Need help please. Full case situation inside.

[Ando. 0]

I'm beginning to feel the weight of this process. I feel like I'm in over my head. I keep hitting speed bumps of all sizes, from requiring a co-sponsor to not be able to set my Australian address in the i-864 form.

So here, as a form of therapy and in the hope someone might be able to help simplify this for me or help in some way, I am posting my entire story.

I am Australian, my wife is a US citizen. We were married in the US 3 years ago. We have a 2 year old and my wife is pregnant (due November). My wife has lived in Australia with me for 7 years now. We went through the whole process to get her permanent residency here a few years back, but now we want to move to the US.

We began the process a while ago and are now at NVC stage. I have paid the AOS fee and completed DS-261. Currently waiting for DS-260 to become available while collecting supporting documents.

In an act of pure naivety, my wife had not been filing her US taxes while living in Aus. It never crossed my mind and she didn't realise she was required to. Our bad. We contacted a US tax agent and had this all squared away earlier this year. We have logged on to the IRS website to request past 3 years tax transcripts and tax return transcripts but have been waiting for them for 2 or 3 weeks now. (They only send by mail at the moment).

I have been to the AFP website to request a police check (name check only). I have also done the NSW police finger print check. Not sure why I did both.

The other day, while looking over the i-864 form, I realised we needed to provide proof of domicile in the US. My wife hasn't lived in the US for almost a decade. We'll be collecting her drivers license, bank statements from her US accounts she still has active, tax transcripts (not sure that helps), voter registration information, and we'll be emailing daycares about enrolling our son. Hopefully that will be enough.

We've also realised we'll need a co-sponsor to meet the income requirement. My wife works part time and will be quitting when we move so essentially she'll have no income. My wife's sister will be our co-sponsor now. Hopefully we weren't required to nominate a co-sponsor at an earlier stage. I own an apartment and will be renting that out so at least we'll have that income. Not sure if that counts for the visa at all.

Those last 2 points are stressing me out quite a bit. Beyond that, it's minor things. Like, when to I schedule the medical? Why can't I list our Australian address under 'mailing address' or 'PHYSICAL address' (!!!!!) in the i-864 form? Why does my household size say 4 when i've just listed myself, my wife and my son? Do I list my sister in-law who is co-sponsoring us in our i-864? Does her husband need to fill out a form too? Does an Australian group certificate count as a W2? These are the things that are clogging up my brain right now. These all add up to stress.

Attempt to simplify: I await DS-260 to become available, fill that out, pay fee, mail AOS package, wait, contacted by Sydney consulate, medical, interview, visa?

Turns out this has been very therapeutic. Apologies for the rant and the wall of text.

[SweetDelish 38]

Thats a lot to think about.. You must be going somewhere really nice to want to move from Australia to the US. Someone that has gone through this would be best to answer, I was K1, so quite different, but I'll give a few things a shot here.

Checking the form that you have linked, you might want to read the questions carefully again, it is a question to the sponsor, and the part you marked for yourself, states above that its for 'persons NOT supported in this affidavit', so I think you have it a little backward there. The total at the bottom, should be your family, + your SIL family. I think question 1, is probably supposed to be your household size, so go back and check part 3, question 28.

Proving domicile, if you go to the search bar and type in 'proof of domicile' quite a few threads pop up with people in your situation, This thread, has a big checklist that could assist you. And Yes, your income for the apartment will count, I believe.

Best of luck, big move. Hope it goes well for you.

Edited August 25, 2015 by SweetDelish