daru

I never filed I-360, and my AOS was a regular one with I-130, and my spouse came to that interview in 2021. VAWA provisions of the N-400 don't only stem from I-360 filings, they also apply to cases with the I-751 battery and extreme cruelty waiver.

And second, I guess it's time I give some feedback on VJ (I already provided some in other places). 10/21/2021 - I-485 Approved (I-130) 8/4/2023 - I-751 Receipt (filed jointly) 9/11/2024 - I-751 Receipt of amendment request to Battery / Extreme Cruelty waiver (without a new I-751 form in the amendment packet) 9/19/2024 - N-400 Receipt (VAWA provision, 3 years) 7/29/2025 - I-751/N-400 Combo Interview 8/20/2025 - I-751 Administratively closed 8/21/2025 - I-751 (B/EC) Received 8/21/2025 - I-751 (B/EC) Approved 8/21/2025 - N-400 (VAWA) Approved 8/21/2025 - N-400 (VAWA) In line for oath ceremony scheduling 8/22/2025 - N-400 (VAWA) Oath ceremony notice was mailed What you will read below will make it obvious why I won't disclose my oath ceremony date before it takes place. My interview was scheduled for 10:45am. I came with an attorney. At 11:45am, she tells me that after an hour we have the right to ask what's going on. She comes back after a few minutes and tells me that the interviewer who has our case is reviewing it and that we're next (for that particular interviewer anyway). At 12:15 we're called in. She was friendly overall but was always a lot more formal when addressing my attorney. At the start she went back and forth a bit with my attorney, acknowledging that since I had filed an amendment request, "it wasn't a regular filing anymore". She started by asking me a range of biographical questions like my name and DOB, that of my spouse, the wedding date. She asked whether I had new evidence. In the following hour, she often asked follow-up or redirect questions but, overall, because I came with 4 thick binders (which I had titled "Bona fides", "Abuse", "Matrimonial suits", and "GMC", with the second being a lot thicker than the others), she gave me leeway in handing her exhibit after exhibit as I specifically explained what each was about and how it was relevant to the overall case. The evidence I handed most notably included: Leases - Several leases, including some already on file. The last one showed I had moved, and I explained that my spouse withheld his signature off of the lease even a year after having moved out due to a criminal order of protection; by doing that, he forced me to move out as the landlord couldn't renew the lease for just me without first doing an eviction. Despite his withholding his signature off, asserting his tenant rights, he didn't pay a dime toward the 2024 rent. Diagnoses Most notably one cognitive (ADHD + autism) and one trauma-related (VAWA evaluation, diagnosing GAD + PTSD + MDD and establishing that these were caused by the abuse) Financial worksheet That spreadsheet was focusing on 3 things. (1) his undercontributions to rent. I established that over several years he generated 40% of the household revenue and paid 25% of the rent/utility expenses, underpaying by about $10k over the few years together; he also paid $0 toward the 2024 rent once he moved out but kept himself on the lease, so based on 2023 figures he was supposed to pay $25k in 2024 to cover his share. (2) his undercontributions to Amazon expenses (I happened to have asked him to pull his order log right before we filed the joint I-751). Based on the same estimated income ratio, he underpaid by about $9 over 3 years (he spent $8k including 45% on individual stuff, while I spent $36k including 15% on personal stuff and 5% for him; the rest are household expenses; based on a 40% share target he should have spent $9k more in my stead) (3) the money I spent since mid-2024 on rehousing (~$5k, + another $10k if we count the time it took me to make and rent out the flex bedroom of the new unit to make the rent manageable) and on his legal abuse ($17k). Matrimonial suits I showed that I filed for no-fault divorce in NY, and I clarified that I have been planning to amend the suit to abuse-based once the suit moves forward. I showed 40 service attempts at like 5 or 6 different addresses, including several blatant indications of overt service evasions. I showed the successful service attempt where he assaulted the private investigator who staked out his place. I showed the filings and transcripts of his frivolous TX suit where he alleged fraud (and had it so in case of no annulment it would fallback to no-fault divorce), and the dismissal of that whole suit based on my claim that a State that I have no tie with has no business hearing about my marriage in which I have claims as well, abuse-related, which would be best heard in the State where I already filed my suit because that's where all the evidence and witnesses are. I showed the more recent CA filing where he alleged fraud AND force, indicated requesting alimony, and put his student debt in the alleged marital debts. I also showed the filing I made in response to that suit (with the same jurisdictional defenses as in TX, explaining the suit belongs in NY), as well as the perjurious affidavit of service he filed in that action. 2 weeks after this combo interview, I had the entire CA case dismissed based on lack of jurisdiction. For context, for each of the annulment suits, I had a couple weeks to do dozens of calls and e-mails to find attorneys with a retainer I could manage, to file specific motions that given the circumstances were very obviously going to lead to complete dismissal, each time throwing mid to high 4 figures out the window and giving me dozens of hours of work during business hours. Oh and as a reminder, autism + ADHD + flaming trauma-induced anxiety and executive dysfunction. All of this was on top of the content of my amendment request from September 2024 which contained overwhelming evidence of several assaults including one with kitchen knives, one time where he almost slit our puppy's throat, a good dozen acts of criminal mischief, one time where I called 911 after an assault where he talked over me telling the dispatcher that we had a bunch of AK-47 and were ready for a shootout, also many death threats, coercion attempts, instances where after assaulting me he would punch himself in order for me to be arrested as well if police showed up, etc. The original joint case was about 100 pages of bona fides, standard stuff. The battery/extreme cruelty amendment request was 428 pages including: Photos (98 across 34 pages) Transcripts of audio recordings (200 pages covering 12 recordings for over 10 hours; links to the audio files were provided, and these audios include dog shrieks, criminal mischief, assault, death threats etc) Personal statement (48 pages; most abuse statements are 8-12 pages long) Cover letter (16 pages, includes list of exhibits as well as list of qualifying acts of abuse with the list of exhibits relevant to each act) Several worksheets partly redundant with the cover letter but with more details and providing case law references IM screenshots (40 pages of Whatsapp, FB Messenger, texts) Domestic Incident Reports Orders of Protection ER summaries Amazon order logs And then some. And in person at the interview I probably gave another ~150-200 pages (the TX transcript alone was 60 pages, my CA response filing was 60 pages too, so it goes up fast). The grand total was close to 800 pages I think, roughly, give or take 50. The most serious moment in the interview was went I handed the transcript of the Dec 2024 TX hearing where I got that case dismissed. I said that the transcript features the specific allegations that my husband was making in that suit, and that he was alleging immigration fraud on my part. I asked if she would like me to elaborate, she said yes. So I explained the following back and forth, stressing that I might not be using the exact words that were uttered but that I was remitting a version of the transcript were those bits were highlighted, thus readily reviewable. Spouse said, prompted by my attorney, that, because allegedly we virtually never had sex, he came to the realization that I, allegedly, had ulterior motives and married him for papers. Then, briefed by me, my attorney adopted roughly the following line of questioning: Attorney: What do you think of your spouse's concerns about your not always taking your HIV medication? Spouse: instead of talking about my concerns, he lectured the court on HIV being untransmittable when undetectable; however he did not address his skipping pills, or the possible interference of heavy alcohol and drug abuse, or the bloodwork being every 6mo when HIV can go up and back down within a month, or the fact I was never given free, continuous, unmonitored access to said bloodwork, etc... Attorney: You have been having affairs throughout the relationship, correct? Spouse: No Attorney: Have you been STD tested? Spouse: Yes, I've been doing that routinely. Attorney: But you said you haven't been intimate with him though, right? Spouse: Right. Attorney: So you've been having affairs with other people? Spouse: ... but he agreed to it! I like to quote that exchange because it summarizes so many of his red flags in so few lines. Also because this exchange seems to be all-encompassing, clarifying his deal to other people without requiring for me to add a single word of interpretation or speculation or contextualization. After about an hour the interviewer went "I wanna do the citizenship" and told me to stop handing her any more evidence, because I wasn't slowing down. I was confused because I could have gone for another 5 hours as I had a lot I wanted to share about, but my attorney seemed very happy of the implication that there already was more than enough. The tests (listening writing reading civics IIRC) went smoothly, as did the rest. There isn't much to say, I guess she had already looked at my background check and read my personal statement and I had been very detailed in the past hour so she mostly just went through the questions already in the N-400 form. At the end of the interview she explained to me that she intended to approve me for both but couldn't do it on the spot because they need to first put a new I-751 in the system with the battery waiver, before they can process the N-400. During the interview there had been some back and forth between her and my attorney as she instructed my attorney to prepare another form I-751 but with the waiver. At the end of the interview the interviewer also pointed out that this was the most well-documented VAWA filing she had ever seen. I replied to this that in preparing my case (which took me over half of 2024), I didn't want to take any chances. The interview lasted a grand total of about 1h30'. I requested a name change btw (the addition of an English middle name). I was expecting the status change to occur within a couple days of the interview and it took 3 weeks so I spent most of that time wondering what more interference my spouse could have run that time around, but apparently it was all just about VAWA-related form processing. Toward the end of these 3 weeks, the first hearing on the CA annulment suit took place, my motions were granted and the suit was dismissed. During that hearing, my spouse testified that the same day he filed for annulment, he also filed for a restraining order. Then because he didn't like that he couldn't get whatever his vexatious suits through all the way across the country without first establishing jurisdiction over me, he came up with a legal theory about the existence of the restraining order suit giving the court jurisdiction over me in the allegedly related annulment case. The judge rolled his eyes, asked a few questions relevant to the matter of jurisdiction, and dismissed a minute or two after. So now you know what I meant by "My interview was different from the one you'll have". 🙃

I'm realizing that I ended up not following up here with updates. First regarding these questions: You could still upload new unsollicited evidence online, but if your only reason to upload documents right now is for the interview rather than because of new developments, then I think you should rather, as they are telling you to do in the appointment notice, come to the interview with a new batch of all your typical evidence, for the new applicable date range (presumably, from your filing date to your interview date). Have a printout or photocopy of all of the new batch, and expect that you will remit those to the interviewer. Don't just hand them a bundle. You can hand them your whole binder toward the end if they are prompting you for new evidence to add to your casefile, but if they prompt for new evidence toward the beginning, then you should present that evidence, so you should pull from your binder, in the order that makes most sense, your exhibits, explaining the context, significance, relevance of each as you hand them to the interviewer. I suggest you start chronologically with the ones with the most evidentiary value (so for a joint case that would be birth certificates, leases, mortgages, tax returns), then moderate evidentiary value (bank statements, utilities), then the softer evidence (travel tickets, photo album, affidavits). The interviewer presumably already glanced at your casefile and should know stuff from before your filing, so if you have a good amount of evidence from after the filing date, just introducing that evidence as prompted will simplify things greatly as it will provide you a set of events based on which to structure your showing of the bona fides of your marriage. Still always keep in mind that you should let the interviewer lead the interview and will sometimes have to refrain to go into long narratives on stuff they're not interested in asking about. But introducing evidence when requested, and provide concise context each time in order to paint a picture and preemptively address questions while leaving room for the interviewer to choose which details to ask about, will go a long way. Also come with the original for all documents that are typically protected, sensitive, or for which matters of authentication are very relevant (typically mostly just gov-issued stuff, or ). For the I-130, as recommended by our attorney, we bought a photo album, laid out the photos in the album, brought the album for the interviewer's review, and provided (letter-size) photocopies of it. I don't know how you organized your filing but I remember that a good way to categorize what you're looking to demonstrate (aside from the base evidence such as the spouses's vital records and proof of status) is: Evidence of cohabitation (same mailing and physical address, same fridge, both have a toothbrush and an underwear drawer at that address, there is a marital bed) Evidence of romantic involvement (you guys go on dates, support each other, don't take separate flights/seats when traveling, gossip with third parties about the life plans you have together, share offspring/pets, are each other's emergency context/will beneficiary/etc) Evidence of financial co-mingling (taxes, mortgages, leases, insurance, but it's not just or necessarily that both names appear everywhere; it's more that a substantial amount of each spouse's paycheck is overtly set up to provide for the needs of both spouses; can be with income landing onto the same joint account, or one's name on one utility and the other's on another utility, one paying the rent and the other doing all the grocery spendings, the husband's Amazon orders showing purchases of tampons for the marital address Note that the financial co-mingling bears the most weight to them because it's typically contracts, statements, etc, they're more of a black-or-white kind of evidence from which neither spouse can easily extricate themselves. Then evidence of cohabitation, which is more of a mixed bag between soft and hard evidence. Then evidence of romantic involvement, which often is mostly soft evidence which typically is not gonna weigh that much in the adjudicative process. And I did go to a combo interview very recently (like 3-4 weeks ago) but it was a battery/extreme cruelty waiver one, so a fairly different format from yours.

There's no legal requirement anymore, indeed. I'm just saying there is a /need/, although not a /legal requirement/, to keep your address up to date with whoever you need to have issue your US passport. You must send them your original certificate of naturalization so don't take any chances. I think it's the Dept of State rather than the Dept of Homeland Security, though.

FYI, I still have a pending N-400 from mid-Sep 2024 and a pending I-751 from Aug 2023 which I requested in early Sep 2024 to be amended to Battery/Extreme Cruelty waiver. I also notified them of a (slight) change of address that occurred in late Jan 2025. Still no update to either filing. Both filings are starting to be overdue based on average processing times so I'm assuming it means they did receive everything and it's all being delayed by their reviewing my abuse claims, which I guess is good given that in the absence of acknowledgement of receipt of these I spent a lot of time wondering whether I had done everything right. My order of protection against my husband expires in a couple of weeks and I'm pretty anxious.

I'd say to receive your certificate and your passport but I guess this is with DOS and not DHS. Maybe this line is just added to all status changes automatically.

By "don't be moving on" I don't mean "don't divorce", I mean "don't remarry". I don't know how this flies with I-751 but I know that with I-360, remarrying is disqualifying. In the eyes of USCIS, your qualifying relationship doesn't end with divorce but does end with remarriage. Even if with I-751 a remarriage is not disqualifying (which I'm not certain of), it's going to be very frowned upon.

If I were you I would avoid remarrying before the I-751 is approved. If it's denied and you're remarried and file stuff based on second marriage, your case will be looking a lot like it's a fraudulent one. You're currently in the process of having a major immigration benefit assessed for your based on a certain relationship. That relationship didn't work out, but don't be too eager to move on from it while filing paperwork tied to it.

People use the expression VAWA to refer to the I-360. However, the VAWA and its renewals also regulate the I-751 Battery and Extreme Cruelty waiver (and an abuse-based cancellation of removal). I'm not too sure about the third but the first two are very similar. They share almost the same requirements and the resulting immigration benefit (10y GC) is the same. Although both these filings are VAWA ones, usually I refer to one as I-360 and the other as I-751 B/EC waiver for clarity. There are significant upsides to amending with B/EC waiver rather than divorce waiver, and vice-versa, depending on your situation. Also, I-751 filings are systematically approved based on a single waiver even if one qualifies for, and requested, more than one. The B/EC waiver is always reviewed before the divorce waiver, so if you request both, they won't look at your divorce waiver request before denying your B/EC waiver request (but if you requested both in the same filing they won't issue a denial unless the whole petition is denied). The main upside of filing for more than one waiver at a time is for the scenario where you get denied. If you get referred to immigration court before you get the time to refile following a denial, you will only be able to fight it, in a way that is kind of an appeal, based on waivers that were reviewed and denied by USCIS. For this reason, a lot of people who file with B/EC waiver but aren't so sure they will get approved also request a divorce waiver as a fallback, to make sure that even if they are put on removal proceedings, by the time they start to have hearings they will likely already be divorced.

People, including like adjudicators on Reddit and elsewhere, have been saying that the estimate is completely unreliable and meaningless (but they're lawyers, not engineers nor mathematicians, so they don't know how it's calculated or how much relevant data is being used to compute it). However, it obviously was based on /something/. The formula seems to have changed a few weeks ago so I'm hopeful that it's now more reliable. Maybe the estimate was based on all N-400 rules rather than specifically the one we selected, and/or was nationwide rather than specific to our field office. Also, maybe the estimate was based on the average processing speed of the last 12 or 24 months. The longer the period the smoother and stabler it is. If it's based on the last few weeks for instance, then the estimate is gonna very greatly within weeks if the amount of resources focused on processing this form varies. I've read on the overall Processing Times public page that 80% of the cases ending up at my field office were completed within like 6.5mo iirc. I filed in mid-September, and it's now telling me the case decision will be in 3mo. That sounds fairly accurate to me. A week or so ago, before the formula change, it was telling me something like 25 days. I imagine that it was either a median (50% of cases filed on my filing date rather than 80%), and/or based on the 5y rule, and/or based on everybody...

Also, the answer is always no if you requested a name change as only federal judges can adjudicate name changes.

If you check tomorrow you might find out that you had your oath ceremony yesterday 🙃

I don't have an update but I have new information. Someone in an immigration-related FB group asked a question yesterday and shared about their situation. They filed jointly in early 2023, then sent a request to amend their case to the B/EC waiver in January 2024. In June 2024, they received the following notice (they provided a screen capture, I'm typing "(...)" on all the parts that they scrambled): So it seems it's protocol for them to play dead while doing something resembling a prima facie on ROC cases before they convert them (although I'm not sure they mean to play dead for this long; but they do adjudicate the amendment request separately from the amended case and only get back to the applicant after that).

An annulment does not prevent you from removing conditions but it would likely be based on a claim that you married under false pretenses and you don't want a court document to state such a thing. An annulment may prompt for you to provide more justifications to USCIS. Also, an annulment will give your spouse a clean slate to do it all over again with his next victim as your marriage will have never happened in the first place so he will get to deny everything for the rest of his life, and you will be deprived of closure.

Also, annulments can happen with default judgements if he files for annulment and you don't fight it (which may require you to litigate, which in turn may require you to have a family lawyer on retainer; these are very expensive). Most respectable lawyers will drag their feet at the idea of filing a frivolous annulment suit, but one can always find someone who will play along.

Divorce waiver is more straightforward because you don't have much else to prove than the same things you already proved in 2021. However it does require a final judgement of divorce. You can still ask to add the divorce waiver without providing the divorce decree, then they're gonna issue an RFE (when they look at the filing, which might take a while longer), then either you have it and provide it or you don't can't provide it on time and they will deny the filing. However, you will still be able to refile I-751 later on with the divorce decree, as long as you haven't received an NTA (Notice to Appear, basically a summons to immigration courts for deportation). In immigration court, you will have the right to fight deportation using any ground that you already claimed through I-751 waiver requests, so at such time if you did previously request for USCIS to add a divorce waiver to your then-current I-751, then in immigration court you will be able to provide the divorce decree (alongside your proof of bona fides marriage) and get your conditions removed. Same as with abuse waiver, if you do request it, even if it's not approved, you'll be allowed to evidence battery or extreme cruelty during deportation proceedings to get your conditions removed. The point of the abuse waiver is mostly to protect you against rogue actions of your spouse or ex-spouse. The original purpose of the immigration provisions of VAWA, as marketed to both political sides, is to enable victims of abuse to have one fewer hindrance to cooperation with law enforcement against perpetrators of domestic abuse. Fewer USCIS officers are trained to review abuse-based filings and it seems I-751 waivers are fairly rare so nobody really seems to know how long they take or how they move around. You can request an abuse waiver if (a) you qualify, (b) you can prove it, (c) this waiver is more interesting to you than the divorce one. Note that you can request both, but the abuse one is always reviewed first because of its ramifications, so although it's still useful to ask for more than one waiver so you have more than one ground you can use in immigration courts, you shouldn't both request waivers for grounds that you're not confident you'll eventually be able to prove. If you request the abuse waiver, you will benefit from privacy and confidentiality provisions, and you will retain eligibility for 3-year naturalization. Whatever waiver(s) you request, as long as there is at least one, then your spouse can't just withdraw their signature and have the case fall apart because the filing will have become individual. In addition to that, if you request an abuse waiver, USCIS will be barred from making any adverse determination based solely on information given either anonymously or by your abuser or any person who might be acting on their behalf If you get arrested while you have a pending or approved VAWA case, you won't be automatically referred to ICE USCIS will waive the requirement that you still be married and living with your abuser when reviewing an N-400 filing under the 3-year rule if you have a pending/approved B/EC I-751. In order to qualify and in addition to the bona fides, you need to document, under the "Any credible evidence" evidentiary standard, at least one of the following: One occurrence of battery toward you. Battery is physical violence. That includes many misdemeanors of domestic violence such as stalking (e.g. chasing you in traffic seemingly to assault you), menacing (e.g. making credible death threats, waving a deadly weapon to intimidate you), assault (e.g. hitting, punching, kicking, shoving, pulling hair, spitting on you, cutting/bruising/burning you, injuring you in any way), sexual assault, criminal mischief (damaging/destroying stuff around you is using physical violence in a way that creates an imminent risk of physical harm to you, and that's how battery is defined), etc. One occurence of extreme cruelty toward you. Items under this category are sometimes one-time events, or acts unfolding over time. A few items for which one occurence is sufficient include crimes such as coercion/extortion; withholding medical assistance while you have a medical emergency; maliciously having you committed in a psych ward; inflicting serious injuries or death to your pets or your children. Some stuff like financial abuse, making you pay for everything, forcing you to work, forcing you to not work, taking away your paycheck, being frugal within the relationship while dissipating funds outside of it, these things count as extreme cruelty but are not really one-time things so you need to show a pattern of these. Psychological abuse toward you that meets two criteria: You can prove that it follows a pattern over time (so it can't be a one-time thing, you need to prove repetition over a good while); I suggest you google "cycle of abuse" to see what the pattern looks like. USCIS tends to consider that this is a clinical finding which means that (a) they prefer if a professional third party (physician, social worker, police, etc) makes that finding and (b) even the honeymoon part is part of the pattern. There is case law on an AOS VAWA (I-360) case where a woman married with a US citizen had to prove that she experienced battery or extreme cruelty while married and on US soil and she underwent physical abuse in Mexico, fled to the US, her abuser contacted her and lovebombed her and she went back to Mexico where she was abused again. She won her case in appeal because the lovebombing is part of the clinical pattern of the cycle of abuse. If you're married with an alcoholic you know exactly what I'm talking about. Actually you said it yourself. Their being nice in-between drinks is how they keep us captive. This item is the best to accomodate abuse that presents in a mellow way (without one of those clear-cut occurrences of battery or extreme cruelty which I mention above) but it's also hazardous to demonstrate. You can secure a psych evaluation by a licensed mental health practitioner (can be a psychiatrist, a social worker, a psychologist, etc) that determines: you have a mental injury (meaning, a formal diagnosis such as PTSD, depression, anxiety, panic, phobia, personality disorder, etc), AND this diagnosis appears to be a direct consequence of the abuse Note that USCIS seems to heavily rely on state family case law, so if something qualifies as abuse for divorce purposes, and if you can prove it, it is likely that you have a decent case for USCIS. I suggest you look PDF publications of the NIWAP (National Immigrant Women Advocacy Project), they've been extremely helpful to me in getting a better understanding of what may or may not count. Qualifying criminal activity for the purpose of other stuff such as the U visa (hostage, slavery, torture, blackmail, etc) does usually qualify as either battery or extreme cruelty afaik. Finally, as far as proof goes, just like with bona fides there is the soft evidence (photos, audios if you're in a one-party consent state, etc), the hard evidence (acknowledgement by third parties of there having been abuse: police reports, criminal cases, orders of protection, medical reports describing injuries, abuse-based divorce decree, psych evaluation etc), and the statement and cover letter. Most appeals I could find online on VAWA cases featured a denial for two most recurring reasons: Spouse was mean, we're sorry you're traumatized, but these acts don't amount to our definitions of battery/extreme cruelty Lack of probative details (location, date, time, what discussion led to the incident, what was the social dynamic in the preceding days or weeks that led to this situation, what factors such as addiction or mental illness make that claim to this abusive behavior be more likely to be truthful). So the problem in your case is how you go about proving that your injuries are not self-inflicted for immigration purposes in the absence of police reports. If you have a lot of pieces of evidence of a variety of types (photos, med/psych docs, audio transcripts, testimonies from credible witnesses, etc) on several occurrences, it becomes much more likely truthful to an immigration officer that at least one of the claims is true, and with enough details of probative value, they can turn around their chair and argue to their direct supervisor that this case qualify because there's this event with these details that are clear enough to check the box. If all your evidence is first-party, you will have a serious burden of credibility to overcome. Some people are approved with just their statement and with little to no corroborating evidence, and USCIS insists on not providing much of a list of qualifying events or qualifying evidence because they want to encourage everybody who underwent domestic abuse to show it to them. it's not a lost cause. The standard is "any credible evidence". However, you do need to be mindful of the fact that the more third-party evidence you have, from professionals who are qualified to leave a paper trail that says "this person did experience domestic abuse" that USCIS officers can readily show to their boss during their daily/weekly/monthly performance reviews, the easier your case gets. DO NOT use anything audio or video if it was recorded in a State that requires the consent of all parties involved, or you will likely get referred by USCIS for a felony charge. If you do live in a one-party consent State, please note that USCIS doesn't do multimedia, so you will likely have to either transform your video into some kind of picture album and/or just use the audio track and put it in some transcription software (I used www.notta.ai, it's a Japanese platform for audio transcription, and yes they do English) to just provide a PDF transcript. My advice: Check with organizations that provide services to victims of domestic violence what your rights are. Even if you don't get for them to represent you, if at least you can get for them to look at your evidence and statement you will get a better sense of how solid your case is whether it be for housing, for immigration, etc. Collect as much evidence as you can before you move out. Take pictures, scan all documents that you have the right to scan. And also, consider not moving out. If you press charges and get an order of protection, and as long as you can keep paying the rent, you will be able to keep living in the house and your abuser will be the one moving out. I don't know where you live but in NYC, many precincts have a DV officer and you can show up and request to speak with a DV officer and they will provide you some guidance on what your options are and on whether you have enough evidence for your abuser to be arrested and charged. Start going to Al-Anon meetings, preferably in-person if you can (but don't attend online meetings while your abuser is nearby). Go several times per week if you can. It's not a "once-per-month" thing. And keep attending even after you separate. Go to at least maybe 10 meetings within a month or so. I promise you, things do get better.

Still no update, but I ended up just uploading all of my evidence onto the joint case on myUSCIS last week. I'm very uncomfortable with that but at least I know that they have all of it. I also called the Customer Contact Center and the best response I was able to get was that my evidence would be looked at during adjudication to assert at such time whether it's appropriate to apply VAWA-related procedures. The purpose of my call was to assert that now that I uploaded the evidence including a cover letter that requests the addition of that waiver, rather than God knows when. Seeing as I did apply for naturalization, I'm hopeful that my I-751 will be bumped up anyway and that I won't wait long. However, no news from the amendment request packet that I physically sent in early/mid September. I'm contemplating reaching out to the USCIS mediator or to my Congressperson because I'm still not sure that it's in my best interest to simply sit and wait.

Absolutely. There's a reason that I-751s exist. You can't naturalize before they have given a second look at the bona fides of your marriage.

I don't think the annulment would stick on the merits (also because I'm fighting it; I'm extremely confident that he was heavily relying on a default judgement because he's done it before in unrelated civil cases) but the case would convert to divorce eventually and I don't want to litigate the divorce in Texas. Even for the matter of lack of jurisdiction, my TX wants me to provide him with certified copies of the OOPs and I'm having a hard time getting these because apparently the criminal court clerk's office and the DA's office are not very familiar with the procedure. The opposing lawyer in TX could keep them out of evidence if they're not certified, and hinder me from making the point that there is abuse to litigate. My TX lawyer says the TX court is much more likely to waive their presumed subject matter jurisdiction if the OOPs are included. If they don't waive it, they will still be lacking personal jurisdiction and will be able to adjudicate the divorce but not the split, so I will be litigating in TX and it will take a while and I'll have to get everything certified and go back and forth etc, for the split to then not be done while that's what I care for the most. The I-751 situation is not just about frivolous accusations of fraud. He could also make frivolous accusations of crimes and disrupt the processing of my case. I have at least two examples in mind where he assaulted me and because I made it obvious that I was audio recording he started punching himself and took pictures of his own self-inflicted bruises. I provided USCIS with one (transcript of) recording where I call 911 and he talks over me to say I assaulted him and then when the dispatcher asks if there are weapons at home he says we have a bunch of firearms and are ready for a shootout. I also provided them with one (transcript of) recording where he records himself starting with something like "So you were saying you married me for immigration, right?" hoping that the gaslighting would have me confused enough to make an incriminating statement. I called his BS, he threatened to kill me if I call 911 again (he was trashing the apt a few minutes before and I had the doorman call 911 through the intercom), then assaulted me, then punched himself when he realized I was recording too, pretended to call a physician to report an assault, then when I confronted him about the criminal mischief he admitted to felony insurance fraud in an attempt to subdue me by trying to persuade me that I was an accessory to that crime (he lied to me so I would make an erroneous statement that led to the approval of his claim). On the recording he acknowledges that he fed me a lie, disregard that my knowledge and intent matter, and tries to scare me around the idea that I wouldn't fare as well as him in prison. So yeah he perfectly could just send pictures of self-inflicted bruises or cherry-pick statements that he induced, to see what sticks. With VAWA, all accusations of crimes will be ignored unless they can be corroborated by a non-presumably-malicious source. Without VAWA, such accusations could be sufficient to complicate and greatly delay at least my N-400 case and possibly also my I-751 case. Also, VAWA filings still require to prove the bona fides relationship (although it lowers the evidentiary standard, so the bona fides criterion is easier to meet). These filings don't drop the bona fides requirement, they simply prevent the abuser from having any say with USCIS.

The joint I-751 was done with the immigration lawyer who also filed I-130 / I-485 etc two years prior. I looked for a lawyer for the abuse amendment but wasn't able to find one. Most private lawyer I was able to get a ballpark from were above $8k for the filing, none of them were willing to take a case where there would be a concurrent N-400 filing, and all pro-bono organizations I spoke with refused to take my case because I still have CPR status (they usually do VAWA through I-360 rather than I-751) and because my revenue is above poverty level. So I did a lot of research and spent 8 months in 2024 gathering and compiling evidence and writing my statement and cover letter. I think the resource that helped me the most is the PDFs from the NIWAP (National Immigrant Women's Advocacy Project), which has several publications decrypting what kind of actions qualify one for VAWA. Most notably, they state that USCIS draws those in large part from family/divorce case law, hence the case law logic that makes something being abuse for divorce purposes also does it for immigration purposes. For instance, criminal mischief amounts to battery for divorce/immigration because it constitutes an imminent risk of physical harm, as does an assault or attempt thereof. I did not request a divorce waiver because I am very confident that my case will be approved on abuse grounds and because I am also very confident that it will be picked up long before I get a judgement of divorce. I could still refile based on divorce if the abuse waiver is denied which is very unlikely, and provide the judgement while the I-751 is pending, seeing as in such case it won't be bumped up by an N-400 concurrent filing. I am not only seeking for the existence of a VAWA filing to be acknowledged at final decision time, I am also seeking the protections granted by having a VAWA case. I believe that he is likely to make false declarations to USCIS in order to jeopardize my immigration status if I do certain things such as pressing charges for more of the things he's done, or reporting him to the licensing body for social workers in the State he now lives in and where he is attempting to get an annulment so that I struggle to defend myself from afar and to prove abuse with out-of-state evidence. On my expectations from divorce, I know that I won't get as much money as I would care for as long as I compel him to pay $10-20k out of the $50k+ he can reasonably be deemed to owe me, I'll be fine. The non-monetary stuff (pets, OOP, etc) is much more important to me and I won't get those things without litigating for them. He has much more of an incentive for divorce to be adjudicated first than I do. He wants to move on with his new victim and has also shown time and again that he will very actively and overtly evade every attempt to reach him or to collect debt, as he has always done. I want to collect as much as possible BEFORE the divorce be final, and I want to drag the divorce as much as possible in order to do so. Also, I have one family lawyer in NY who filed my divorce (and said "you could bury him" when I shared my I-751 VAWA statement and evidence and mentioned some of the stuff that I didn't include in evidence for his sake) and will litigate it on the merits, and another one in TX who is fighting the frivolous TX annulment filing based on lack of jurisdiction.

(I posted twice by accident above, if an admin could delete the first of my previous two comments, thx) To get back to the topic of this thread, I went through a call and a chat with a live agent through Emma and I tried to fill an inquiry but didn't go through because none of the options of that last one seemed to fit. For context/reminder, I mailed in a 428-page request to add a battery/extreme cruelty waiver to my joint I-751 filing. That request was received via FedEx on 9/11/2024 (so it's been a month and a half). The original joint filing was received in early Aug 2023. On the phone it was recommended for me to mail an inquiry to the service center and that I would get a response to it within a month. I haven't done that yet. On this past Saturday I received an automated e-mail from USCIS saying that they received my non-delivery inquiry and that their target response time to those is 72 hours. I don't know from which source they picked up an inquiry so I don't know how much of my problem they're already aware of. Also, it's all in the California Service Center, which I recently found out had moved to a new facility. I filed my amendment request at the old address during the overlap time so my request is acceptable as far as timing is concerned but I'm thinking it could have been lost in the move, or they might simply be struggling with a huge backlog in scanning. The lady on the phone did tell me that right now the ingesting time tends to be 30-60 days which seems huge to me.

I can't negotiate an IRS debt that I paid off. If I pay it off now I'll just be shifting the debt to my credit cards which would be a terrible judgement call. That means I shouldn't just pay the tax debt off, but at the same time, I filed for naturalization so I need to be careful to not be found to lack GMC in not outright paying the tax debt off. Also an agreement is not feasible when the other party can't be reasoned with and/or has unsafe demands (such as shared custody of pets that he abused). Court will hold him accountable in a settlement for SOME of the debt that I care for, will give me full custody of the pets, a long-### full order of protection, and a judicial acknowledgement of what I went through which might be useful down the line given that he is a licensed social worker who currently works with children and has been routinely working with vulnerable populations in the past. These things will never happen without court involvement. Court will also hold him accountable for the portion of the rent that he didn't pay this year while absolutely wanting to stay on the lease despite not living there. I was going to go to small claims court for that but my lawyer said it would be simpler to just include that in the divorce proceedings. On the bright side, his two main incentives to avoid(/evade?) abuse-related divorce litigation, besides money, are (1) because he's a social worker, that would be a long-term threat to his career and (2) he's in a rush to marry his next victim and to buy a house with him and has stated so. I spent 3 years trying to have him get help. Two years in I started to attend Al-Anon near daily. Therapists of relatives of addicts often say that their roles is that there only be one casualty instead of two. And there's mental illness involved, it's not "just" the addiction itself.

I can't negotiate an IRS debt that I paid off. If I pay it off now I'll just be shifting the debt to my credit cards which would be a terrible judgement call. That means I shouldn't just pay the tax debt off, but at the same time, I filed for naturalization so I need to be careful to not be found to lack GMC in not outright paying the tax debt off. Also an agreement is not feasible when the other party can't be reasoned with and/or has unsafe demands (such as shared custody of pets that he abused). Court will hold him accountable in a settlement for SOME of the debt that I care for, will give me full custody of the pets, a long-### full order of protection, and a judicial acknowledgement of what I went through which might be useful down the line given that he is a licensed social worker who currently works with children and has been routinely working with vulnerable populations in the past. These things will never happen without court involvement. Court will also hold him accountable for the portion of the rent that he didn't pay this year while absolutely wanting to stay on the lease despite not living there. I was going to go to small claims court for that but my lawyer said it would be simpler to just include that in the divorce proceedings. I spent 3 years trying to have him get help. Two years in I started to attend Al-Anon near daily. Therapists of relatives of addicts often say that their roles is that there only be one casualty instead of two. And there's mental illness involved, it's not "just" the addiction itself.

What are you referring to as being very rare (or seldom seen here) specifically? That waiver as opposed to the I-360/to joint/to divorce waiver? The combination of that waiver with the N-400 ? The addition of that waiver to joint rather than outright filing with it? 😕 I'm expecting that whoever is processing the N-400 will pick up the I-751 and ultimately speed it up overall but I wouldn't be surprised for it to delay the N-400 at least a bit. I also requested a name change to get a middle name, and I'm also expecting some scrutiny on my taxes as I'm on a payment plan for reasons mentioned earlier. Other than that I think that my abuse case is rather overwhelming and that I don't really have any GMC red flag, so I'm more worried about the procedure and timeline than by the outcome itself.