US Immigration from Chile

Wondering if anyone has recent experience / or more information about entering the US (by land or air), and specifically if there were more reviews of phones / social media. There have been more news stories of tourists or people with work visas being turned away or detained based on what they find in people's phones, so just trying to see if there have been recent experiences here.

Someone on Reddit mentioned to double check the signature sections for online filed I-130s because apparently its been a trend for people to sign them wrong, and while I didn't screw that up, while I was scanning through it I noticed that my response to question 13 (my husband's residence outside the US) was showing up as blank on the PDF (screenshot attached.)

I vaguely remember getting an error on the online form when trying to type in SAME because it didn't like for formating or something like that. Since we'd already provided his physical address is leaving this blank something I need to be worried about or should I submit unsolicited evidence clarifying it?

This might be getting into the weeds, but just want to know exactly what would count as "work" in regards to visiting on ESTA. My mother-in-law (from Chile) will be visiting us probably quite frequently once we move back to the US. She is a widow, retired, and lives off of her pension and income from her beach rental property. It just occurred to me, that management of her property remotely potentially could count as work and would not be permitted while she was visiting the US -- anyone have advice or more detailed reference of what is permitted and not on a ESTA?

Just for details, she has someone that manages probably 95% of the work of the property (booking, managing guests, cleaning, supplies, etc.). But my MIL every once and a while has to talk to a guest, or reimburse her property manager for some expense or something.

Hey everyone, just wanted to make a post about our experience since it was a question we had going into my wife's IR1 visa interview, and there weren't a ton of previous posts about it -- so just sharing if helpful to someone else. So one of the requirements to bring to the CR1/IR1 interview is a police certificate, specifically:

"The original police certificate from your country of current residence and countries of previous residence."

My wife had previously lived in the US (with her green card) for 2 years, so we didn't know if she needed to bring in a police certificate from the US since it was a previous country of residence. From what we could find it seemed like the answer was NO, and even some other counties embassy instructions specifically state that background checks from the US aren't necessary (presumably because they already do a background check during the USCIS stage) -- those reasons plus by the time we even considered it we didn't have time to get a FBI background check (mailing fingerprints and all), my wife only went with her local Chilean police certificate. And just wanted to report that they did not need the US one, and it was zero issue.

Hi Everyone,

My wife and I got married back in September 2024 in the United States when she last visited from her home country of Chile, and she was here for about two weeks. This time around, she booked a round trip flight for nearly a month and is arriving next week. She had no problems getting into the country the last time around, and we had a lot of paperwork to show the customs agent just in case there were any issues (they weren't necessary, thankfully), but this time around there are a couple of different factors and I wanted to get the opinion of others if there is anything else we can do to be prepared for when she arrives and goes through customs. We submitted our I-130 and are at the NOA1 stage since October, so I know this might suggest more intent for someone to want to stay in the country instead of return home. She has ties to her home country, such as her lease contract agreement for her apartment, but she no longer is working right now so we cannot show that she has a job to come back to in Chile as we did last time, which I know is a strong tie. She also has the return ticket home, and will have a copy of our marriage certificate, and I intend to write a letter explaining our situation and that she intends to go back home, as I saw someone else on a different thread had recommended. The only other difference is she is flying into Atlanta for the first leg of the trip, whereas last time she flew from Chile to Bogota, and then from Bogota directly to Dulles. I have heard Atlanta customs can give a little more of a hard time as well. If anyone has any thoughts or feedback for our plan and what we should anticipate, I would appreciate it!