PeterMcS

About the amount of assets needed if there's insufficient income, for purposes of citing the law/regulations in my cover letter to a I-290B: we're married, so the relevant standard is 3x the income deficiency? She came in on a K-1, so before we were married it would have been 5x? We have far more than either: I just want to make sure I cite the right regulation.

I believe the "reopen" option is for submitting additional evidence, and the "reconsider" option is for error. We're thinking of checking both options. Thanks! We'll take a look.

My wife's I-485 application was denied because of my I-864, Affidavit of Support. We filed it over a year ago and they sent us an RFE (covered in this previous post by me) saying "we could not determine that the petitioning sponsor on Form I-864, Affidavit of Support, is qualified." They requested we get a joint sponsor or submit evidence of assets. I thought maybe it was an autogenerated letter, based on my low reported income, as I'd already presented evidence of assets on my I-864. We saw online that their scans of our evidence were incomplete, uploaded the missing parts, and replied that we'd already presented evidence of assets and added the pieces they were missing. The other day, we got notice that her I-485 was denied because the RFE had requested a joint sponsor or evidence of assets and we hadn't presented it. I had been worried that my non-standard assets (about ~$1 million in crypto) would be an issue, either because they wouldn't understand it or because the previous administration was very anti-crypto (e.g. debanking crypto customers because of regulatory pressure). Of course it could just be common incompetence. My wife will lose her employment authorization within a couple of weeks "unless you submit, within 18 days, proof that your Form I-485 remains pending." She cried over that, and we've been stressed about this. They say there's an I-290B form that we can submit to reopen (with additional evidence) and/or reconsider (if they made an error) the case. I don't know if submitting that's enough to keep her work permit, but I hope so. The additional evidence could be the $300K more in assets we have (in a regular investment account, not crypto). The error would be they missed the evidence of assets originally submitted. I just wrote our congressman earlier tonight, and we plan to submit the I-290B later this week. Does anyone have experience or suggestions on how to deal with this?

There's an IRA, self-directed and invested in crypto. I think it's most likely we received an autogenerated RFE etter: someone keys in data from the form, the software sees taxable income below a certain level, and it sends the letter. There were no comments about our specific situation in the RFE, and it's hard to imagine someone who read the evidence of income and assets we presented sending a letter like that. I do want to be sure of the outcome, however.

I believe I've read about people successfully using offer letters on these things, so I don't know if 6 months of previous employment is necessary. Also, I'm not employed. The assets should be more than enough, though.

There was a potential joint sponsor, but we didn't pursue it at that time.

It was dollars first, then in a crypto exchange. There are records. I think I demonstrated how much and where it came from pretty well. Of course, most people have a limited understanding of cryptocurrency.

No, my assets are almost entirely cryptocurrency.

We recently submitted an I-485 for my new wife (she came over on a K-1) and we received a Request for Evidence regarding the I-864 we filed with it. The request didn't give any details on what the problem was; it just said: "Based on the documents submitted, we could not determine that the petitioning sponsor on Form I-864, Affidavit of Support, is qualified." Is it possible to talk to these people to determine what the problem is? I anticipated potential problems with the Affidavit of Support: I posted here before my then-fiancee's Embassy interview. They didn't even ask to see the Affidavit of Support at that time (that's standard at the Manila embassy), but now they've questioned it. My concern was that my income and assets were non-standard: the income is mostly family money which isn't taxable income for me, and the assets are entirely cryptocurrency. My taxable income for last year doesn't exceed the federal poverty level (though my real income did, and I reported that to them and explained it), but my assets are far more than enough to make up for it (~$1 million). Maybe it's just a sloppy government employee who didn't bother to look beyond my tax return (I believe I did include good evidence of my assets). Any advice on how to proceed here? I could just reiterate that I have plenty of assets, assuming they overlooked my detailed evidence at first (or I could get any job or a joint sponsor to be safe), but I wish I could talk with them and see what's up.

Two notes that you may be interested in: Apparently, lots of people don't pass the medical right away: their lung x-rays aren't clear so they have to do a sputum test, to check for bacterial infection I believe. Consequently, they have to cancel their visa interview, and I believe the delay is months. My fiancee talked online with five people who did the medical the same day as she did (she'd met some online beforehand, and others she just met that day). She was the only one of them that passed the medical. She adopted healthy habits approaching her medical (eating, sleeping, exercising), and also chose to take an antibiotic for a week before the medical. She had another online friend that also passed the medical at a different time, and that one had also independently decided to take an antibiotic before her interview. All the usual disclaimers apply: this isn't medical advice, doctors should prescribe medications (though you can generally get them without a prescription in the Philippines), etc. They didn't even ask my fiancee for her I-134. They did ask her what I did for a living. So no one ever even looked at all the documentation that I spent a lot of time preparing. Of course, they may ask for yours, so provide everything they ask for.

My fiancee has her interview in Manila, Philippines in a month, and I'm not sure what evidence to provide with my I-134. I have assets over $500K and I've mostly lived off of family money in recent years ($30K+/year in regular monthly autodeposits to my bank). I'm wondering various things: should I present the family money as income, just keep it simple and present assets alone, and what evidence I should present of either? I've read mixed things about how demanding the State Department is with this. One of the visa legal services websites says: “If you are using assets, you will need 3rd-party proof and verification of the value. This may be stock portfolios, or notarized appraisals or any other proof other than "your word for it". Without 3rd-party evidence, your numbers are almost worthless.” I've also read, right in this forum, "Manila rarely asks for the i134 anyway. You need to be prepared but a better than average chance it won't even be needed." My assets are all in cryptocurrency, worth $500K+, about half in a self-directed Roth IRA and the other half in regular taxable assets. All of the IRA is in the largest US-based cryptocurrency exchange; most of the other assets are self-custodied (which is like keeping cash in a safe at home rather than the bank), though I should probably move them to an exchange for now to simplify providing evidence of them. I'm not sure how to provide convincing evidence of this, but I've read that in my state "A notary public may supervise the copying (or printing, as the case may be) of any record and attest to the trueness of the resulting copy or printout." Would notarized printouts from both crypto accounts suffice as evidence? As I said, I've mostly lived off of family money in recent years; for tax purposes that counts as gifts, so it doesn't appear on my tax returns. I suppose the family money could be demonstrated with a notarized printout of my bank account showing the regular monthly deposits, maybe accompanied by a notarized statement from a parent confirming it's family money. I've read that the Manila Embassy doesn't usually accept joint sponsors (though my family was willing); does that mean they'd disregard regular family income like I get as well? I'd intended to get full-time work again before my fiancee's interview, but our timeline progressed months quicker than I expected, including my fiancee snagging a canceled interview spot before Christmas. I did have a contract earlier this year ($10K+ for seven weeks), but I don't know if the State Department will care about that. I don't think I'll have full-time employment in the next few weeks, so I just want to make sure she'll be safe to get her visa approved just on my assets and/or family-money income. On her DS-160, my fiancee checked Other under Employment Status, and I'll probably do the same on the I-134, as it seems more accurate than retired or unemployed. Is it best to keep it simple and just submit the assets, or to submit both the assets and the family money? I gather it's usually income or assets you're supposed to present, but I'll do whatever is best. Either way, should I also submit tax returns, as they don't really show either my income or assets, or can I skip that? And when the instructions say (though indicating optionality with the words as appropriate and or) submit a statement from an officer of the bank, can I skip that, as I don't even know if I could get that from my online-only bank?