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For people who live together, USCIS considers financial comingaling to be the gold standard of proof that you actually live together and share a life. Utility bills are great. Drivers licenses with the same address are great. Joint bank accounts with the same address are great. Joint title to a car registered at the address on both your licenses is great. Bills showing both of you at the address are great. All of these things show both 1) time living together and 2) comingaling of finances. Those are the two things USCIS cares about for people living in the same country.

1) Do not listen to ChatGPT; immigration proceedings are the last place you should use GenAI because there’s so much bad info out there for it to summarize 2) You are overthinking this, which is the main reason why I (and I’m assuming @OldUser as well) told you to scan the entire passport — That way you don’t think yourself into doing too much or to little. Just do it and add brief explanation page noting where the stamps showing your entry into the Philippines are and what dates they correspond to and that you were staying in the country with her. It should literally be “I scanned my passport for completeness. I was in the Philippines on the dates listed below staying with my wife. The passport page of the exit and entry stamp are noted beside the trip date.” Keep it simple. 3) texts with Airbnb hosts aren’t useful. Airbnb will give you a receipt with guest names during the stay, but I don’t think they do it after the stay is complete. 4) Re: photos, have a handful that correspond to each trip. With other people is better

If you have a home scanner, that’s fine. Most people these days don’t so I was giving a free suggestion.

It’s the advice given when submitting passports for proof of citizenship — loss of citizenship is noted by the consulate damaging the passport so they like to see it all. This is different because it’s proof bona fides, but there’s no disadvantage to it and it provides your biography page and shows the evidence being submitted is complete.

Nothing unless asked. Like we’ve all been saying, this is really common.

On the accountant/estimate point: I have a friend who does HNW individual taxes. One of his clients intentionally underpays estimates as a tax strategy because he gets a better rate of return than the underpayment penalty by not giving the IRS the money until 4/15. Paying the penalty is part of the client’s strategy. All that to say, there are a virtually infinite number of reasons OP’s sponsor might owe taxes as of 4/15. None of them are relevant to immigration.

Likely not. Like I said, owing tax as of 4/15 is common for business owners. If the consulate asks you call him and ask him to download the “Record of Account Transcript” that contains both the account balance and other account information and the return. Takes all of 2 minutes to download. No need to provide it to them unless they ask.

Just go to the public library and scan your entire U.S. passport and upload it in one combined PDF with the photos as part of the RFE response (or photocopy and mail.)

“Amount you owe” is a point in time number as of the date the return was filed. It is not the current amount due. If they owed anything it would be a positive number next to the “Account Balance” line on the “Account Transcript” or “Record of Account Transcript.” This is just reporting the return as filed. Yes, OP has the return transcript — the account transcript/account information portion of the record doesn’t show current balance using that language or format.

The consulate has no way to check — the reason they’re asking for transcripts is that the data is stored solely within IRS systems and not shared with other agencies. Its also pretty normal for business owners to have large amounts due at YE. If OP wants they can ask the sponsor to pull the “record of account transcript”, which will show both the return and the account, but it’s not needed. Owing the government is normal when you’re successful at what you do as a small business owner.

Agreed with @pushbrk, but also providing additional context: that isn’t the current balance due. That’s the amount they owed the government as of the date they filed their return. They could have paid it all in full for all you or the consulate knows.

And sometimes they need something from someone in another government agency that has been furloughed. Fee funded means you can work on your work if you have what you need, not that you can work on things that others who aren’t working need to give you. It’s becoming a big limitation even in agencies that haven’t furloughed anyone at this point. USCIS received $6.4 billion in FY2024 appropriations according to DHS’ financials (p. 230.) Most of that likely doesn’t fund staff salaries and relates to contractor funding, but all that still has an impact. ISOs are working but if some contractors and support staff aren’t they’ll face limitations. Also the data is public. One of the paid websites is showing a decline in processing speed of 900 cases a day for I-130s in October (I don’t pay and can’t link here because they sell services, but they have a great free page that slices and dices the API data.) The obvious answer is the shutdown has had some impact, but even if that’s not the case the data is clear that October has been slower. Still faster than January and 2024, but slower than the rest of 2025.

They are not sponsoring you: you’re a U.S. citizen so the government has certain obligations towards you. Household size would be your wife, the JS, and their spouse: three people. You could use your parents, yes. If they don’t meet the threshold, they can try on assets which need to be 300%; they generally can’t use their primary residence to qualify. In your hypothetical they would need at least $100,000 in liquid assets if they have no income (or if their income is $23k, they’d need $30k, etc.)

For immigration purposes $0 will count as it won’t continue in the U.S. The standard is 125% of federal poverty guidelines for the household: See page 13-14 of instructions. Also see current guidelines by household size. Note the JS has to meet it for their entire houses (immigrant, themselves, spouse, and any children or dependents.) So if it’s a sibling with a spouse and two kids it’d be a household size of 5, current threshold of $47,062

Also contact your senator/congressman’s office to see if they can apply pressure after you request the expedite.

Naples is the consulate that processes IVs for Italy. You put in Naples.

You can still paper file; but the paper filing will then be scanned and/or manually typed in. Some people still prefer it that way. You can also respond to RFEs via mail. Anyway, ISOs are working, but support staff isn’t necessarily and that’s probably the reason behind the slowdown.

They've decreased I-130 processing at a speed of about 1000 a day since 10/1/25 (was ~4500; at ~3500 now.) They're still going because of the reasons you mentioned, but it might be that mailroom workers or other support staff have been impacted, which would impact the rate of processing. Still significantly faster than under in the Biden-era.

I think the person you heard this from might be thinking of K-1s, which have been paused for some countries. Yes, CR-1/IR-1s are still being approved by consulates.

USCIS is still processing I-130s, even in the shutdown.

Don’t think you need to submit English lesson receipts, especially since she speaks English well enough to communicate. In our case since my husband didn’t we felt the need to establish my Spanish abilities since not speaking the same language is one of the “red flags”. I’d just keep uploading tickets and/or passport stamps/I-94s. No need to upload the Chilean PDI tourist slip they give you.

Yah, I was being imprecise. I should have said all work within the U.S. would be cured via AOS assuming no other factors preventing adjustment. I still don’t think uploading a few videos merits disclosure. It’d likely just create more of a headache and would cross the line from full transparency to over disclosing. If they were doing a full business out of it, there might be questions, but continuing a weekly true crime podcast is likely to be fine. If it’s a major source of income where they will be producing substantial work, then I’d check with a lawyer.

Not disclosing something that you honestly do not think is work is not willful misrepresentation. There’s a fine line between overdisclosure and being completely honest to all questions asked. Overdisclosure can also cause headaches. It’s not clear if someone who is a YouTuber uploading a video they then get income from would be considered work by the government. If it’s disclosed as work when it’s not, that can trigger further levels of review, questions, and delays in the process. If OP has a lawyer it’d also be a decent thing to get their advice on if they need the money from new content as advice of counsel can generally be relied on in matters like this if an issue comes up later.

Agreed. It’s a risk tolerance question for a grey area of the law. For AOS I think it matters a lot less practically than for IR-1/CR-1, since everything is forgiven. IR-1/CR-1 it matters a lot more how the government official interprets uploading videos to a streaming platform for cash.

It also doesn’t really matter either way in the AOS situation as AOS would cure it. That’s not advocating for a violation of the law in violation of the TOS, just pointing out that under AOS the distinction matters a lot less. I don’t think the government interpretation of the law on the question of what constitutes work is as set as a lot of the immigration internet seems to think. Otherwise influencers would be facing a ban for uploading videos at Disney they make money on while here under VWP. I haven’t really seen that strict interpretation anywhere other than here or Reddit, and even in cases where the ban does matter (consular I-130), my gut is that it would depend on the CO adjudicating, but in most cases it wouldn’t be interpreted that way by the government. I personally wouldn’t do it in that case because I’m risk adverse, but I could also see a lawyer advising a client not to disclose it as work to the government. Like I said, I don’t think there’s a settled interpretation of this by the government, which is why so many people aren’t sure about what counts.