WeekendPizzaiolo

A contract is not null and void because of a name change. Otherwise, people would change their names to get out of an onerous contract. I cannot imagine the right to change one's name could be waived by contract. Perhaps a court could bar someone from a name change, but not a private party. If so, it would be the first I have heard of it. An Au Pair contract may have a clause that a visa may only be sponsored if the au pair remains unmarried. Marriage may or may not trigger termination of participation in the agency's program. It depends on the agency. What kind of visa was the au pair on? VisaJourney has an Adjustment of Status guide for couples in the US. Is there a pressing reason why having a driver's license with the new name before AOS is so important? The expiration date of a DL is often the expiration of her visa or sooner. In some states, you can get a REAL ID driver's license with an AOS NOA1. Brazil is very bureaucratic, especially with name changes. A US marriage certificate must be registered with Brazil for it to be recognized by any Brazilian authority, which can be done at a Brazilian consulate (Itamaraty). Any Brazilian consular process must use the consulate assigned to your US state. If you change a name in the US but not in Brazil, this can make round trip air travel to Brazil difficult in the future since she must use a Brazilian passport with her former name to enter Brazil. A name change may be easier at the naturalization stage.

This is very useful information! I did not know this.

Sorry to hear that happened to you. What bad luck! In the future, as long as you have a travel booking outside the country within 14 days, you can apply for a new passport in person at a passport agency. There is a passport agency in Miami and 33 across the US. The DOS rep. at the passport agency returns your documents on the spot after verifying them. I recognize that some people do not travel often or frequently enough for this to be an option.

Digital is primarily for clerical convenience for applications that must be submitted by snail mail (AOS, I-751). By digitizing and storing docs in the cloud, I can more easily find documents when they're needed and forget about them otherwise. I hate paper so I have a high-speed wireless scanner to turn my mail into PDFs, but I keep anything important in paper form (official USCIS notices, titles, certificates) in a safe. There is no one size fits all relationship -- some people get married sooner than others. Different relationships will need to weight evidence differently. All chats seems excessive. We submitted zero chats. Some people submit a sample of chats that demonstrates continuity of the relationship over time. We submitted a video call log of date, time, duration, which we kept in Google Spreadsheets. We also kept a visit log in a different spreadsheet with another cloud storage folder of travel bookings. We submitted copies of all of our bookings (~150 pages). Some would say that's excessive. We had about five years of relationship photos and showed one per month (~10 pages total) including with friends and family. You can use Google Presentations/Powerpoint/Keynote to arrange the photos on standard 8.5x11" paper and print using the highest quality color at your local copy shop or FedEx Office. Almost all other documents we submitted were black & white photocopies.

Sorry that your wife's family is not very good. Some people get a raw deal when it comes to family. Without a joint sponsor, your wife really needs to increase her income so that your case meets the minimum requirements. Can you take some of the child rearing responsibilities while she works until the adjustment of status is approved? Without knowing where you live, it is really hard to assess what short and medium term employment opportunities might be. In Oakland CA, where I live, a hotel housekeeper makes on average $48K/year without overtime, and likely a bit more with overtime. To compute her income, simply multiply her pay check by the number of pay periods per year (e.g. x52 for weekly pay checks, x26 for biweekly, x12 for monthly). It's not ideal but I only saw my mother one day per week (if I was lucky) because she was working all the time, but there was always food to eat and a roof over our heads. Of course, I would have loved to have seen my mom much more during my childhood, but then we wouldn't have had anything to eat nor would we have had an apartment to live in. In your case, you either need to find a suitable joint sponsor or your wife needs to find a source of income that meets the minimum requirements. It's good to get this ready, however, it is not sufficient on its own to have an approvable case. From the government's perspective, without a suitable sponsor that meets requirements, the government cannot eliminate the doubt that a person would need public assistance, so the case is denied. As @Lemonslice wrote, joint sponsorship is a huge responsibility. It is possible for a sponsor to be liable for reimbursing the government for public charges incurred by the beneficiary for life. This would happen if the beneficiary never becomes a US citizen nor does the beneficiary work at least 40 quarters (10 years) as defined by the SSA. Sponsorship is not a pro forma act. This is why the most appropriate sponsor usually has a strong relationship with the US citizen spouse. A hypothetical sponsor would need to understand the severity of what they are agreeing to. If neither spouse has job prospects, joint sponsorship would be an act of extreme generosity. It's on the level of leaving a significant sum to someone in their will & testament IMHO, ie not something to take lightly.

We used USPS Priority Mail for AOS and FedEx for I-751. USPS Priority Mail is historically cheaper than FedEx but FedEx has new options that are competitive with USPS called FedEx OneRate. Anecdotally, FedEx was a bit faster in terms of getting a case number and receipt sent back. Here is the standard FedEx pricing from my zip code (Oakland) to Phoenix lockbox: This standard pricing allows you to use almost any packaging, which is not particularly useful if you're sending documents. You can save a bundle by clicking on the "One Rate" tab (see below). And then the rates go down from $66 down to $23 for 2-day service using a medium box. OneRate only allows a subset of FedEx boxes and envelopes (small, medium, large, envelope). We chose Deliver by 5 PM FedEx 2Day OneRate Medium Box but the package was delivered in 2 days at 9:30am anyway so there was no need to pay extra for the 10:30am guarantee. We affixed our own label with the ATTN I-751 (BOX 21200) in addition to the FedEx label. We received a receipt number a week after the package arrived at which point our check was also cashed.

As a US citizen who used to work in the UK on a visa, I remember those lengthy notice periods -- mine was 3 months! My understanding is that "resignation with immediate effect" is often a breach of contract and that a UK employer could sue for damages from the financial effects that results from one's sudden departure. The flipside is all UK employees get 5.6 weeks mandatory paid vacation regardless of the job and one could sue for burnout. Some UK employment contracts allow employers to give "garden leave" after an employee's resignation, which could be served in the US, but then the employer would be giving "free money" to the resigning employee.

It is by no means necessary to travel with your fiancé. Many people travel alone on a K-1 with success but entry is never guaranteed even with one's fiancé present. Make sure he remembers to bring the yellow packet. After admission and customs inspection (including inspection of checked bags), remember that he must physically put his checked bag(s) on the transfer belt if he is connecting on a domestic US flight. At some airports, it's easy to miss this step due to a lack of strong visual cues so some people accidentally exit the transfer area and must wait in line at a check-in counter. At Houston (IAH), the transfer baggage area is huge so it's almost impossible to miss. This step is often not intuitive for people who have never travelled internationally before. As others have mentioned, being serious and answering everything truthfully goes a long way with CBP. Have him dispose of any banana peels, apple cores, or unconsumed meal service items before landing. Even an undeclared banana peel can result in denied admission. Those delicious bags of dried Indonesian shrimp chips -- it's a very good idea to not bring them. Declare any and all food items always even if a declaration is not required because the rules can be so fine-grained that the declarability can be borderline. When I traveled to Indonesia, the officer asked if I had anything to declare; I said "coffee and chocolate", and he thanked me, and let me on my way. There is always a chance that any declared food is confiscated (& destroyed), but one removes significant exposure to penalties, fines, and denied admission by declaring as long as said declared items are not illegal! One's initial entry is a terrible time to try to import fish though it is allowed under very specific circumstances. By not bringing any (borderline) declarable items, one greatly reduces the complexity of CBP handling their admission into the US. It's entirely up to you whether to join them, but it would not necessarily be a waste of a trip. Indonesia is a very enjoyable and affordable place (~$70/night 4-star hotels, ~$15 for a fancy meal, and ~$5 for a normal meal). Flights between US and Indonesia are not cheap (~$1K on the low end). However, traveling back with your fiancé is not a requirement of the K-1. It's a good practice to take photos regularly as you live your lives together in the US. Good luck on the rest of your journey. Best wishes to both of you.

We used WorldNomads 2017-2019 for visits before the K-1. See https://www.worldnomads.com/usa/travel-insurance. They provide emergency, non-routine medical coverage up to $5m. This gave us peace of mind when biking, hiking, and kayaking. We now use them for family members who visit. They have 12 month plans that cover multiple trips across multiple countries, if desired. For US residents with US health insurance traveling outside the US, the GeoBlue by BlueCross BlueShield plan covers non-emergency medical expenses in almost every country outside the US. A GeoBlue policy is void without US health insurance. For more serious ailments, GeoBlue reserves the right to require you to travel back to the US for follow-on treatment. I have been subscribed to it for over a decade. I later put my spouse on it after the green card was received. We have never had to use either of these insurances.

It's interesting that it was denied and not rejected, as the USCIS Manual Volume 1 Chapter 2 says that signature errors usually result in a rejection ("USCIS rejects any benefit request with an improper signature and returns it to the requestor"). Usually a denial is the result of an adjudication (see USCIS Volume 1 Chapter 9 -- "If, after evaluating all evidence submitted (including in response to a Request for Evidence (RFE) or Notice of Intent to Deny (NOID), if applicable), the officer determines the requestor is ineligible for the benefit sought, the officer denies the benefit request."). As others have mentioned, I would refile. Filling immigration forms is one area that requires the utmost care to ensure accuracy. Mistakes just increase your exposure (and need to be corrected when noticed!) Just save yourself future headaches by looking over everything multiple times, preferably on multiple days. Assuming your spouse is not stateside, it's probably good to start being careful earlier in the process as the stakes may be higher with later stages of the process. Certain filing errors will lead to a rejection without your application being considered further (as opposed to denial): using the wrong version of a form missing biographic data for the petitioner or beneficiary missing a required signature (see USCIS Manual Volume 1 Chapter 2) not dating your signature lacking a handwritten (ink) signature (e.g. wrongly using an e-signature) At each phase, make sure you read over the instructions very carefully. Personally, I highlight with one color those instructions that don't apply to our case and another color those instructions that do. Then I can focus my attention on the ~20% of the instructions that apply to my case. I then make out a draft form in pencil and then once the data is complete, I start a typewritten PDF in Acrobat. With my spouse, I look over every response on the form 3 times on 3 different days. We check the form versions. We check the signatures and dates. We then go through the document checklist. We look over the cover letter to make sure the documents are ordered according to the list in the cover letter. It may seem a bit overkill, but I personally sleep better this way. It's worth pointing out this excerpt from the I-130 instructions that you will also see in instructions for almost every form. So, for example, if an applicant had no children, and the response to the number of children was omitted, the application can be considered incomplete. Conditional instructions (e.g. "if X, answer Question Y" or "if any") may allow answers to be omitted. In my draft form, I highlight required responses based on instructions, which helps for reviewing the form for omission errors later. VisaJourney has examples of I-130s here, but bear in mind that the form versions in the example are outdated.

Ah, thanks for the clarification. Well, it worked for us in 2022. Fingers crossed.

Sorry to hear about your mother's knee. I hope it's acute and short-term. It would appear that NJ requires 5 years of permanent residency to be eligible for NJ's medicaid (see NJ Medicaid Requirements and NJ FamilyCare Immigrant FAQ) : Some neighboring states, such as NY and PA, do not have the 5 year requirement for permanent residents, but she would need to reside in different state to qualify. If I were you, I would gather pricing information from NJ ACA marketplace (see here). Since most people over 65 are eligible for medicare, you might have difficulty getting pricing online through the NJ Compare Plans and Costs website, which refers you to the medicare website if the age entered is at least 65. So you may need to call the number 833-677-1010. There is a 60 day window for a special enrollment period after a qualifying life event (such as moving from a foreign country). With an ACA subsidy, the premium can be quite low. While you are navigating the bureaucracy for insurance, consider taking her to a charity clinic. The National Association of Free and Charity Clinics has a nationwide directory here: https://nafcclinics.org/find-clinic/. Some clinics are free while others have a sliding scale based on financial means.

Some apartment complexes will let an applicant sign a lease if they have at least 12-24 months of rent in their bank or brokerage account. I have done this before. I agree with @Coco8 who suggested not renting a place without seeing it first and who also suggested renting from individual owners. Individual owners often are more flexible than large commercial complexes. The leases are often shorter and easier to read too. Often condos (owned by individuals) are bigger than apartments anyway and give more value on a dollar per square foot basis. Zillow will allow you to search for condos and houses for rent. Interesting. The I-9 List A allows a foreign passport with a valid and current I-94 with an endorsement for employment. Since this is not for employment purposes, but for identification purposes for an apartment, I do not see why this endorsement would be necessary. Different apartment complexes might have different policies so you might try another one.

How would the NVC know where to send your case if the desired consulate was not provided in the I-129F? According to this post, you may need to do a public inquiry during the NVC stage to change consulates after the I-129F is submitted.

Yes, it is possible. The only risk is if the work visa expires before the interview. You also have to complete document requirements for both countries. There may be a delay in case the consulate needs to verify documents or other details with a consulate in your home country. My Brazilian fiancé completed the K-1 in Montreal, Canada while studying in the country on a student visa. We put in our I-129F Montreal as the requested consulate. After the NVC stage, we had an extra step before Packet 3. The consulate requested by e-mail for a copy of a valid, unexpired non-visitor visa (work, student, or PR) before they could proceed with Packet 3. This added an extra few weeks and pushed us into the following month's interview batch and added perhaps another week or so after the interview.