Brought my cat with me

[Teddy B 17,252]

I came on visa waiver and my stamp says 90 days is that bad?

That all depends, have you stayed longer than 90 days in the states? That would be bad.

You should start another thread as to not derail this one.

[Confused785 3]

Yep I have a magazine subscription as well as im on a few store mailing lists with my new name. We filed our taxes jointly this passed year. He had a payment plan set up last year with the IRS but it only lasts one year i guess then he has to update it. Because he currently switched jobs he needs to set up a new payment plan which he's trying to do this week. Will the fact that he owes around 50k in back taxes pose a problem if he has a payment plan arranged with the IRS? I am on his health plan with his new work ..though it doesnt take affect until november. My immigration medical exam was done last january after our lawyer told us it would be needed. Though it expires october 31st so I may end up needing to take a whole new exam due to the financial problems we've had with trying to get the money together to file.

On his bank account he has a business account and a personal account. I was able to get on the personal account as some sort of beneficiary. But the ssn was needed for the business account.

The wedding cards of course are a given because they hold sentimental value to me. I keep those in a special safe place lol

Like I said proving that our marriage is based on Love and not just to get a green card is the easy part for us. We know that we married for the right reasons and love each other very much. Im pretty confident to be able to prove that.

The smaller things that may or may not even play part in the process are the scary parts.

Im really shy in person...and really sensitive. I know that I will be nervous when it comes time to file the paperwork let alone the interview day. I mean I havent even filed yet and look how scared I obviously am lol

I have thought about doing it on my own instead of using the lawyer, But I feel a little bit better knowing that I am using a lawyer. Its more for the peace of mind aspect lol And to make sure nothing is filed incorrectly

Edited September 26, 2012 by Confused785

[Tanja08 11]

That all depends, have you stayed longer than 90 days in the states? That would be bad.

You should start another thread as to not derail this one.

Yes I have I'm in the middle of adjusting, no rfe at this point.

Sorry about that, I panicked for a second

[Teddy B 17,252]

Yep I have a magazine subscription as well as im on a few store mailing lists with my new name. We filed our taxes jointly this passed year. He had a payment plan set up last year with the IRS but it only lasts one year i guess then he has to update it. Because he currently switched jobs he needs to set up a new payment plan which he's trying to do this week. Will the fact that he owes around 50k in back taxes pose a problem if he has a payment plan arranged with the IRS? I am on his health plan with his new work ..though it doesnt take affect until november. My immigration medical exam was done last january after our lawyer told us it would be needed. Though it expires october 31st so I may end up needing to take a whole new exam due to the financial problems we've had with trying to get the money together to file.

On his bank account he has a business account and a personal account. I was able to get on the personal account as some sort of beneficiary. But the ssn was needed for the business account.

The wedding cards of course are a given because they hold sentimental value to me. I keep those in a special safe place lol

Like I said proving that our marriage is based on Love and not just to get a green card is the easy part for us. We know that we married for the right reasons and love each other very much. Im pretty confident to be able to prove that.The smaller things that may or may not even play part in the process are the scary parts.

Im really shy in person...and really sensitive. I know that I will be nervous when it comes time to file the paperwork let alone the interview day. I mean I havent even filed yet and look how scared I obviously am lol

I have thought about doing it on my own instead of using the lawyer, But I feel a little bit better knowing that I am using a lawyer. Its more for the peace of mind aspect lol And to make sure nothing is filed incorrectly

It appears that you're doing everything correctly. The back taxes won't pose a problem because he has the payment plan set up. Don't you find it strange that the IRS allowed you to file a joint tax return, but the people at his work won't let him change his filing status to married? Just take a stab at who is right in that case. lol

If proving your marriage is legit an based on love is the easiest part for you, than you have the hardest part of the process conquered. Also, the customs officers that do these interviews can usually tell right off the bat whether you and your husband are really together by the way you interact, they are trained to do so. The material evidence will help to support that. And as you stated earlier, Canada is a very low on the list of known immigration fraud countries.

As for the lawyer, you do what's right for you. I was just thinking that where you were tight for money it would expedite things to bypass the lawyer.

[Teddy B 17,252]

Yes I have I'm in the middle of adjusting, no rfe at this point.

Sorry about that, I panicked for a second

If you've gotten married and are adjusting your status, the overstay will be forgiven. It wasn't clear what your status was in your first post.

[Confused785 3]

Actually me and my husband talked about maybe getting the retainer back since we are so tight on money lately. The cost of our lawyer was 1250 for the retainer which was half his fee and then a payment plan of like 1/4 the other half over a 4 month period which we were not able to make those payments due to the money situation over the last year. But we've been putting money aside And so far as long as nothing bad happens financially we may have enough for the other half of the lawyer fees. Then its of course a matter of getting the immigration fees together. But at least the lawyer will be paid for. I really like our lawyer alot even though Ive only had 2 consultations with him.. one before and one after the marriage. But he answered all my questions and helped to make me feel a bit better. Im on of those people that google everything lol to find information. Of course by doing that I also find alot of horror stories. Finding this site I think has made me feel a bit better seeing how soooooo many people are going through the same situation as me.

My lawyer even told me that I shouldnt believe everything I read online. That immigration officers arent really chasing down canadians to kick us out of the country.

Which I thought made sence because I could drive down the street and find some undocumented people standing on the corner waiting to be picked up for odd work. I don't imagine Im the only person that would know that they more than likely are not legal. Thats what my husband says anyway, and that I really need to stop worrying.

Well this weekend anyway, we're really hoping to get a few things up on craigslist or whatever to sell.. If we can get them sold no later then next weekend...then we will book an appointment with our lawyer the following friday and preferably get this process on the go so I can stop being so stressed over everything.

[Teddy B 17,252]

Actually me and my husband talked about maybe getting the retainer back since we are so tight on money lately. The cost of our lawyer was 1250 for the retainer which was half his fee and then a payment plan of like 1/4 the other half over a 4 month period which we were not able to make those payments due to the money situation over the last year. But we've been putting money aside And so far as long as nothing bad happens financially we may have enough for the other half of the lawyer fees. Then its of course a matter of getting the immigration fees together. But at least the lawyer will be paid for. I really like our lawyer alot even though Ive only had 2 consultations with him.. one before and one after the marriage. But he answered all my questions and helped to make me feel a bit better. Im on of those people that google everything lol to find information. Of course by doing that I also find alot of horror stories. Finding this site I think has made me feel a bit better seeing how soooooo many people are going through the same situation as me.

My lawyer even told me that I shouldnt believe everything I read online. That immigration officers arent really chasing down canadians to kick us out of the country.

Which I thought made sence because I could drive down the street and find some undocumented people standing on the corner waiting to be picked up for odd work. I don't imagine Im the only person that would know that they more than likely are not legal. Thats what my husband says anyway, and that I really need to stop worrying.

Well this weekend anyway, we're really hoping to get a few things up on craigslist or whatever to sell.. If we can get them sold no later then next weekend...then we will book an appointment with our lawyer the following friday and preferably get this process on the go so I can stop being so stressed over everything.

It's good that you've got an attorney you both like and trust. Having gone through this, I know it's tough for you to be hanging in limbo too. My wife was going stir crazy not being able to work or go back home for any visits until she got her GC. In her case her GC came before her advanced parole or her EAD. She's now working full time and we got back to Ontario to visit her family for 9 days in April.

[Confused785 3]

That is great to hear.

I too would like to take a trip home sometime even if its just for a few days. The first lawyer we called we called him when we were just planning to get married.. No dates were yet set and we hadnt started sending out the invitations yet. He made me extremely nervous, because we told him or our situation that we wanted to get married and needed to now how to go about it being on the current visitor visa , and I had explained to him that we didnt want to rush a marriage but would preferably like to have it by the end of the summer of 2011.. It was probably around may or june that we had spoken to this lawyer. He said once my b2 expires after the 6 month stay then im in overstay and that as long as I get married in under 180 days of overstay then I wont be banned from the US. Which I now know isnt true lol. So this made me very nervous. I wanted to start planning the wedding right away. It was easy to tell all our family members of our plan for the wedding but telling his two younger kids was the hard part where as they still resented him for the divorce. Thats the biggest reason the marriage didnt go through by the end of the summer. Finally thier mother was getting remarried which actually made it easier to tell the kids our plans of our wedding which they originally were going to be a part of but unfortunately were not allowed to attend .

My biggest surprise was that my husband had made arrangements of my mother to come... to share a bit of that funny story really quick.. the night i found out was when we had gone to a friends house to ask for them to be our witnesses. I was a little stressed out, my first marriage (and as i tell my husband all the time my last marriage as well so don't be getting any ideas), but I really wanted someone from my family to be here. My younger sister was the only one other than me in my family that had a passport where as she was the only other who had travelled outside of the country. Little did I know she knew my mother had alrready secretly got her passport and was coming to the wedding. But my little sister still played along as I tried to find the cheapest way possible to get her to the wedding lol Tickets from there to here are 1000$. As i cried and cried talkig about it to my husband in the truck on the way home, he finally broke and told me that my mother was coming lol. It made me so happy . So my mother walked me down the aisle. She's so proud having raised only 3 girls never any boys, that my husband is her first son in law.

Anyway, sorry for rambling. We did get married under the 180 days of overstay mark. Though our new lawyer informed us that it wouldnt matter if we got married 1 year into overstay or 10 years into overstay, the process is still the same for marriage.

[DandT14 272]

The reason I asked was because it is unusual for a Canadian to receive a passport stamp when entering as a tourist, unless the stamp is for a mandatory return date, an I-94. Sometimes it happens, but not usually. I just wanted to make sure that you weren't accruing illegal presence. So no dated return stamp means you're fine.

My husband's passport was stamped 2 of the 3 times he flew in. It seems to depend more on where he cleared customs - in Newark he was stamped, Toronto he wasn't.

We filed our taxes jointly this passed year. He had a payment plan set up last year with the IRS but it only lasts one year i guess then he has to update it. Because he currently switched jobs he needs to set up a new payment plan which he's trying to do this week. Will the fact that he owes around 50k in back taxes pose a problem if he has a payment plan arranged with the IRS? I am on his health plan with his new work ..though it doesnt take affect until november. My immigration medical exam was done last january after our lawyer told us it would be needed. Though it expires october 31st so I may end up needing to take a whole new exam due to the financial problems we've had with trying to get the money together to file.

If you filed taxes jointly then you have an ITIN. You can use that like an SSN on bank accounts. The IRS should have sent you a letter telling you what the ITIN was. When we filed jointly, we just submitted the request for an ITIN with our IRS tax return. As soon as the ITIN came, we used it to file state taxes and open a bank account.

I also have a payment plan with the IRS (I'm the USC) and it was a non-issue. Mine must be different though, because I don't have to renew it or anything, just pay it until it's gone. (I owe A LOT less than your husband does.)

Your I-693 should be valid for a year. Why do you think it expires in October?

[Confused785 3]

Well I was looking at the medical exam paperwork.. the opened copy that was given to us and it sayd it expires october 31st. I didnt think it would expire until the end of December since we had it done last January. But It seems that it expires after 10 monthes not 12.

Im not sure why his tax payment plan stopped unless I heard him wrong. I do know that he needed to adjust it because the payments he was making was alot higher than what he can now afford.

I got the ITIN paper in the mail and it says it can be used in place of the SSN when it has to do with tax purposes. I asked him if he could use that at his work to be able to file jointly through there . He said that he talked to his boss about adding me on there where it says if ur spouse is an alien then u must file single. Which is really weird, and I really don't want that to affect us because he only put single because that's what it said.

I told him he needs to get a copy of that exact paper so we can have that on file to show at our interview when the time comes.

As for my passport being stamped. It was stamped in Canada. I went through customs there before entering the US. Its never been stamped inside the US at all. And I was not given any type of i-94/ My lawyer asked me that and I didnt know what that was... Which worried me for a moment because I thought maybe I should have been given something that I wasnt given. But the lawyer said that its rare for canadians. And reading on this site and others, I also see that canadians are not required to have an I-94.

I guess if at the POE the cbp officer was really thinking I was a suspect of possible immigration then not only would he have not approved me entry.. but he could have also given be a return date written in my passport.. is this true?

[DandT14 272]

Well I was looking at the medical exam paperwork.. the opened copy that was given to us and it sayd it expires october 31st. I didnt think it would expire until the end of December since we had it done last January. But It seems that it expires after 10 monthes not 12.

Im not sure why his tax payment plan stopped unless I heard him wrong. I do know that he needed to adjust it because the payments he was making was alot higher than what he can now afford.

I got the ITIN paper in the mail and it says it can be used in place of the SSN when it has to do with tax purposes. I asked him if he could use that at his work to be able to file jointly through there . He said that he talked to his boss about adding me on there where it says if ur spouse is an alien then u must file single. Which is really weird, and I really don't want that to affect us because he only put single because that's what it said.

I told him he needs to get a copy of that exact paper so we can have that on file to show at our interview when the time comes.

As for my passport being stamped. It was stamped in Canada. I went through customs there before entering the US. Its never been stamped inside the US at all. And I was not given any type of i-94/ My lawyer asked me that and I didnt know what that was... Which worried me for a moment because I thought maybe I should have been given something that I wasnt given. But the lawyer said that its rare for canadians. And reading on this site and others, I also see that canadians are not required to have an I-94.

I guess if at the POE the cbp officer was really thinking I was a suspect of possible immigration then not only would he have not approved me entry.. but he could have also given be a return date written in my passport.. is this true?

I don't know why they gave you an expiration date. They told us clearly "one year" and trust me, we barely got it filed in time. I think we had about 15 days to spare before the year was up. (We procrastinated a bit.) But it was accepted.

Your husband's boss told you to file what as single if your spouse is an alien? I'm confused.

I bank at a credit union, but we had no trouble adding my husband to my account. We just gave them his Canadian driver's license and the ITIN.

[Confused785 3]

My husband said that he filled out the tax section on his paperwork when he first started working there. Once he handed it to his boss. His boss noticed he filed as single..and asked "arent you married? why would u file as single" And my husband showed him where it says if your spouse is an alien then you should file as single. And then his boss said "ahh well I guess you have to file as single then"

After my medical exam, they told me also that it expires after 1 year, But looking right now at the medical exam results on the copy they gave me. In the top corner of it has a tiny date saying expires 10/31/12.

Which The date I had my medical exam was 2/15/12 so it is really weird that it would have any expiry date at all

[DandT14 272]

My husband said that he filled out the tax section on his paperwork when he first started working there. Once he handed it to his boss. His boss noticed he filed as single..and asked "arent you married? why would u file as single" And my husband showed him where it says if your spouse is an alien then you should file as single. And then his boss said "ahh well I guess you have to file as single then"

After my medical exam, they told me also that it expires after 1 year, But looking right now at the medical exam results on the copy they gave me. In the top corner of it has a tiny date saying expires 10/31/12.

Which The date I had my medical exam was 2/15/12 so it is really weird that it would have any expiry date at all

Oh, I think you're talking about the W-4. Whatever he put on there is fine, it just dictates how much your federal withholding will be on your paycheck. They probably recommend marking single because it will cause a higher withholding rate. Don't worry about that.

Is the expiration date pre-printed on the form? For example, does it have an OMB approval number and then an expiration date?

EDIT:Ok, I just looked at the current I-693 form. You're looking at a form approval expiration date, it has nothing to do with your actual exam. You're good until February.

Edited September 26, 2012 by DandT14

[Confused785 3]

Yes it was for his paychecks that he had to file single on.

And yes it is an expiration date after the little OMB number on the top. Here I was thinking I would have to get another medical exam in the next month and a half. I even told my husband that we will have to get another one done lol. Thanks for the clarification on that.

So then his taxes taken out of his paychecks.. that won't raise any flags to them as to why he filed single then?

[DandT14 272]

Yes it was for his paychecks that he had to file single on.

And yes it is an expiration date after the little OMB number on the top. Here I was thinking I would have to get another medical exam in the next month and a half. I even told my husband that we will have to get another one done lol. Thanks for the clarification on that.

So then his taxes taken out of his paychecks.. that won't raise any flags to them as to why he filed single then?

No, I'm pretty sure I probably checked married on my W-4 when I was single and vice versa. It's really just a calculation for how much to withhold for taxes. People mark whatever works best for them. Lots of times, married people will put "married" on one W-4 while the other partner puts "single". It's just a way to get the right amount of taxes withheld so you don't owe at the end of the year. Or in my case, I wanted more money in my paycheck so I think I put married with 10 dependents at one point. (Now you know why I owe the IRS money.)

You know, if money's really tight, you might consider skipping the attorney. My situation was not terribly different from yours. My husband entered in June 2010 and had no job in Canada, no lease, nothing. I was worried about the intent thing, because the only proof we had that weren't planning on getting married when he entered was that I was already married. (Sounds scandalous, I know.) But anyway, intent wasn't questioned at all at the interview. Because of money (and procrastination) we didn't file for AOS until May 2012. If you ask me, that helps show my husband wasn't in it for the greencard. If the marriage was fraudulent we wouldn't have waited so long to file. But like I said, the interviewer never mentioned the word "intent." As long as you don't have any skeletons in the closet you're not mentioning (the cat doesn't count ) then I don't see why you would have any problems.