Evidence for I-129f (merged x2)

[Boiler 45,478]

As far as I know there are no regulations covering Therapists attestation in this situation 

[clericbeast 12]

4 minutes ago, Boiler said:

As far as I know there are no regulations covering Therapists attestation in this situation 

Fair enough. What about affidavits from friends/family? I guess it could fall under that category. Do you know if they need to be sent the original signed letter, or are scanned copies with the signature still accepted?

Edited November 14, 2023 by clericbeast

[IWander 589]

10 hours ago, clericbeast said:

Fair enough. What about affidavits from friends/family? I guess it could fall under that category. Do you know if they need to be sent the original signed letter, or are scanned copies with the signature still accepted?

A careful read of the instructions will indicate that any evidence submitted to the USCIS shall be legible photocpies unless an original id SPECIFICALLY requested.  

 

As an aside, not sure why you are wanting to submit this kind of evidence.  You will get zero credit for this evidence during the petition process and your Consulate is London which is not a difficult place to interview with.

[clericbeast 12]

3 hours ago, IWander said:

A careful read of the instructions will indicate that any evidence submitted to the USCIS shall be legible photocpies unless an original id SPECIFICALLY requested.  

 

As an aside, not sure why you are wanting to submit this kind of evidence.  You will get zero credit for this evidence during the petition process and your Consulate is London which is not a difficult place to interview with.

It’s more to avoid an RFE where possible. One of the people who got the “intent to marry” RFE is actually from the UK, one from Russia, one from the Philippines, it seems random. They all sent the “intent to marry” letters with the petition too, so it seems that in some cases that alone is not enough. Proof of pre-marital counselling is something I have that shows a clear intent to get married, along with sending our individual signed intent to marry letters.

[IWander 589]

19 minutes ago, clericbeast said:

It’s more to avoid an RFE where possible. One of the people who got the “intent to marry” RFE is actually from the UK, one from Russia, one from the Philippines, it seems random. They all sent the “intent to marry” letters with the petition too, so it seems that in some cases that alone is not enough. Proof of pre-marital counselling is something I have that shows a clear intent to get married, along with sending our individual signed intent to marry letters.

First of all, as it relates to the petition, country of beneficiary does not matter.  Anybody can submit a poorly krafted statement of intent and receive a RFE.  I am one who was approved with only a two sentence statement.  Kraft it properly you will be fine 

[clericbeast 12]

20 minutes ago, IWander said:

First of all, as it relates to the petition, country of beneficiary does not matter.  Anybody can submit a poorly krafted statement of intent and receive a RFE.  I am one who was approved with only a two sentence statement.  Kraft it properly you will be fine 

Thank you for your advice! Despite numerous people being approved with the short statement of intent to marry, there are also exceptions, most of which used the exact same statement of intent to marry that is provided by VJ, which is why this all seems kind of unpredictable to me and where my concern lies.

 

These are the threads I could quickly find just now.

 

On 1/30/2023 at 9:32 PM, Nat & Dongyoung said:

My fiancé and I received our RFE reasoning in the mail today. I attached the RFE to this post. My fiancé and I submitted letters of intent to marry but we didn’t provide enough proof of our intent. In the examples provided, they said we can submit proof of subsequent meetings and ongoing communications. I am currently in South Korea with him and have met his dad. I will be meeting his sister too. Does this mean we can submit pictures/text messages of our current trip to support our proof of relationship? I thought USCIS only wanted proof of relationship within the 2 years of filing the petition. 

 

1. Can we submit photos of our current trip together in South Korea? (Pictures with the beneficiary’s dad, pictures with his sister, and of our trip in general together)

 

2. He proposed to me in Colorado back in February 2022. We have pictures of our engagement right after he proposed (pictures of us together holding up my engagement ring). Would this be good evidence to submit? 
 

Any opinions would be greatly appreciated! We want to make sure to submit the correct evidence so we can avoid any further issues/delays with our petition. Thank you!

 

On 9/1/2019 at 4:28 AM, SalishSea said:

That is odd!

 

Couldn't hurt to re-do both letters of intent with current dates.  Please keep us posted.

 

On 8/17/2014 at 6:30 AM, CowBoE said:

That's really too bad.

I think because the way our society is...

my speculation is that you are being unfairly scrutinized because

1. you are older by 5 years (which is really not much in reality)

2. you are African-American and he's Indian (which couples you don't see often)

3. they could suspect that he might be interested in GC more than marriage

please don't get offend it...I'm just trying to put my shoes in their head

and just thinking out loud what they could be suspecting...

As for us...

We didn't have engagement party

We didn't have engagement rings

We didn't have wedding venue details

We submitted about 50 pages of Skype chat, emails, and phone call history for I-129F petition

and prepared about 100 pages for the interview. But they didn't ask or looked at

any relationship evidence during the interview. And we got approved.

But when I visited her, I did have a dinner with her family at a restaurant,

and a separate dinner with her friends, and we took pictures there

for our evidence to show that our marriage is publicized to her families

and friends.

Also, in our (written) conversation, we talked a lot about our future marriage life...

we often planned and discussed things like...where and when to sign up her for

English classes, learning to drive, what type of work/business I can help her do,

what type of food we could cook together, what things we can do together,

where we would want to go on vacation, what I liked in life, what she liked in life...

basically...they could clearly see that we were already planning and

building our future marriage life as we were going through the petition.

I think its totally unfair to you but since we are at their mercy and they are just doing their job...

it may help to starting building some evidence of your conversation in writing.

We knew this ahead of time, so though we mostly talked on video, we continued to email

and Skype chat-ed to build written evidence.

Getting notarized affidavit from both sides of friends and families acknowledging your marriage

should definitely also help. You can even draft up some tentative wedding and honeymoon plan

(which can change later).

By the way, it wasn't clear...

Are you currently in US, and he's in India?

Have you met him in person within last 2 years?

If possible, another physical meeting between two of you,

and with families and friends should help also.

Gosh...you don't need this pressure on top of what will be a long wait.

Hope all goes well..

 

On 4/20/2020 at 8:32 AM, dan-desi said:

Yes we did (from both parties, signed). But we are planning to send it again for completeness. 

 

On 2/17/2021 at 12:13 AM, LibertyBears said:

We got a RFE for proof of petioner's US citizen proof, despite us sending a scanned copy of his birth certificate front and back ...
We are confused by this but we are assuming maybe it wasn't clear enough or something ? 😕

We are going to send a copy of his passport along with the physical official copy from usa.gov 

Hope this will be enough?
 

We also got a RFE for proof of bonafide relationship

(we had received different perspectives on this regarding too much or too little information.

Received advice that as UK is not a high fraud country we only need to hit the minimum requirements which is proof of having met in last two years)

 

our packet originally contained 
- proof of having met in last two years 
- beneficiary passport stamps of my entry into US (passport photo page, stamp page)

-hotel receipts with both our names and payment addresses

-receipts at the same place with both our payments and name

-photos together on christmas and new years, photos with petitioners friends and family.

 

is there a reason they asked for more evidence?

we have compiled a big file now with:
facetime records
whatsapp messages
gifts we've sent to each other
more receipts
more photos
more selfies together
handwritten letters to each other
declaration of how we met
affidavit of bonafide relationship written by petitioners mother to acknowledge our relationship and intent to marry

Another letter of intent to marry with present date.

Ongoing proof of maintaining a long distance relationship with more gifts sent to one another and continuous facetime call records

 

I thought all of this was secondary evidence though in comparison to the passport stamps and flight proof .. 

We are very confused.

 

Will be grateful for any advice or insight.

Is there anything else we should be adding ?

 

 

There is no evidence of financial support as he does not financially support me at the moment

There are no concrete wedding plans due to Covid-19 

There are no subsequent visits due to Covid-19

We explain all of that in the "declaration of how we met".. hope they can understand that it has no been possible to visit since submitting the i-129F

Also added that we communicate in english... even though US and UK primary language is english .. we found this strange it's added. 

Unsure if it's due to the fact that my last name is foreign. Hoping that it's just us overthinking there and it's a copy and paste for all RFE bona fide intent to marry 

 

 

 

[yuna628 9,674]

11 hours ago, clericbeast said:

Thank you for your advice! Despite numerous people being approved with the short statement of intent to marry, there are also exceptions, most of which used the exact same statement of intent to marry that is provided by VJ, which is why this all seems kind of unpredictable to me and where my concern lies.

 

These are the threads I could quickly find just now.

 

 

 

 

 

 

You're going to find dealing with the USCIS unpredictable. Sometimes I suspect RFEs are a stalling tactic, other times legit reasons, and still others possibly because the officer is new or lost some of the paperwork and they are never going to admit that. Ultimately a good statement of intent letters should be no problem along with evidence of relationship. Our RFE for medical evidence for AOS for example is common and we provided everything that was asked for. I'm confident the case really was the officer was new to handling AOS and was not aware of their own rules, or they simply lost the paperwork. When I responded to the RFE, I gave again what was asked for, and wrote a stern letter providing them their own rules in hopes that the officer would not do it to someone else ever again.

 

For UK K1 couples, it is generally accepted that an extremely high burden of proof is not required. I understood that but front loaded what I could (as I did with every application), within reason. IIRC we included letter of intents and a signed statement detailing how we met as it was a very long relationship. Affidavits from friends and family (cannot recall if we did this for K1) but did for AOS, are considered weaker evidence, because anyone could say anything. LibertyBears will never know if any of the stuff they sent in actually helped or not (I suppose it would if documents had been lost), but the RFE was answered positively and quickly with no issues. RFEs are frustrating but generally can be answered quickly when they are simple.

[IWander 589]

13 hours ago, clericbeast said:

Thank you for your advice! Despite numerous people being approved with the short statement of intent to marry, there are also exceptions, most of which used the exact same statement of intent to marry that is provided by VJ, which is why this all seems kind of unpredictable to me and where my concern lies.

 

These are the threads I could quickly find just now.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Nothing in these threads indicate what exactly was submitted initially particularly how any statement was worded. 

[clericbeast 12]

7 minutes ago, IWander said:

Nothing in these threads indicate what exactly was submitted initially particularly how any statement was worded. 

Some do show the specific wording and it matches the VJ template

On 4/22/2020 at 6:11 AM, dan-desi said:

We followed the examples provided from visa journey. What would be amiss if it comes from csc, as opposed to the consulate?

 

 

 

On 9/1/2019 at 7:18 PM, 1point3 said:

Here's mine that was included in the original petition packet. There both state the exact same thing. Just different names and signatures. I was misled to think that it were supposed to be short and to the point....

 

 

On 9/1/2019 at 3:57 AM, 1point3 said:

As the title states, i received an RFE yesterday. I'm a bit confused because I made 2 exact copies of my petition that I sent in. I double and triple checked everything before I made the copies. Anyways the RFE states that they need additional evidence of her letter of intent to marry. I've attached the one that we sent. Was it not good enough perhaps? We only plan on having a small civil wedding. To prove that would be difficult because the courthouse here where I live doesnt do pre registrations.

 

Also does this mean I need to redo mine with a more current date? Even if the RFE just states hers? Another thing that confuses me is, both our letters of intent were exactly the same in our original petition. Only difference are the names, dates signed, and signature. 

 

[clericbeast 12]

2 hours ago, yuna628 said:

You're going to find dealing with the USCIS unpredictable. Sometimes I suspect RFEs are a stalling tactic, other times legit reasons, and still others possibly because the officer is new or lost some of the paperwork and they are never going to admit that. Ultimately a good statement of intent letters should be no problem along with evidence of relationship. Our RFE for medical evidence for AOS for example is common and we provided everything that was asked for. I'm confident the case really was the officer was new to handling AOS and was not aware of their own rules, or they simply lost the paperwork. When I responded to the RFE, I gave again what was asked for, and wrote a stern letter providing them their own rules in hopes that the officer would not do it to someone else ever again.

 

For UK K1 couples, it is generally accepted that an extremely high burden of proof is not required. I understood that but front loaded what I could (as I did with every application), within reason. IIRC we included letter of intents and a signed statement detailing how we met as it was a very long relationship. Affidavits from friends and family (cannot recall if we did this for K1) but did for AOS, are considered weaker evidence, because anyone could say anything. LibertyBears will never know if any of the stuff they sent in actually helped or not (I suppose it would if documents had been lost), but the RFE was answered positively and quickly with no issues. RFEs are frustrating but generally can be answered quickly when they are simple.

Thank you for sharing your experience. I definitely need to accept that random things can pop up and that there is only so much you can prepare for. Anything I do have proof for, I will probably send with the petition, but will be mindful to keep the package on the smaller side.

 

Some RFEs sound downright bizarre in this process. It really seems like a luck of the draw situation regarding whoever adjudicates your file.