

Sounds like the consular's decision was a good call .... Sometimes they can see things that "love is blind to." For your 2nd Wife, they are going to read through the lines and judge it the same way ... If all is legit as you say, and your 2nd Wife can answer all the details about you, etc then you should not have any issues.

If you do it the cheap way, directly through the FBI, it does take some time. But if you do it with the FBI's affiliated agencies, then it only takes about a day for a small fee. All the info on how to do that is on the FBI's webpage. I did mine on the weekend with the affiliated agency, and I think it came the same or the next day. It basically just runs your fingerprints and shows you any arrest record you had,, the charges, and the disposition. It's won't be worth it if you never have been arrested and had fingerprints taken. But you could do it for fun, just don't expect much.

Unfortunately, it is the final disposition that is mandatory, if you continue with the K-1 approach. But as we've said above, a document from the court certifying that the records are not available, and even better that were expunged and no longer available if you can not produce the final disposition. At least the latter is true for a normal criminal case, I can't be sure for an AWA case. This does seem a bit ridiculous because USCIS will see from the FBI check that there is an expunged record, and they should be able to see the disposition as well. Oh, by the way, USCIS also wants certified copies of the court papers ....

- Sounds like it shouldn't be a problem, but it has some small risks, or even risk of delays, since you said you can't get the documentation. - If the court records are not available, you will need to provide a letter from the court as such. - Providing your own FBI background reports will be useless and not helpful. Just wait if they send you an RFE for any additional info. - The FBI keeps a database of all expunged cases, and USCIS has full access to it. I think you will need the court records to prove the disposition of the case is not guilty. You could file for a CR1 instead and avoid the I-129F questions,.

Thanks! And as you see in the December 2023 AOS thread, there are a whole slew of reports of people getting their EAD, AP, and AOS in a similar extremely fast timeframe. USCIS apparently have done an amazing job in speeding this all up.

yeah, it was ~1 month faster than even the USCIS online account was estimating. And in one of our Philippine's K1 FB group, others have reported about 3 months. Apparently it was so fast, they didn't even have time to update the online status, it still says "being reviewed" I did use an agency to prepare all the paperwork. Despite it not being very difficult, they really did do a great professional job, better than I would have done, along with many little details, for example, like how to prepare, label, and assemble all the photos and supporting docs. Maybe this had something to do with it? I also included PSA (certified) birth certificates and certified marriage certificates because I had ordered plenty of extras to bullet proof everything. I can see USCIS even scanned in seperatly the writing we did on the plastic photo bags, So I don't know if we just got lucky, or if it had something to do with the way we prepared it. But for sure, having them scan in the paperwork and convert it to an online application was the key (the receipts had an IOE prefix indicating it is being electronicaly scanned and processed), and I can see those scans. Do they do that to everyone? BTW, oday, the actual approval noticed arrived in the mail. Apparently USCIS wants to share the good news with everyone because you can clearly read "We have approved your application for employment authorization" right below the address field in the envelope's address window.

Hahaha ... Correction!!! The case status still says "actively being reviewed" and 4 weeks to a decision.. BUT I checked the documents tab in the online account and there was the approval notice, issued on Feb 1! Therefore, it took less than 1 month to get approved for the EAD and AP !!!!! So .. yeah .. not 7.5 months! Here is an extract of the approval notice We have approved your application for employment authorization and advance parole based on your pending Form I-485, Application to Register Permanent Residence or Adjust Status. We will send your Employment Authorization Document (also known as an EAD card or Form I-766) to you separately. The EAD card will have an I-512 endorsement on it, which indicates that you have been approved for advance parole. Your EAD card should be produced within one to two weeks. Your EAD card will be mailed via U.S. Postal Service (USPS) Priority Mail with Delivery Confirmation to the address you designated. The time frame in which you will receive your EAD card may vary, depending on USPS delivery times. Please allow a total of 30 days from approval before inquiring with USCIS. We encourage you to use Case Status Online https://egov.uscis.gov/ to find your USPS tracking number for EAD card delivery. If you have not received your EAD card within this time frame, please visit https://egov.uscis.gov/e-request/Intro.do for instructions on how to submit an inquiry

Update, today, Feb 7, my online account timeline for my Wife's EAD has now changed to 4 weeks. Note, USCIS had received it on Jan 8.

I don't see how that would expedite it. In fact, I could see how that could slow it down as they need to verify there were no violations.

I didn't bother checking, but I would imagine it would not be as accurate as to what my online case specifies. Plus others have reported their EAD came within a few months recently too, so it all makes sense. However, my AOS, EAD, and AP packet were scanned in at the Chicago lockbox and I got IOExxxx receipts accordingly, and an online account and access code to go with it. I hear some packages do not get scanned in, so are processed the more slowly manual way by moving the paperwork around. I don't know if I got lucky or if that is the normal way of processsing.

So does this mean that, for now, the K-1 is much faster than a CR-1 for the Philippines? My fiancee got her K-1 interview in Manila very quickly after her NOA2

The registry of motor vehicles in your State will have a list of acceptable and required documents to get the drivers license. And for sure, a greencard will be fine. If you plan to got for the RealID, you need to carefully prepare for the additional docs needed to prove residency. For example, my registery did not accept the USCIS receipts for proof of address because they said it is part of her visa used to prove her status. They didn't accept the mailing from the social security office, because that was part of the social security card used to prove her SSN. They didn't accept a bill from the gas company, because their stupid system could only add her as "c/o" on the bill.