Joint Sponsor & I-864 filing

[jmanddk 0]

Hello!

 

My husband and I are going to concurrently file I-130 and I-485 for AOS from his F1 visa. We are both PhD students with decent stipend incomes. We are having trouble filling out form I-864 affidavit of support. I (the petitioner) make $30,500/year and have a letter guaranteeing this funding until early 2023 - my husband's (the beneficiary) stipend is $25,000/year and he has a letter stating he will continue to get it for another 4 years contingent upon satisfactory progress. Hopefully this will be enough for USCIS, but as I have read that sometimes they do not like PhD income (they don't consider it durable), we are including a joint sponsor, my father. He is self-employed and collects income from a variety of companies. My questions are as follows:

 

1) Although it seems like we meet the income requirements just fine I want to include a joint sponsor just to be safe - is this a good/bad idea?

 

2) Does the joint sponsor I-864 get included with our I-130/I-485 application, or will my father need to mail it in separately? Does it need to be submitted at the same time as the I-130/I-485 file (regardless of who mails it in)?

 

3) My Father has quite a few 1099's for each tax year (~20) - putting these into the application for all three years will considerably bulk it up. Do we need to include absolutely every 1099? Is it a good idea to include bank statements as well to show income? We are also going to include Schedule C, business license, etc etc.  

 

4) I am not given a W-2/1099 from my University - instead they give me a stipend letter detailing the full amount of my stipend income for the year and explaining that it will not be reported on W-2/1099 but it is still my responsibility to file taxes on it (which I have) - Will including this letter be enough? I also have a form that I submit to the IRS explaining why I don't get a W-2 - maybe I should include that too?

 

5) Do the online tax-transcripts that can be acquired through the IRS website count for submission, so that I would not need to submit W-2 or 1099, or does USCIS require the printed ones that can only be recieved by mail from the IRS?

 

Apologies for the long post - thank you very much for your time and help.

[databit 328]

Re: question #3: 

You should submit the entire tax return (even if it's as big as a book) of your father, not just chosen parts of it, which looks suspicious. 

[TNJ17 1,329]

Income is income and your sound satisfactory to me as long as you have the papers to prove it. I don’t see the need for a joint sponsor, but that’s your choice. It won’t hurt you. Submit everything together, you don’t need booklets of the tax returns, the online scripts that you can get online on the IRS website are just fine. Pay stubs and tax transcripts are really all they need. 

[jmanddk 0]

58 minutes ago, databit said:

Re: question #3: 

You should submit the entire tax return (even if it's as big as a book) of your father, not just chosen parts of it, which looks suspicious. 

That's what I figured - thanks for your help.

 

48 minutes ago, TNJ17 said:

Income is income and your sound satisfactory to me as long as you have the papers to prove it. I don’t see the need for a joint sponsor, but that’s your choice. It won’t hurt you. Submit everything together, you don’t need booklets of the tax returns, the online scripts that you can get online on the IRS website are just fine. Pay stubs and tax transcripts are really all they need. 

I am hoping they see it that way too, but I have read about students getting RFE'd before because the income has a defined end-date (i.e. graduation, even if ours is a ways off) and thus isn't considered durable. We just want to avoid any potential RFEs, particularly as the processing times for everything have gotten so much longer.  Thanks for your info about online tax transcripts - that will hopefully simplify everything.