RIE - birth certificate?

[tachi88 4]

Hello everyone, 

 

My husband and I just received a yellow RIE/RFE(?) in the mail and I feel very anxious about what this means. 

 

Excerpt from the letter: 

 

"Request for Initial Evidence

Submit a copy of the applicant's foreign birth certificate issued by the appropriate civil authority. If the document is in a language other than English, you must submit a copy of the foreign language document and an English translation. If the birth certificate is not available, you must submit acceptable secondary evidence and a letter from the government or other authority". 

 

I don't understand if it means that they don't like the birth cert we provided or if they lost it?? We sent a black and white scanned one with the AoS packet in January 2018 with a self translation by my husband as he is fluent in English (In hindsight, I realize that was probably not a great idea and we will get a certified translation this time around. If anyone one has suggestions, I'd greatly appreciate it). 

 

Two other things concern me about this letter, it was mailed March 29 but it says" remailed" at the top and we got it April 12th. Does that mean we missed it before? I don't know when the 87 day window to reply actually started. 

 

They also misspelled my husbands first name incorrectly by one letter off. 

 

Should I mention the misspelling in the cover letter? Other letters that we have received have his name spelled correctly. 

 

My husband has an official, color copy of his El Salvador birth certificate and receipt when he got it that we can send this time around.

Should I provide other secondary evidence just in case to be safe? He also has his country ID card that lists his info including both his parents names. He also has a driver's license, but it does not list his parents there. 

 

They state that we have 87 days to reply, but there is no date included?? Does that mean from March 29th the clock starts? 

 

I was going to call USCIS today and see if we can get any more info about what they want exactly. I'm really scared because you can only do this once! I saw people saying to schedule an InfoPass, but my nearest office is 3 hrs away and I don't want to schedule for something that may be a minor issue.

 

Had anyone else had experience with this? Is there a good template for replying to an RFE/RIE? 

 

Also, there are two addresses listed and I don't know which one to write to...!

 

Thank you for reading and thank you in advance for any replies!

 

 

Edited April 12, 2018 by tachi88
minor grammar, etc

[Olivia2804 18]

Hi tachi88,

 

I hope you ended up finding some answers to your questions.

Can I ask you how long it took for USCIS to approve your case after they had received your RFE?

 

Thanks!