NorthByNorthwest

Looks like you didn't fill out the section on the I-130 asking in which country the beneficiary will apply for the immigrant visa. You need to fill in either item 61 or item 62, if you fill in neither, or both, you get this notice and nothing else happens until you file I-824. Per the instructions for I-824 only you (the petitioner) can file I-824 for this scenario of sending the approved petition to NVC, so your mother will not be the one signing it. Only the petitioner of the previously approved immigrant visa petition may file Form I-824, if action in Part 2., Item Number 1.d. or Item Number 1.e. is requested. You must provide the A-Number (in Part 1., Item Number 6. of the application) or the Receipt Number of the previously approved petition (in Part 3., Item Number 1.b. of this application), and complete and sign this application.

No harm in updating your W-4 as soon as possible - then you'll get more money in your pocket each paycheck instead of having to wait for tax refund season to get it back. The most common debate on these forums on how to file the actual taxes relate to the immigrant not yet having a SSN which sometimes becomes an issue trying to file jointly. If your spouse does not yet have an SSN I'd suggest taking care of that ASAP so you have it in place in time for tax season. Then just use TurboTax or similar and you'll be guided through the whole process, unless you already have someone do your taxes for you. IRS won't bug you for giving them too much money, and I don't think USCIS would have any issue either unless you file your actual return as single, that would be a red flag.

Nothing to worry about, the W-4 is essentially just between you and your employer and you can update it as many times as you want to. What matters is what you select when you file your tax return for 2023 next year. For an interview before then you won't have any meaningful transcripts to bring. Worst case if you leave your W-4 as-is your employer will withhold too much tax and you'll get a larger refund when you actually file your return as married filing jointly. The biggest difference is that the tax brackets are different filing jointly + the standard deduction is double, if your spouse does not work you basically give away a $14k deduction if you were to file separately instead of jointly. Any tax filing software will tell you about this when you put the numbers in.

Not sure why anyone would recommend that since you'll end up paying more tax filing separately when your wife is not working. The only time it makes sense to file separately is if you are both working making similar amounts of money and filing jointly puts you in a higher tax bracket than if you had filed separately.

My case was a bit different as it was K-1 and I was living in Japan at the time, but I still visited the US multiple time (on ESTA) while the petition was in progress - never had any issues. My final visit on ESTA was two weeks before my K-1 interview at the US embassy in Tokyo, no issues. In my case I had the visa in hand the day after the interview, but processing obviously differs depending on embassy. I'm not sure what situation requires him to be in the US in the specific time frame and if you consider it worth even a minimal risk to the process. My visits on ESTA during the petition period were mostly work-related with plenty of paperwork to support that (never needed it) but a few were only to visit the petitioner and I was always honest about that and never had issues. Timelines are unpredictable and through the process we always made all our plans around getting it done with as little friction as possible since any rescheduling can add months to the timeline. Your case is simpler since you're already married and your husband will be free to travel immediately so I'd definitely recommend not delaying unless absolutely necessary.

Sponsoring siblings take a very long time - you can expect it to be at least a 20 year wait depending on where you are from - your sister's son would likely age out as dependent during that time unless he was just born. If you are not living in the US when the visa becomes available there needs to be an additional sponsor for the affidavit of support. If your sister wants to travel to the US in the meantime she can always apply for a B2 visa which has nothing to do with you at all, but with a pending petition for F4 showing immigration intent her B2 would face harsh scrutiny.

To add to this, the various I-9 instructions specifically mention that even conditional permanent residents are NOT subject to reverification: Employers should not reverify: U.S. citizens and noncitizen nationals; Lawful permanent residents who presented a Form I-551, Permanent Resident or Alien Registration Receipt card for Section 2, including conditional residents; or List B documents

I did a K-1 interview in Tokyo 7 years ago, the focus was really on my (beneficiary) documents, with the added twist of me not being Japanese so I had police certificates from multiple countries (including Japan) and a different type of birth certificate than they were used to seeing. The medical was of course done in Japan and that along with the police certificates was really all they looked at, with 2-3 questions around how I met my fiancée. Took less than 5 minutes.

When you travel on separate tickets (unless they are on the same airline) you would typically need to collect check-in luggage and recheck it for the next leg which will mean passing through Schengen immigration checkpoint, and needing a regular Schengen visa, so this will probably not work for you. Chances are you would not even be allowed to board the flight from Tel Aviv to Paris in this case without a regular Schengen visa.

Transit visa requirements vary by country within the Schengen area, see this link for details: https://home-affairs.ec.europa.eu/policies/schengen-borders-and-visa/visa-policy/who-must-apply-schengen-visa_en In essence only Czech Republic and France has restrictions on Russian citizens, but even there they may be exempt if holding a valid US visa.

You as the sponsor would need use I-865 to submit a change of address, that's supposed to be done within 30 days of moving. Your husband as the beneficiary would use AR-11 or online - this is supposed to be submitted within 10 days of moving. I doubt you'll have any issues, it's pretty common for people for forget to file address updates, especially sponsors. It's typically more of a problem for you if you miss case updates, appointment requests or RFEs because you didn't get a notice in time or not at all - that can jeopardize an entire petition. See https://www.uscis.gov/addresschange for details.

I was in this exact situation back in 2017 where the company offered to do L-1B with blanket approval that would have had me working within weeks, but I opted to stick with K-1 to AOS faster without any dependency on the company in case my new role didn't work out. However, at the time EAD approval times were 3-4 months so I just took a long-ish vacation and the company was fine with that. With the current wait times I'd probably have gone with the L-1B, I'm not sure my company would have waited a year for me to get EAD. If it had been L-1A on the table it would have a no-brainer since you can transition to EB-1C without PERM certification and have a green card in hand in less than a year anyway.

I'm surprised nobody suggested making sure you have USPS address change with forwarding in place in time for your move. I don't recall if the actual card shipment has some restrictions as to not allow forwarding, but I had no issues with other USCIS mail getting properly forwarded when I moved while waiting for an important I-797. The USCIS address change is of course important, but USPS address change takes care of the gap.

Correct. Not sure how quickly that system updates, worst case it may take a few days, but the site will give you the I94 record number.

Copies of the most recent I94 are typically available here if it was issued electronically: https://i94.cbp.dhs.gov If you are not able to retrieve it at that site you might need to apply for a replacement, see page 10 of the N-600K instructions: https://www.uscis.gov/sites/default/files/document/forms/n-600kinstr.pdf

Plenty of good info specific to NM so far, here's some generic info from an older post that gives you an idea of the worst-case costs involved if they don't qualify for any state benefits: Elderly immigrants can buy into Medicare after being legally present in the US for 5 years, at that point they become eligible to sign up for Medicare for the full premium. This is currently $506/month/person for Medicare Part A and $165/month/person for Part B. They would both need to sign up as soon as they become eligible, or there would be additional monthly penalties if they ever want to sign up later. In most states they will not be eligible for Medicaid until being present for 5 years either, and even then they may not be eligible depending on your income assuming they're part of your household. In summary, after 5 years you'll have to pay at least $1,500/month for basic Medicare for the two of them, and that's before any copays and deductibles. During the first 5 years you would have to buy private insurance that can get very expensive for elderly people. A quick glance at the NM marketplace shows the cheapest plan being around $1,500 / month for an elderly couple born 1940 and 1950 and that's also the cost before deductibles and copays. So lacking any state benefits, assume a minimum of $18,000 / year if they are healthy.

If Boundless advises you to lie on the application I would strongly suggest you avoid them like the plague...

I did the previous two years and provided both the 1040 forms (with schedules, straight out of TurboTax) and IRS transcripts for both years (downloaded from irs.gov).

I seriously would not rely on a LLM AI for any sort of factual information - if you give them paranoid prompts you may well get paranoid answers... As others have stated, you're completely overthinking this. Your history of responsible visa use without overstays carries a lot of weight.

Looking back I had a grand total of 44 pages, 20 of which were tax return transcripts, the rest were joint apartment contracts, insurance, joint property deed, property tax statements and some random utility bills that were in either one of our names. No photos, no affidavits.

Any time I traveled back to the US on GC I routinely handed over Swedish passport and GC when checking in. Most of that time I had NEXUS so the experience coming back from Canada was a bit smoother through preclearance, but airlines always wanted passport and GC regardless. Coming by land into the US CBP typically wanted to see NEXUS and GC together (I just scanned both cards driving through).

Back when I had pending I-751 and doing regular land crossings into Canada I simply took my extension letter to the local enrollment center to update the GC expiration date and updated both systems (this was for Nexus so for every change US and Canadian systems need to be updated separately), Global Entry is less complicated. As long as the Global Entry/Nexus card itself isn't expired the other entitlements can be updated. Now, coming back into the US I typically had to show both Nexus and GC (with extension letter) anyway since Nexus alone isn't proof of of lawful status when you're not US/Canadian citizen. I don't recall if I did any airport entry during this time though - worst case you'll just get flagged and have to show extension letter to an officer.

Nobody is saying you will or will not get an interview waiver, that process can differ slightly by country and the DS-160 application system will typically tell you if you qualify based on your answers as you put in the application. For Bahrain these appear to be the basic requirements: (from ustraveldocs.com) The applicant and everyone applying with him/her is a citizen or resident of Bahrain. The applicant is currently present in Bahrain. The applicant and everyone applying with him/her, have a previous visa in the same category (except children under 14). The applicant IS applying to renew a B1/B2 visa that has not been expired for more than 48 months. The applicant and everyone applying with him/her have a prior 5-year (or full-validity for your nationality), B1/B2 US visa. The applicant most recent visa issued after June 27, 2007. The applicant and everyone applying with him/her do not have any US visa refusals after the expiration of an issued B1/B2 visa. The applicant visa, and the visa of everyone applying with him/her, still valid or has expired within the past 48 months.

It is not relevant who pays for your trip, B1/B2 is purely based on how strong your ties are to your home country/country of residence. Unless you lived in Bahrain the last time you applied for a visa chances are you will need an interview based on your current circumstances. I'm sure it's a positive that you've had visas in the past and have a history of properly returning from those trips, but anything beyond that is speculation.

Adding to what others have said - from the perspective of someone living 20 minutes from the western crossings into Canada I'd mainly be concerned about traffic. Traffic varies greatly by time of day and day of the week. If you arrive (by car) at the wrong time it could be 1-2 hours wait before making it to the actual inspection booths and entering on an immigrant visa you WILL be sent to secondary inspection. During high traffic, there can be a significant line in secondary too and that can easily take at least another hour. If entering from Canada / Vancouver area there are 4 different crossings to choose from (Peace Arch/I-5, Blaine/SR-543, Lynden/Aldergrove, Sumas/Abbottsford), the last two are almost always faster during times of heavy traffic. Other than that I wouldn't worry - if all paperwork is in order (which it should be or the visa wouldn't be issued in the first place) the actual entry should be a mere formality.