New couple has no evidence to submit, suggestions?

[MariAndJoseph 3]

Hello, we are newly married couple. I (US citizen) will submit I-130 for my wife who lives outside of the US.

My wife lives in europe. I work and live in the USA. 

I'm worried about supporting documents.

I cannot add my wife to my bank, insurance etc because she doesn't have SSN. I called and asked all of them and they all say, person has to have SSN or tax ID.

Since we live in different countries, we don't share an address. No joint lease.

We live in different countries, we don't share phone, electric etc bill.

We can open a joint bank account in her(also my original) country, but bank wants me to be there physically and I can't travel just for that soon.

 

We have TONS(of 3 years) photos, wedding photo, we also have vacation/honeymoon receipts but this is it.

 

I'm worried that this is not enough, can someone please suggest us what to do?

What else can we add to our package?

[pushbrk 12,882]

24 minutes ago, MariAndJoseph said:

Hello, we are newly married couple. I (US citizen) will submit I-130 for my wife who lives outside of the US.

My wife lives in europe. I work and live in the USA. 

I'm worried about supporting documents.

I cannot add my wife to my bank, insurance etc because she doesn't have SSN. I called and asked all of them and they all say, person has to have SSN or tax ID.

Since we live in different countries, we don't share an address. No joint lease.

We live in different countries, we don't share phone, electric etc bill.

We can open a joint bank account in her(also my original) country, but bank wants me to be there physically and I can't travel just for that soon.

 

We have TONS(of 3 years) photos, wedding photo, we also have vacation/honeymoon receipts but this is it.

 

I'm worried that this is not enough, can someone please suggest us what to do?

What else can we add to our package?

Some photos over time, and boarding passes/passport stamps showing time spent together in the same country is plenty for Europe.  Would not be for Ghana or Nigeria.

[Daphne . 1,853]

USCIS understands that couples who live in seperate countries don’t have that type of evidence. We had the same thing, and we sent pictures of us together (and with family and friends), wedding pictures, some screenshots of social media posts, some text messages, boarding passes and pictures of the stamps in my passport when I visited. Any type of evidence of time we spent together. I am also from an EU country. 

[MariAndJoseph 3]

thank you both so much. Do you know if we can combine our photos(5 of them) in 1 pdf? instead of uploading 100 photos, i can group them and upload 10 pdfs, is this okay?

 

37 minutes ago, Daphne . said:

USCIS understands that couples who live in seperate countries don’t have that type of evidence. We had the same thing, and we sent pictures of us together (and with family and friends), wedding pictures, some screenshots of social media posts, some text messages, boarding passes and pictures of the stamps in my passport when I visited. Any type of evidence of time we spent together. I am also from an EU country. 

 

1 hour ago, pushbrk said:

Some photos over time, and boarding passes/passport stamps showing time spent together in the same country is plenty for Europe.  Would not be for Ghana or Nigeria.

 

[Dashinka 24,493]

1 hour ago, MariAndJoseph said:

thank you both so much. Do you know if we can combine our photos(5 of them) in 1 pdf? instead of uploading 100 photos, i can group them and upload 10 pdfs, is this okay?

 

 

 

Personally, I would not use more than 6-12 photos.  When we did it, I pasted the photos, 2 to a page, onto .PPT slides and then saved it as a PDF.  That should be fine.

[pushbrk 12,882]

1 hour ago, MariAndJoseph said:

thank you both so much. Do you know if we can combine our photos(5 of them) in 1 pdf? instead of uploading 100 photos, i can group them and upload 10 pdfs, is this okay?

 

 

 

Some, not all.  If you have a lot, I suggest selecting "examples" over time.  Photos are secondary evidence.  Primary evidence is boarding passes, passport stamps, and receipts for hotels, etc.

[Daphne . 1,853]

3 hours ago, MariAndJoseph said:

thank you both so much. Do you know if we can combine our photos(5 of them) in 1 pdf? instead of uploading 100 photos, i can group them and upload 10 pdfs, is this okay?

 

 

 

No need to send 100 photos, pick a few and make sure they cover the entire timeline of your relationship/marriage. 100 pictures will not prove more than 10 carefully selected ones

[BLC 112]

Some things we did: Wills  naming each other as beneficiary, Life Insurance policies (I did this through my work since we have guaranteed issue policies, so no medicals needed), a few chat logs, Apple Family Share (we have that set up), social media history from FB, which luckily we had going back quite a few years (you can display just your activity with each other in there, so I printed that), postage and customs slips of packages we sent to each other over the years, receipts for gifts that we sent directly to the other’s home address (that way delivery address was on the invoice), cards with the envelopes they were mailed in, so postage dates could be seen.

 

You can add a joint account holder to a Wells Fargo ( no ITIN or SSN, can just use foreign birth certificate and foreign passport). I also added him as an authorized user on my credit card (Apple’s Goldman Sachs card doesn’t require a SSN for authorized users). 
 

I just want to add, for bank, credit cards, basically all the legal paperwork—-we did all of this about a year before petitioning..I think doing it last minute, right before submitting,  would look almost forced and for show. With the exception of Life Insurance, I added this about 5 months prior to submitting the petition. We intentionally delayed our petition a bit because we wanted to make sure we had good, solid evidence, and lots of trips to see each other after marriage. 

[pushbrk 12,882]

1 hour ago, BLC said:

Some things we did: Wills  naming each other as beneficiary, Life Insurance policies (I did this through my work since we have guaranteed issue policies, so no medicals needed), a few chat logs, Apple Family Share (we have that set up), social media history from FB, which luckily we had going back quite a few years (you can display just your activity with each other in there, so I printed that), postage and customs slips of packages we sent to each other over the years, receipts for gifts that we sent directly to the other’s home address (that way delivery address was on the invoice), cards with the envelopes they were mailed in, so postage dates could be seen.

 

You can add a joint account holder to a Wells Fargo ( no ITIN or SSN, can just use foreign birth certificate and foreign passport). I also added him as an authorized user on my credit card (Apple’s Goldman Sachs card doesn’t require a SSN for authorized users). 
 

I just want to add, for bank, credit cards, basically all the legal paperwork—-we did all of this about a year before petitioning..I think doing it last minute, right before submitting,  would look almost forced and for show. With the exception of Life Insurance, I added this about 5 months prior to submitting the petition. We intentionally delayed our petition a bit because we wanted to make sure we had good, solid evidence, and lots of trips to see each other after marriage. 

All that is good stuff but from the UK, a low fraud country like all of Western Europe, some evidence of time spent together in person, is sufficient for a couple who have never lived in the same Country.  No need to go out of your way to "contrive" evidence.  (Not saying you did)

 

Wills and beneficiary designations are prudent AND excellent evidence.