Scandi

A year or a year and a half sounds perfectly normal. Just relax and wait for your turn.

Once USCIS has received and accepted your i-485, you will be under "authorized stay". Ie you can stay legally until they have made a decision on your case. Dashinka just beat me to it. 😆

It's very much open, they are certainly working there. But they don't appear to be stopping the actual freeway very often at all. You also see their cars parked in random places all along that part of the freeway, "hiding" in the little bush that is there. That station is permanent and operating 24/7 I believe. We drive past at least once a week and have only been stopped once. It was so crazy to see how they stop the entire freeway going north, with traffic lights, large signs (yes that little "bridge" you drive under have large signs on it that they light up when they need traffic to stop) and temporary stop signs on the street. A little intimidating but cool experience, but maybe not so much if you don't have any documentation. Not sure if you're sad or glad you haven't had to experience it. 😁

We were stopped at the one just south of San Clemente in 2017, I had just received my greencard, luckily. We pass there often but have only been stopped once. There's always a ton of border protection cars parked all over the place there but have only seen them stop traffic once, so doesn't appear to be common. It should be a warning though, it CAN happen and does happen to some, evidently. So that's something for OP to take into consideration too, especially if living in a southern border state.

It's enough to drive through and be stopped at one of the check points in southern CA to get in trouble. I myself have been stopped there, between San Diego and Los Angeles, and had to show my greencard and all. But obviously that's not a regular "traffic" stop, that's an actual "border protection" stop. Regular police doesn't ask, like you said. I bet all the states bordering to Mexico (and Canada?) have these check points.

Ah okay, that makes sense. I knew there was a 2 year something rule but misunderstood it. So forget what I posted about possibly not needing a waiver.

Just to be clear, you never applied for a K-1 visa. A US citizen does not need a visa (or can even get a visa) to the US, for obvious reasons. Foreigners apply for visas to the US. You filed a petition. This will be your third petition, yes. Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe there's only a limit if it's within a 2 year period? You can file multiple i-129f petitions if they are 2 or more years apart and you don't need a waiver if so. Hopefully someone who knows for absolute sure can chime in.

They most certainly can, and do in many cases. Filing your taxes proves good moral character, so sometimes they definitely ask to see that you have filed yours. If you owe backtaxes, they will also want to see your payment plan with IRS. It's all about good moral character.

Absolutely, don't send in that form, it has nothing to do with your AOS at all.

Correct, i-130 is not part of the AOS from a K-1, if you got married within the 90 days.

The K-3 is for people who are already married (although that visa is hardly ever used anymore, it's the CR-1 these days). You weren't married and therefore applied for the K-1 instead. So whatever it says about K-3 doesn't apply to you at all. For the K-1 you have the i-129f.

I wouldn't even call the "English test" where you're supposed to read and write a sentence, an actual test. The ACTUAL test is when they small talk with you, that's when they know if you're English is good enough or not. There have been cases where applicants have been denied because of poor English, the IO determined that the applicant's English was so bad that s/he couldn't understand what the yes/no questions on the forms meant, and therefore may not have answered them truthfully (or even had someone else answer them for him/her). If when communicating with you, they feel that your English is very weak and that you have a hard time understanding what's being said, they may ask you to define certain words off of the N-400. Just to make sure you understand the questions you have answered. This is how it's possible to get denied for too poor English skills, even if one actually passed the "reading and writing a sentence" part. Judging by your written English, this will never be the case for you. You will do great. The citizenship interview (and naturalization process just in general) is by far the easiest of all the immigration steps you will ever have to go through.

We did not send any evidence of a bonafide marriage with our i-485. We did however get an interview 7 months later, at that point we had managed to collect a fair amount of evidence.

You absolutely do not need an SSN to file the i-485, so there's that. No reason to delay filing for AOS just to wait for the SSN, there are no benefits in doing that. You should however apply for an SSN immediately after entry into the US (like within the first week at least), you don't want to delay that as it can be harder to get one once you start getting near the end of your 90 days (and if something goes wrong in the SSN process you will want to have enough time left on your 90 days to be able to reapply if needed). Applying for a SSN should be the first thing you do when you enter the US. But after applying it can take weeks to actually get it - so you can absolutely go ahead and get married and file your AOS before getting your SSN. SSN and evidence of bonafide marriage will be brought to the interview, which can be months or even years later.

I would dare to say that these days a combo interview is probably more common than a non-combo interview for those who have both petitions pending at the same time. USCIS has gotten better at getting the petitions together, a few years ago it was more chaos'y. ROC interviews are generally waived for those who had an interview for AOS, ie you usually get interview for one OR the other, generally not both (again, generally). But when you file the N-400 while your I-751 is still pending you interrupt the process a bit, the chances are much bigger that you will be interview for both then, no matter if you had an AOS interview or not.

Congratulations! And a big THANK YOU to you for all the help you have given others, on AND off VJ.

The digitalized packages are so much better, you never have to worry about CBP losing it or that CBP forgets to send it to USCIS etc. Wish we had that for our K-1.

Yes we did that too, I felt so good about being able to bring an actual tax return transcript to my AOS interview, in addition to the very few other "evidences" we had managed to collect in just a few months. "Look at me, filing my taxes before even having a status in this country". 😂

I had not been in the US in 2016 other than the day I came on my K-1 in October of that year. You're really looking to make this non-issue an issue, not sure why? Let it go, just file MFJ like the rest of us.

Yes I had been a tourist on VWP before, not that I understand what difference that makes? 😮 I applied for my SSN 3 days after entry into the US on a K-1, recieved the card ~4 weeks later.

Same, I moved to the US in Oct 2016, married Nov 2016 and only got my greencard in Jul 2017. Me and my USC husband filed married jointly for tax year 2016 (ie I wasn't even a greencard holder at that time, neither in 2016 or at the time of the tax filing) and didn't have to add any odd forms etc. Easy peasy.

As the other poster said, what you're planning is immigration fraud.

We sell online and ship many orders daily with USPS. Just the other day we had a customer inquiry about an order, we looked it up and it had been sitting at a USPS facility for over 10 days, only an hour from where he lived. The order was delivered two days later. It happens, you package is still in transit, you will receive it (its not lost, and the tracking shows activity only a couple of days ago). Your local USPS can look up the GPS coordinates to see exactly where the package was last scanned, the tracking doesn't show all the scans.

Correct, evidence of a bonafide marriage isn't needed with the i-485. Many of us didn't send any evidence, only the marriage certificate. You can if you want to, of course.

Rather send too much than too little. For ROC, more is more. I too sent every single statement from our joint checking account, that was 2+ years worth of statements, each being 4-6 pages. That was definitely the part that took the most space. I fit everything into a USPS priority box, I believe that box is just over 3" thick and about 12"x15".