Do we need to send chat/email logs as evidence of relationship?

[achilles19282 0]

Hi Everyone,

We consulted a lawyer and she says that she likes to send only itinerary, receipts and engagement pictures initially. She thinks that chats/emails will only give the consular officer more information to bring up questions and that they can be typed up in a text document by anyone anyway.

Does it make sense? Do you guys usually send out all the chats/emails with I-129?

Thank you.

[Al422 221]

They want to see that you did in fact use chat or email. When my wife went, I gave her a sample. I had over 1000 pages of chat, so I printed every 50th page, a total of 20 pages, and put a note on front that that is exactly what I did. Accepted fine, no problems.

It can be a source of questions by the interviewer, but if you already know what is on those pages, you can answer the questions just fine.

[whity_rabirabit 1]

They like to see evidence. It's better to have more evidence than getting RFE for that! I used chat logs from Facebook, Skype and text message app. I took screen shots of our lovely conversation (where we said love you~ and love you mwaaaak to each other, lol) then put them in Word file nicely. Also, I put cover note saying "evidence of relationship" too so it's easier for them to see.

[j&ana 363]

it is not so much what or how much evidence you send in . It is about telling your story without being there. You want the person that looks at it to be able to see when you met how you became in love what your relation ship is like. they might not know everything but you want them to have a general ideal. so whatever evidence helps with that you should send just do not over do it

Edited February 10, 2015 by j&ana

[Pheebs1201 269]

I didn't include any chat history and we've had no issues so far.

It's up to you what evidence you include to demonstrate a genuine relationship.

We included photos, plane tickets and other information about travel plans during time we'd spent together. I also wrote a "relationship timeline" in a letter to explain how many times we met, for how long each time and what we did on each visit.

Some people will argue chat logs are vital. I disagree, but it's good to include them if you have little else to show.

Good luck.

[achilles19282 0]

Thank you, appreciate your advice.

[-Shana- 152]

For us it was:

- 12 pictures of us in various places (US, UK, Italy, Japan, Korea!)

- Scanned passport pages of the border control stamps to prove above trips.

- Print outs of old itineraries with our names/dates of travel on.

- Scans of our visas when he lived in the UK and when we both lived in Japan

- Screen shot of our Facebook friendship page

- Screen shot of a chat between us

- Itinerary of his trip to see me for Christmas, which was after I-129f filing.

I hadn't arrived on this site when I filed, so I would probably have left out the screen shots of Facebook/chat because our pictures and passport scans were more than enough proof. His flight to see me for Christmas after was solid evidence that we were continuing our relationship long distance.

[Hank_ 9,174]

Hi Everyone,

We consulted a lawyer and she says that she likes to send only itinerary, receipts and engagement pictures initially. She thinks that chats/emails will only give the consular officer more information to bring up questions and that they can be typed up in a text document by anyone anyway.

Does it make sense? Do you guys usually send out all the chats/emails with I-129?

Thank you.

For the I-129F petition your lawyer is correct (did I just say that?), at this phase they are only interested in evidence of having met in person within the past two years. Later at the embassy they want to see the relationship evidence.

[TBoneTX 45,047]

Front-loading your petition package with evidence of your bona fide relationship can be crucial at high-fraud or tough consulates, perhaps including those in India. USCIS will not care about this additional material but will forward it to the consulate, where the consul might make up his/her mind before the visa interview ever happens.

Pick a healthy selection of material that YOU want the consul to see, and include it.

[jenjoe 2]

From my understanding, the goal of showing chats/skype/etc. is to exhibit proof of an ongoing relationship. They used to ask for phone bills showing the international calls or letters with the proof of postage, but not many people have this anymore. I do think it helps more than it could hurt - better to give them more information than less!

If you use What'sApp (and maybe other int'l texting apps, I'm not sure), you can export your conversation through email and load it into a Word document. We did this and, like some of the commenters above, had thousands of pages of conversation. I went through them and picked a day or two of conversation for every month we had been apart, in my mind this helped to show the story of us, and that we are still intentional about being in relationship.