I130 Supporting docuements

[Janay Thomas 1]

Hi everyone i started putting together documents to petition my spouse to come and join me in the USA it asked for proof of bonafide marriage my supporting documents are

* Bank statement to show we have joint bank account,

*  Authorizee on credit card and beneficiary on his bank account 

*DEERS Beneficiary on his military documents

*Pictures from we started dating up to the last time we see each other ( Including wedding pics) 

* Boarding passes

* Letters when we used to communicate while he was at Basic Training 

* Emails showing we communicated while he was on Deployment 

* Screenshots of video calls, text msgs and fb msg. 

 

Do you guys think i needed to add anything more to proof our bonafide relation ? 

[JKLSemicolon 443]

  On 4/5/2021 at 4:10 PM, Janay Thomas said:

Hi everyone i started putting together documents to petition my spouse to come and join me in the USA it asked for proof of bonafide marriage my supporting documents are

* Bank statement to show we have joint bank account,

*  Authorizee on credit card and beneficiary on his bank account 

*DEERS Beneficiary on his military documents

*Pictures from we started dating up to the last time we see each other ( Including wedding pics) 

* Boarding passes

* Letters when we used to communicate while he was at Basic Training 

* Emails showing we communicated while he was on Deployment 

* Screenshots of video calls, text msgs and fb msg. 

 

Do you guys think i needed to add anything more to proof our bonafide relation ? 

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This looks like good evidence overall. For the letters and emails you might include just a few representative ones over the course of the entire period of time you have been together so that the adjudicating officer doesn't have to sift through too many pages of correspondence. Same with the text messages and Facebook messages.

 

For photos, pictures with family and friends or with recognizable places in the background can be helpful (imagine if your spouse were asked about them in the interview eventually).

 

If you are including boarding passes, I would recommend summarizing the in-person time spent together in a separate table, bulleted list, etc. to make it easier to understand. In our case I made a table with these columns: Visit # / Start Date / End Date / # Days / Description (e.g. who visited who, or both living together, etc.) / Location(s) / Supporting Documents.

 

I would also suggest adding a relationship timeline that tells the basic story of your relationship and marriage. In my case I also created a basic table with dates and descriptions of important events since we met.

[Janay Thomas 1]

for our pictures the only pictures we have with family and freinds are the wedding pics. The other pics are us only at different places and such would this be any problem? Roughly how many pics do you think i could include because am doing the petition online

[JKLSemicolon 443]

  On 4/5/2021 at 4:43 PM, Janay Thomas said:

for our pictures the only pictures we have with family and freinds are the wedding pics. The other pics are us only at different places and such would this be any problem? Roughly how many pics do you think i could include because am doing the petition online

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You can only include what you have. Overall with photos I personally feel like it is helpful to check as many of these boxes as possible:

• Selection of photos from different time periods throughout the relationship (e.g. showing changes in appearance, changes in seasons, specific holidays and celebrations, etc.)
• Photos with friends and family
• Photos of important events or trips taken together

For the petition I sent, I included about 80 photos, but we have also been together for over 10 years. I saved them in a PDF with 4 photos per page and put the date and location as a caption under each one. That still fit under the 6mb file size limit.

 

I know others tend to include fewer photos than that (maybe 10-20?). Think in terms of the minimum number of photos you need to include as much of the above as possible.

[Janay Thomas 1]

did you file online or mail

[JKLSemicolon 443]

  On 4/5/2021 at 5:06 PM, Janay Thomas said:

did you file online or mail

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I filed online - that's why I mentioned the 6mb file size limit and creating a PDF. I think filing online is the better option myself but others may not agree.

 

This thread about filing the I-130 online is long, but worth the read:

 

 

 

[Ryan H 3,844]

Moved from Progress Reports to Process & Procedures.

[pushbrk 13,281]

Looks good, but use "examples".  Quality examples are better than reams of stuff nobody will bother to inspect.

[Janay Thomas 1]

  On 4/8/2021 at 1:41 AM, pushbrk said:

Looks good, but use "examples"  Quality examples are better than reams of stuff nobody will bother to inspect.

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what do you mean by " but use "examples"  Quality examples are better than reams of stuff nobody will bother to inspect" i do not understand what examples are you talking

[JKLSemicolon 443]

  On 4/8/2021 at 10:45 PM, Janay Thomas said:

what do you mean by " but use "examples"  Quality examples are better than reams of stuff nobody will bother to inspect" i do not understand what examples are you talking

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I'm not @pushbrk but I had mentioned a similar idea - rather than including pages and pages of letters, emails, chats, photos, etc., just choose a small selection of the best and most representative "examples" of these things.

 

Think of it as quality over quantity.

[Janay Thomas 1]

Thank you 

[pushbrk 13,281]

  On 4/8/2021 at 10:54 PM, JKLSemicolon said:

I'm not @pushbrk but I had mentioned a similar idea - rather than including pages and pages of letters, emails, chats, photos, etc., just choose a small selection of the best and most representative "examples" of these things.

 

Think of it as quality over quantity.

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Correct.  A ream of paper is 500 pages.  Use examples and limit the number of evidence pages to no more than 50.  

[Babu Frik 1,162]

What has worked for most people.

But a few photos on each page, personally I fit about 4 depending on the orientation

Below each photo put the date and caption, these should be in order.

It will create a timeline and show a story

Boarding passes can sometimes be correlated with this.

 

You have extra financial stuff that most people don't have and they get approved without it, so that's a plus for you.

[Sabi76 7]

What you have so far is great!  When our interview was conducted all they wanted to review was proof of merged/shared finances, and photos of proof of relationship.  We had a few photos of just my wife and myself but the majority of our photos, 50ish+,  were of us with family and friends.  This demonstrated that we were not hiding our ashamed of our union by actually spending time with other people and showing that by being together at various events and different times during our visits and that they accepted our relationship.