US Immigration from Japan

Hello y'all,

My foreign citizen spouse and I visited not one, but *two*, SSA offices in Austin, Texas today and were told at both places that appointments are now required for all first-time SSN/card applicants. The Kafkaesque element lies in the fact that nowhere on the blessed ssa.gov site can I find a link to schedule an appointment. It does give you the option to schedule at the end of the online SS-5 application but that requires an account which you cannot create witout a SSN in the first place! Of course, my wife doesn't have an SSN and couldn't avail of this "feature". Furthermore, an agent on the 1-800 line told me that they couldn't schedule in-person appointments in Austin.

An employee at the second Austin SSA office did schedule us for a late Feb date using their terminal. He was insistent that he did so from www.ssa.gov but in all my searching I couldn't find the page where outsiders such as myself could schedule without a login.gov or ID.me account. My question is whether others have run into this issue? The helpful SSA officer did tell me that the process for first time applicants changed around 6 weeks ago. Not sure whether this is a Texas only thing or nationwide. I'd really appreciate some insights, recent experiences with SSA. Thank you!

Kind of a complicated situation and I could use some advice. I'm a US citizen and my wife is a Japanese citizen; we've been married for about 25 years and living in Japan for about the last 10 years. She was a green card holder for many years until we moved to Japan (and had to give up her green card). We were planning on eventually moving back to the US but recent events accelerated those plans.

I got a job in the US that had a very short-notice start date and was granted permission for Direct Consular Filing. I have an appointment in Tokyo next week to submit an I-130 and related documents at the Embassy. However, my wife just a few hours ago got a job offer from a U.S. university that is offering to sponsor her for an H-1B. They are flexible on the start date but would like to get her to the U.S. as soon as possible (as would we).

Three questions:

1. Which method is likely to be faster? I know that H-1Bs through universities typically get people working within 4-6 months, but I've also heard that some universities can do it in just a couple of months? This seems even quicker than DCF (and maybe minus the hoops of the medical exam and criminal history search?). It's also appealing because the university handles all of the paperwork and pays all of the fees. I really am not clear on how long we can expect DCF to take.
2. Can we do both in parallel? I don't mind paying the I-130 fees and other things twice but I worry that starting one process would close off the possibility of the other. Again, our goal is for her to be able to move to the U.S. as quickly as possible. If we go down the H-1B route I need to figure out what to tell the Tokyo Embassy pretty quickly.
3. Is there an advantage down the road to doing DCF? I have never even thought about what's involved in changing from an H-1B if you've already married to a U.S. citizen. I don't want her to get stuck in some sort of limbo waiting years to get her green card.

Thanks for any insight you may have! I don't imagine that many people have been in a similar situation but I know there's a lot of experienced people here.

Hello.

I am a Japanese national living in Ishikawa prefecture.

I have my interview at the embassy on January 22.

My police certificate got lost due to the earthquake that happened several days ago.

I tried contacting the embassy, but they seem to not know what to do....

I was wondering if there are any alternative I can take?

Hi everyone - I received the very generic RFE for i-864 after sending through our AOS application.

It says "Based on the documents submitted, we could not determine that the petitioning sponsor on Form I-864, Affidavit of Support, is qualified. In order to be a qualified sponsor, the petitioning sponsor's Form I-864 must be properly completed and signed, and the supporting documents must establish that the petitioning sponsor's income meets 125 percent of the federal poverty guideline for the sponsor s household size. See Form I-864P for information on the Federal Poverty Guidelines. If the petitioning sponsor's income does not meet 125 percent of the federal poverty guideline for their household size, you must obtain a qualifying joint sponsor who demonstrates the ability to support you or submit evidence of assets. See Form I-864 Instructions for more information."

I am confused as to why I got an RFE but have a few ideas. For clarity sake here, I make $186,000 a year so very confused as to why they are giving me an RFE.

What I gave:

1. My tax returns for 2022. Note: my income was foreign, so technically on my tax returns show that but redact it from my total income. So my total income on this is $4,000.

2. My pay stubs for the last 6 months where I get paid $12,000 a month (3 of which are in the US, 3 are from Japan when I was working there)

3. My US employment contract, showing my agreed salary and bonus.

Do you think 1 above was the issue? Perhaps despite 2 and 3 being provided, the income from my previous year was redacted as it was foreign income?

OR the I-864 was filled out improperly. I didn't use Adobe Acrobat and instead just used Chrome to fill out the pdf. Maybe that was the issue?

Either way, they were not specific at all. Perhaps it's safest to have my father (income of $140,000, household size of 3) to be my joint sponsor instead.

Maybe I should make a cover letter, saying that I should qualify with previous documents, but in the case that is not true for whatever reason, to use a new I-864 based on my father's information?

I have my visa interview scheduled on January 22, 2024.

They required me to bring my husband's certificate of naturalization, but he does not have it with him at the moment since he applied for his passport few days ago.

I do not think we can obtain his certificate before the interview date.

I was wondering if there are any alternatives I can take.