Petition Approved! Now the I-864...

[kmbrady 0]

So excited! Filed the I-130 on Jan 7th and by the end of January received an approval notice! NVC has been pretty quick in contacting me with the next steps too which is good, except that I wasn't prepared to be dealing with Affidavit of Support so soon, thought maybe it would be a few months and our income status might have changed. But anyway - we'll take it and work with it!

So I have a few questions...

Right now I (the US citizen) have only a freelance writing job where I get writing jobs sporadically - for example I havent had anything since the start of the new year but had a few writing jobs per month in the months before that and get paid per job as I complete them. So I don't really have a set annual income. Will this be a problem? What will I put in the annual income area in the affidavit of support form?

Considering the above, we'll be asking my mom to be the joint sponsor - can she combine her income with my dad if she needs to in order to meet the 125% rule? Also, my dad only receives disability/retirement income from the government - can this be counted at all towards income? And finally, my parents claim my 21 year old sister as a dependant - will she need to be counted in their household size because of this?

Thanks for anyone who tries to help, and congrats to the other few who have gotten approvals lately - its a very exciting start to the new year!

[kmbrady 0]

One more thing while I'm at it - I haven't seen a new Poverty Guidelines for 2012 posted on the USCIS site. Does this mean I should still go off of the 2011 ones?