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If possible work on getting a certified copy of her passport so you can file taxes jointly with an ITIN. It’ll save you money and is evidence of commingling.

Have you met in person yet?

Usually they process them fairly quickly, but like others have said, it depends on the circumstances. I would have advised against the money transfers, but that’s done now and the other items are useful.

The odds of a B2 visa being granted to someone with a recent I-130 petition on file are effectively zero. You are of course free to withdraw the I-130. I would still expect the B-2 visa to be denied. Neither of you have strong ties to NZ it seems like, and you’d need very strong ties to overcome a recent immigrant visa filing.

They’ve slowed down a bit with the shutdown (they’re still processing, but went from ~4500/day to ~3500/day) January was tracking to have first approvals around the end of December. Now it’d probably see first approvals around end of January/beginning of February as a best guess.

Put down the month and year you started at the most recent educational institution if the reason for your unemployment was that you’re a student.

We’re agreeing. I was providing extra comments that from a government-wide level, a lot of people view K-1 with suspicion. Being from a country that already has increased risk of fraud doesn’t help that.

There’s an assumption and/or prejudice by some in the immigration/state department world that even K-1s from low fraud countries are fraudulent. India and Pakistan are not low fraud countries. Draw what conclusions you want from those facts. I suspect at some point in the next three years K-1 will likely see significant changes. It’s viewed with suspicion by left, right, and center and the Utah marriages have more or less rendered it redundant at this point.

You’re confusing the “account transcript” and the “record of account transcript”. The nearly identically named documents are both different and poorly named as they’re easily confused. The “Record of Account Transcript” (what I suggested) contains both the “Tax Return Transcript” and the “Account Transcript” in one PDF. It is the most complete transcript you can get from the IRS and contains all the information the consulate would need. Its poorly named as it can easily be confused with the “Account Transcript”, which is definitely not sufficient. The record of account transcript contains everything related to both the return and account status. Anyway — my ping was to check if they could use the simpler return only version as the joint sponsor might have reasons to prefer that vs. all account info. Answer to that appears to be yes.

The one I provided includes the entirety of the return transcript as well as additional data so would be more complete. Just wasn’t sure if they were fine with the simpler return-only version as well. If they’re fine with the return-only version that’s useful to know, thanks.

Try again with the transcripts and not the tax return. I have a hunch that will solve your problem. She can get them for free from the IRS website. The transcripts page has several options. The “Record Account Transcript” contains both the return and filing status/dates. I think they might also accept just the return transcript (@pushbrk would know more), but as the record of account also contains the return plus more information it should be safe. Included a screenshot below.

In you all’s situation MFS likely makes the most sense; the only thing is she’d need to paper file as you don’t have an ITIN. You’re in one of the weird situations where MFJ might actually hurt because it would disqualify you from the foreign earned income exclusion (FEIE) She’d paper file as MFS, manually write in “NRA” for your SSN, and mail it off to the appropriate IRS office. She would need to claim the FEIE and would likely owe $0 in taxes. I’d recommend mailing any back taxes in soon as paper can take a minute. This is not tax advice, and if you have specific questions it’s worth consulting a CPA with experience in expat filing.

Sure, but as with all things it’s a question of risk tolerance and the amount of effort and money one wants to put into the perceived risk. The risk of being denied for domicile while applying from deep South America is not high. Someone could spend a lot of money establishing proof even to the extent of moving to the U.S. ahead of their spouse or they could do all the normal things one does when moving countries and use that as proof. Speaking personally, if there’s an additional cost to doing things overseas vs. the U.S. for a non-English speaking country where there’s not a cultural history of people splitting time between countries, I wouldn’t pay the extra cost in order to develop evidence beyond what would come up in the normal course of moving.

And all congressional case inquiries are tracked in a separate database from the normal case inquiries, which is just as valuable as having the right contact number. This year it also apparently is advantageous on speed of response if the senator or congressman is Republican, so if you have an option between the two parties, I’d choose one of those.

General comment: living in a renter heavy town “getting added to the lease” is the slang for how people here talk about moving in with their significant other (or anyone really.) We also frequently tell people to draw up leases with their parents if they’re planning on staying there at first. My point is we shouldn’t be so quick to jump on OP for what’s a fairly normal thing to do when you’re moving 5000ish miles, and at least in my part of the U.S. is normal shorthand for living with someone. Similar on the consulate point: of course no one should present false evidence to a consulate, even if it’s not a high risk consulate. That also doesn’t mean we should be pretending every consulate needs Juarez or Montreal level evidence on domicile. La Paz isn’t going to go in with the assumption that the couple doesn't want to relocate. That means they don’t need to spend excessive amount of time worrying about this. The normal things you do when moving work: a lease, a job offer, emails about schools, etc. and all of those should come about naturally. The consulate officers are well trained and will be able to see OP is taking steps to relocate and that it’s not contrived.

You said “it would obviously be fake”, which is just not true. It’d be the normal and expected transaction if you actually intended to move in with your brother — most landlord would require it. Again, even looking at it solely from an immigration perspective, this is the exact same thing we tell people to do all the time when they plan on moving in with family who own a house; only difference is her family rents. And sure, more evidence is always better; but the government takes a risk based approach to this sort of thing. There’s significantly more risk of a person living in Montreal or London using their spousal green card as a way to get work authorization in the U.S. while living abroad than there is of someone in La Paz doing that. People don’t commute between Des Moines and Bolivia for work, and the consulate knows that. It influences the amount of evidence they’ll want to see to show intent. All that to say, yes, OP should have evidence, and getting added to a lease as well as inquiries on school enrollment, shipping receipts, etc. are all good proof. But this isn’t really something they should lose sleep over; doing the normal things you do when relocating countries should suffice. They’re not dealing with Montreal.

This video might be relevant

If you plan on moving in with your brother, him adding you to the lease would be the normal, legal, and expected thing. Yes, it’s good evidence of intent to relocate, not sure why you’ve been told otherwise as “draw up a lease with family” is standard advice we give. This is the equivalent of that if the family rents and doesn’t own. In all honesty, I don’t think you’ll really need all that much. I’d be shocked if the consulate in La Paz is a stickler about domicile proof. There’s not that many people with USC children and family in the U.S. who want to use a green card as a way to work in the U.S. while living in Bolivia 180+ days a year. It’s far enough away that’s not practical. Montreal and a lot of the other English speaking consulates tend to be stricter. @appleblossom gave good advice, but also worth noting you won’t need it until the visa interview stage, so you have 1 year+ in order to get everything in order.

Domicile isn’t required at the I-130 stage. It’ll take a little over a year at the current rate for the I-130 to be approved. NVC would be another month, then 2-6 months with the Rio consulate. If you do the math, by the time you have your interview it’ll probably be 2027 so applying now makes the most sense. If you need to stall, you can stall indefinitely at NVC.

US government forms are written at Grade 4 English level by law. Therefore they don’t use the word “domicile” because in 90% of cases it would confuse people. You’re the 10% where it would be useful to use adult words. Only list your legal domicile when they ask for “physical location” and if you’ve never been domiciled together say you’ve never lived together.

I’d find a joint sponsor.

In theory even the paper petitions now are digitized and they get routed to an ISO’s computer when it’s their turn. A few line ISOs have done AMAs about it or posted comments. Even for trainings I’d assume most of them would be semi-automated by PD. My overall theory for most of any type of form that gets approved significantly faster than normal is that there’s a mistake or some other flag/error that requires manual intervention in the computer. For a lot of systems to fix data entry errors, database artifacts, etc. you’d actually need to look at the underlying support. At that point if an ISOs already reviewed it, they might as well adjudicate. I know in my work there’s a software that doesn’t work if there’s an extra comma somewhere in the CSV file. If my staff need my assistance figuring out how to fix it, I usually just go ahead and review the entire output when fixed without waiting for them to do it. In short, my theory is the super quick forms are probably supervisory staff fixing data entry errors or the like that fail automated validations.

I generally agree with your point of view on it, but I think there’s enough early approvals coming out of TSC to say it might be useful if your I-130 is already sitting there. Doesn’t hurt and anecdotal evidence it could be helpful along with a rational explanation as to why that SC would let people “skip ahead.” Another Reddit case where you got a 4 month approval from TSC. Another 6 month K-3 from TSC. Didn’t feel like digging for more but there’s enough anecdotal evidence for me to feel comfortable calling it a trend. For all the others I agree with you that it’s not worth the time filling it out. Even if it’s free.

Yeah, if you look at the crazy fast approvals on Reddit or Discord these days they’re virtually all originally at TSC. Similar to the theory of a rogue adjudicator, I think there’s probably a supervisor somewhere trying to pad the numbers and directing I-130s to ISOs when an I-129F comes in. ISOs don’t have any say on what cases go into their queue, so it’d have to be a supervisor routing it. Someone with performance metrics tied to closing cases would have a motivation to speed something up if it’s a 2-for-1, which would explain why you see a lot of Texas ones. Of course, that’s all speculation but everything regarding K-3 is speculation and I think it’s a decent explanation for I-130s in TSC taking 3-6 months to get approved with K-3.

This is a Texas I-130. It’s the only service center I’ve seen where there’s a trend of approving I-130s faster than average if you file for a K-3 as well. They’re the ones who process the I-129Fs for K-3. I’ve said this before, but I can totally see local leadership having an unofficial policy of processing easy I-130s already assigned to them if a K-3 is applied for since it’d let them get rid of two petitions and bump their numbers. I’ve yet to see any evidence the K-3 works for I-130s initially assigned elsewhere.