wagonmaker

Hi again - ok, this now makes more sense. All I have been reporting is what happened with my friends in 2010, based on the advice of their attorney (who was not misinformed - at that time it was still apparently acceptable). The USCIS greencard interviewer surely knew the law, and had no issue with my friend's truthful report of her work with the stamp. No one was "caught", they were up front and honest and it was not a problem. At that time anyway it was not all black and white. Now I am not surprised if it has been further clarified and those pesky stamps confiscated from the JFK agents so they can't use them any more. But a good, experienced, established immigration attorney who works at it every day and has been recommended by a reliable source would know that, as my friends' did. All I say is get a lawyer, don't go by us - we all mean well, but we are not professionals, and every situation is a bit different.
One question Rebecca - do you really think K-1 s should not be allowed to work, or was that sarcasm or a typo?
Cheers

And reading and posting on a bulletin board does not make *you* an expert, so you could cut the unnecessary sarcasm. I am only trying to help others to understand that the laymen here are well-meaning, but they are only reading and interpreting the law themselves, and they are not always right. So get a good lawyer. Yes, the stamp was valid for 90 days (not "a few days"). Yes, my friend's experienced immigration attorney advised her correctly about this. I can't say what JFK airport is doing today, but my friend entered the US in October 2010, got the stamp, got married within days, got a SSN, got a job with e-verify checking, and had no problem whatsoever - in fact they were completely honest about her employment at their green card interview, and it was completely fine - she now has a green card, and expects to have no problem removing the marital qualification. I will repost what I said before about my friend's experience, the advice she received, and how it was correct. I am not telling anyone to go with that, but I am saying that you need an attorney, not just the lay advice found here. Here is what I said previously, and it is 100% accurate for my friend's experience:
I say again, consult a reliable, recommended immigration attorney. My friend, about whom I have written before, came here last year on a fiancee visa, entered in NY JFK, got the dated work authorization stamp which said it allowed work for 3 months, got a SSN, got a job that went through e-verify, and worked successfully. They got married immediately upon her arrival and subsequently had the AoS appointment where they were asked about employment and were truthful and had no problem, and got the conditional green card. They have one more hurdle, of course, to remove the marital conditions, but that should be no problem as they are a 100% legitimate married couple and then she'll have her permanent green card. I am not saying this will always be the case, but i am saying emphatically that you should consult a reliable immigration lawyer who has experience with family-based visas if that;s how you're coming in, and don't go by the laymen's interpretation here of obscurely written rules. Start with AILA - American Immigration Lawyers Association (www.aila.org) for recommendations. It is ALWAYS a good idea to consult an immigration lawyer who is recommended to you by a reliable source for all phases of this intimidating experience. It is very confusing, and you should try not to go it alone. But be careful, as there are many unscrupulous lawyers in the field - get a rec from AILA or even the Bar association in your area, not the yellow pages. Good luck to all and happy new year.
Yes, that is what I have been saying here too. My friend's lawyer said the same thing, and it was 100% correct for my friend.

I say again, consult a reliable, recommended immigration attorney. My friend, about whom I have written before, came here last year on a fiancee visa, entered in NY JFK, got the dated work authorization stamp which said it allowed work for 3 months, got a SSN, got a job that went through e-verify, and worked successfully. They got married immediately upon her arrival and subsequently had the AoS appointment where they were asked about employment and were truthful and had no problem, and got the conditional green card. They have one more hurdle, of course, to remove the marital conditions, but that should be no problem as they are a 100% legitimate married couple and then she'll have her permanent green card. I am not saying this will always be the case, but i am saying emphatically that you should consult a reliable immigration lawyer who has experience with family-based visas if that;s how you're coming in, and don't go by the laymen's interpretation here of obscurely written rules. Start with AILA - American Immigration Lawyers Association (www.aila.org) for recommendations. It is ALWAYS a good idea to consult an immigration lawyer who is recommended to you by a reliable source for all phases of this intimidating experience. It is very confusing, and you should try not to go it alone. But be careful, as there are many unscrupulous lawyers in the field - get a rec from AILA or even the Bar association in your area, not the yellow pages. Good luck to all and happy new year.

I say again, consult a reliable, recommended immigration attorney. My friend, about whom I have written before, came here last year on a fiancee visa, entered in NY JFK, got the dated work authorization stamp which said it allowed work for 3 months, got a SSN, got a job that went through e-verify, and worked successfully. They got married immediately upon her arrival and subsequently had the AoS appointment where they were asked about employment and were truthful and had no problem, and got the conditional green card. They have one more hurdle, of course, to remove the marital conditions, but that should be no problem as they are a 100% legitimate married couple and then she'll have her permanent green card. I am not saying this will always be the case, but i am saying emphatically that you should consult a reliable immigration lawyer who has experience with family-based visas if that;s how you're coming in, and don't go by the laymen's interpretation here of obscurely written rules. Start with AILA - American Immigration Lawyers Association (www.aila.org) for recommendations. It is ALWAYS a good idea to consult an immigration lawyer who is recommended to you by a reliable source for all phases of this intimidating experience. It is very confusing, and you should try not to go it alone. But be careful, as there are many unscrupulous lawyers in the field - get a rec from AILA or even the Bar association in your area, not the yellow pages. Good luck to all and happy new year.

It's been a while, so I thought I'd let you know that my friend's green card was approved. She did get that work stamp at JFK and was hired legally by a reputable and knowledgable company; they got married; she got her Social Security card; filed for and received her EAD; filed for adjustment of status; had their appointment for green card and was approved. It all went quite easily - just 5 months from arriving in the US on the fiance visa to green card approval - and there was absolutely no problem at all regarding working on the JFK stamp, as their lawyer advised, and as opposed to the sense of things stated here on this board. They did not do this under the table - it was all documented. So while I am not giving anyone any advice, and think one should find a respected attorney, the fact is that her process went well and she worked legally from right after she arrived here. The fees are exorbitant, punitive even - I don't know what people without jobs do - but it all went quite well. So now they are settled, and only have to get the green card restriction lifted in 2 years. One more form, one more fee, one more interview - and they are done. Good luck to everyone else - and keep asking questions. Things are not always as they seem. Cheers!

Thanks for the input here - I also am not accusing anyone of intentional misinterpretation - obviously there is great confusion here, but dismissing contradicting advice is not necessarily the right thing to do. The attorney we consulted for our K-1 work question is expert in both family-based and work visas - and she has 20 years experience, gained not just from reading the law and trying to understand what it means, as most of us here are doing. She works every day in this field, and has colleagues, and is not giving an off-hand opinion at a cocktail party, she was hired to give her professional expertise in getting the K-1 Visa and EAD and AoS and could be sued for malpractice if she did not understand this properly.
The social security office (not a local one, but the one in downtown NYC where they handle immigrants all the time) would not take the application until asking for the work authorization and examining the POE stamped document. Then they took the application, saying you are work authorized, temporarily. The card arrived, stamped "valid for employment only with DHS authorization". The back of the card says If you are an alien legally in the US`with temporary authorization to work, your card will be marked "VALID FOR EMPLOYMENT ONLY WITH DHS AUTHORIZATION". If you show this card to an employer as evidence of employment eligibility, you will have to show your US immigration document authorizing employment. Note, "temporary" - that is what K-1 visa holders have - temporary work authorization. Temporary until the EAD, but only good until the date that was written in on the POE stamp by the DHS employee - CBP is a part of DHS - at JFK airport. The lawyer confirmed that DHS authorization includes these temporary CBP stamps.
I do not know if my friend's fiance's employer has gone to e-verify, and I'll report on what happens there, but Crissie's experience was that e-verify confirmed that the temporary work auth was good. Earlier in this thread (or maybe it was somewhere else on Visa Journeys), a lot of noise was generated on this, saying that now there is E-Verify, and with E-Verify the POE stamp "loophole" was closed, and that you would not pass E-Verify without a plastic EAD. Yet Crissie is reporting that E-Verify DID confirm eligibility. Now you want us to believe that the stamp is not valid even though authorized DHS employees give it and go to the trouble of indicating an expiration date, and that the touted E-Verify system may give a false positive, and that USCIS officials who are consulted may not know what they are talking about, and an immigration lawyer who does this work every day is wrong too. All possible, of course, but I am wondering if there's any room here for people on this board to acknowledge that a lay person's well-meaning and somewhat informed reading of a law that is always written obscurely because that's what law-writers do, is more accurate than all of the above people whose jobs depend on their being right about this? And how could E-Verify be wrong?
I'm sorry, but this does not add up, no matter which way you look at it. One thing I agree on is that of course if you wait until the EAD plastic card comes, you wont have these questions. And that might be a good thing to do for peace of mind. But in the real world people have to eat, and they need to be employed, and sometimes a duck is a duck, when duck experts say so. I really do want to understand this, because I don';t want to see Crissie's friend or my friend's fiance doing anything wrong or in any kind of trouble, after having done all the work it took to get that K-1 visa approved. But something is not right here.
One other thing - it had been said on this board back in the Spring that K-1 petitions were taking 5-6 months to be approved out of the Vermont office. People were posting their timelines and bemoaning that awful, long wait. No exception,s it was said here, that's what it takes. the CIS site said the same thing. Just have to wait 5 or 6 months. My friend filed his petition in late May, fully expecting to have to wait until about now to get that first approval. But he got his approval in June. One month from the filing date. Approved. Why? People here reported that they heard it was because the Texas office needed work so a load of petitions were shipped there and processed quickly. So the people here who earnestly and compassionately counseled patience, because it cannot happen any faster than 5 months were dead wrong. Happily so, for my friend and his fiance.
The moral is, you are lay people who have done a tremendous amount of research, and are well-meaning, and are very helpful in trying to navigate these very murky waters. It is very appreciated. But in the end of the day, you cannot make such definitive statements - others have interpreted the same facts in different ways.
Crissie - good luck to your friends - I truly hope that what my friend's lawyer advised them is correct, for them and for you. please do let us know if you learn anything more as I will. I know that the folks here are doing their best to give accurate info, and they may be right, but if they can't acknowledge that they could be wrong, then I don't know what to say.
No hard feelings folks I hope - we all want the same thing, and that is that our loved ones and friends get what they have worked so hard for, and can be productive members of our country, married and happy. Goodness knows, the USCIS doesn't make that easy.

Well, we checked with a well-respected NYC immigration lawyer - one who came highly recommended, not one out of the yellow pages - whose practice is exclusively immigration and she said that you folks are not right. She looked at my friend's fiancee's I-94 and the POE stamp from JFK is indeed temporary work authorization for her K-1 visa. The stamp expires after three months, so it is temporary work authorization, and meanwhile she is applying for AoS and EAD, and paying the fees, and has applied for a social security number. But this attorney is crystal clear that the POE stamp on the visa is authorization to work on a short-term basis, and that the I-9 that everyone has to file would be valid as completed with the expiration date indicated. The photo ID will come when the EAD is issued, yes, and that is the long-term authorization needed before green card, but the stamp on the visa is valid work authorization for three months. I know this is not what you all believe to be the case, so I recommend that folks talk to an attorney, rather than trying to interpret the law on your own. I read the same section that Heather & Nik referred to, and it can be interpreted differently from how they are readfing it - their way sounds reasonable, but it may not be the only reading. The preposterous suggestion is that JFK blithely continues to issue work authorization stamps, complete with expiration date written in, and that they are not what they say they are. JFK employees don't work in a vacuum of their own creation - CIS would have stopped them from issuing such stamps if the stamps were meaningless. It makes no sense the way the folks here are portraying it, and this attorney says the same thing. The stamp on th e I-94 is good until the EAD arrives, or three months from arrival, whichever is sooner. K-1 visa is a class of non-immigrant visa that allows work.