stegsaurus

Apologies to all for my late response; I had a busy couple of days after posting this. Thank you so much for taking the time to look into this and helping me out. The IRS page JeanneAdil linked to evaded me in my searches, which I chalk up to the IRS website having so many pages and being generally confusing. The way I read it, she's considered a resident for the whole of 2025 since she was in the US for the entire year and got her GC in 2025 as well. I know her bank account didn't have anywhere close to $10K US at any part of the year, but I'm going to make sure we check to see if the bank account earned any interest. (If so, it would very likely be under $1 US, but I'll make sure.) Someone else also mentioned I should confirm that no bank account she has signature authority over (her mom's would be the only one I can think of) generated interest, and report that if so. Due to the differences in Honduran currency and standard of living, I can't imagine any account her family has there would ever get close to $10K in balance, but I'll double-check. I'll confirm with her about her retirement savings, too. She told me her plan is not like a 401k where there's an account with your name on it with a balance. To my knowledge, the account is not earning interest; it's more of a "pay into it for X years and we'll give you Y when you retire". She wouldn't be eligible to start getting money from the HND government until she was retirement age. For what her salary was and how long she worked, I know the money in it wouldn't be anywhere close to $10K either. Thank you all for your time! This community is a blessing for all these new situations that arise from being married to someone from another country.

My wife entered the US on a K-1 visa in Dec 2024 and we were married in January 2025. She got her work authorization in May 2025 and her first US job in August. She received her green card in November 2025. Since it's my first time filing jointly and having a foreign spouse is a special circumstance, I want to make sure I'm doing this correctly. I've walked through both federal and PA state taxes in H&R Block's software and to my understanding, there are only two points that I need to double-check: Her tax filing status, since she was not a green card holder/permanent resident for the entirety of 2025 Any foreign assets she owns For #1: I've seen conflicting information about what to do. Some sources say that she's considered a "Dual-Status" alien for 2025 because she started as a non-resident and then got her GC later in the year. In that case, we have to attach a statement to our return saying that we're choosing to treat her as a US resident for the whole year. Because H&R Block doesn't let you include this with an e-file, we'd have to print and mail the return if this is required, which I'd like to avoid. But I've seen other sources saying that because she had her GC at the end of the year, she can be treated as a GC holder for the entire year, and we don't need to include anything else. I'd appreciate some clarity on this. For #2: My wife left her job in Honduras before she came to the US in Dec 2024. She didn't work for any Honduran company at any point in 2025. She does not have any assets there: no car, house, or investments. She has had some money put into their equivalent of Social Security, but this is akin to how it is for US citizens: they've taken your money and promise to provide something for you once you retire, but there's no account sitting there with your name on it that has the money ready to withdraw if you want. She does still have a Honduran bank account with her name on it, but this has a very small amount just to keep the account open — less than $10 USD. I've made sure to answer "Yes" to the question of foreign account ownership in H&R Block, so our Schedule B has that box checked. The account has well under $10,000, so FBAR and FATCA filing aren't an issue. She's going to check soon if the account earned any interest in 2025 so we can report that if needed; if so, I imagine it was only a few cents. Otherwise, I can't think of anything that would affect our return, but please let me know if I'm wrong. In 2025 we paid off student loans she had in Honduras, but I confirmed those interest payments are not eligible for a deduction in the US because her university is not on this list of eligible international schools. I'm considering contacting a tax expert who has experience with international couples, but don't want to spend the money if I don't need to. Thanks for any advice you can offer!

Thanks @jolive2025 — our interview was on Nov 12 and it went incredibly easily. We were not asked any questions other than the general ones about criminal activity and the like, so it was a very simple interview. We had those summary statements from our banks, which was great. We probably had over 200 pages, but didn't need to provide any of them. My wife has her green card now and we are very thankful that this part of the process is complete!

Thanks, everyone — I appreciate the advice. We've printed plenty of statements and documents, so I'm feeling confident about having enough evidence.

Hi all, My wife and I got married in January, filed our AOS packet at the end of March, and have our AOS interview scheduled for Nov 12. Our final AOS packet, as prepared by our lawyer, was nearly 300 pages (including all forms and evidence we submitted). We've had an interview prep session with our lawyer, as well as with another lawyer at the immigration law firm where my wife now works, and they've both stated that we should have an easy interview because we submitted so much proof with our initial case. Despite this, I still want to be very prepared, of course. While I took all the steps I could think of to have proof with our initial filing (adding her as an authorized user to all my credit cards, screenshots of all accounts where she's a family member, lots of photos, etc.) we have plenty of additional proof from the last ~7 months. This includes new photos, WhatsApp communication, remittances to her family, utility bills, and pay stubs from both of us. My current concern is the number of pages we'd be bringing to the interview with the recommended 6 months of financial statements for all institutions. I have five different credit cards (I use them for rewards and never carry a balance) and two bank accounts. Even with cutting out the extraneous informational pages from the statements, the last 6 months' of our primary bank statements alone are about 20 pages. If I print those statements for all credit cards and accounts, we're going to have over 100 pages just of statements. This seems excessive when our lawyer recommended 30-60 pages of new evidence. I'm worried about not having something we need, but I also don't want to be overkill. I also don't want to struggle to quickly find a particular document or set of documents the officer may ask for during the interview. Would you recommend I print it all and do my best to keep it split up, or focus only on the accounts we use the most? Also, does the 6 month recommended period also apply to utility bills? The only ones of those I can add a spouse to are our internet and electricity bills, and I was going to do two statements for each of them to cut down on paper.

They gave her a sheet of paper that said "your visa has been approved" (in Spanish) and told her she should have her visa in a week, so I'd say that's as close to officially legally "yes" as possible. I suppose something could still change, though that's all I need at this point. That's why I'm waiting until she has her visa in hand to book anything.

I believe they called her from the same Honduran embassy number, but I'm not sure -- I can ask her and report back. She doesn't have her visa in-hand yet, but she was approved after a very short interview on Thursday. They said she should expect her visa in about a week, so with Thanksgiving (not sure if that will affect it), I'm hoping for her to have it this Friday, at which point we're going to book her trip to come here. I was worried about the medical exam expiring too, so I understand that concern. Did they comment on that either way? As long as the pre-interview is before, it should hopefully be fine. It's so frustrating what's happened here and costed people so much time/stress.

That was my thought too -- the squeaky wheel and all that. If you keep making enough noise, hopefully they'll get sick of hearing about it and fix it.

This is how I contacted the White House: https://www.whitehouse.gov/contact/request/ I did so twice; the first time I put "NVC" and the second time I used "Embassy". I think this must have been what made the difference

Hello all, Per the issue I explained in this thread, my fiancée and I had an issue where she was not allowed into her interview on Oct 17 because she never went to the pre-interview, which they never let us know about. She has just called me with great news: the embassy rescheduled her pre-interview for this Thursday (Nov 14) and then her interview will be next Thursday, Nov 21. I'm so relieved! But I want to make sure I have something right. Because we didn't know when the pre-interview would be the first time around, we completed and signed all the documents for her interview (my I-134, our updated letters of intent to marry, employment verification letter, etc.) around Oct 5-7. I want to make sure my I-134 and supporting letters from my banks would still be valid now, about a month later. I can easily grab the more recent pay stubs that have been issued since, and I could probably get another letter from my main bank tomorrow if needed. However, I use an online service called Betterment for my HYSA and investing, and that letter took several days to generate when I did it the first time so I couldn't have a new one ready on such short notice. The simplest thing would be to leave everything alone so the amounts on my I-134 match what's on my existing letters without scrambling to fix it in one day, and I'm sure she can explain this to the officers if needed. I don't think a month is too large a gap considering the circumstances, but I also don't want to take any chances given the issues we had last time. I appreciate any advice on this. Thank you!

My fiancée just called me to tell me the embassy called her and scheduled an appointment! Her pre-interview will be this Thursday and then her interview will be next Thursday. This is so much sooner than I was expecting, and I'm so relieved. I don't know if it was the White House inquiry that did it or what, but I'm so happy!

@Myfam1st Thank you for that number -- my fiancée found a list of call center numbers a bit ago and this was one of them. Apparently the numbers 2262-0246 through 2262-0251 are all call center numbers. I believe she's called them all, but I'll double-check to see if she's called this one. Did you call it, and what were your results if so? I've called the main embassy Honduran number (2236-9320) a few times myself and don't get any useful info. When I talk to anyone on the phone, they tell me they aren't a consulate and can't look into specific cases. They tell me to email these various addresses, which always leads to no response.

Thank you for this -- I haven't come across this page before. I was going to try step 2 first, but when it looks like this page is intended for people in Washington DC to add complaints about the embassies of other countries. I'll email the general-purpose email to ask if I can use it for this purpose and see what we get.

I'll give them a try, but I doubt anything will come of it. Thanks for letting me know.

What number/email did you get an actually helpful answer from? I feel like I've tried everything and get the same runaround nothing answers.