top_secret

Everyone's tax situation may be different but it is not uncommon that filing jointly results in a significantly lower tax bill and thus a much larger return. It doesn't make much difference at all from the immigration standpoint.

We are headed to Brazil on vacation this April. It turns out that Brazil is reinstating their visa requirement on US Citizens based on reciprocity. IE, since the US requires visas for Brazilians, Brazil is reinstating their visa requirement for US Citizens. So I have to get a Brazil visa for the trip, whereas my wife and stepdaughter will be admitted visa free using their much more favorable Philippine Passports. My wife thinks this turnaround in passport power is hilarious.😆

Filing a ROM is not a prerequisite for applying to retain Filipino citizenship after naturalization. Only for having marital status and name listed as married. In cases of married women applying to retain Filipino citizenship after naturalizing to the US, where no ROM was ever filed and no name was changed in the Philippines, but when US Documents do exist in the married name. Philippine Consulates generally issue the new Philippine certificates of citizenship as "Full Maiden Name AKA Full Married Name".

We did just that. Applied for wife and stepdaughter at San Diego Passport Agency the day after naturalization. Large books and cards were both available for pickup by will call the next day.

Amongst VJ members who updated their timelines, it been taking about 180 days on average over the last 6 months and is trending towards a good bit less than that more recently. https://www.visajourney.com/timeline/apstats.php?history=180

If you get married and are petitioning your wife rather than your fiancée, then there is no requirement to declare or disclose any type of arrests or convictions. Unless a petitioner had a record of specific immigration related crimes, sex crimes, crimes against children or extremely serious relationship violence, any other type of "ordinary" criminal record is very unlikely to be raised at all during any point of the entire immigration process. There is no requirement to disclose it and they are very unlikely to even mention it. We initially pursued the K1 route and I have several 30-year-old convictions that I would have had to disclose. I had started digging up old court cases and arrest reports but the process was becoming a little daunting. Based mostly on the other benefits of a CR1 spousal visa vs a K1 fiancée visa, but also in part due the hassles of digging up old criminal records, we decided it was best to get married and pursue the CR1 visa instead of a K1 visa. For us it was one of the better decisions I ever made. I imagine @Crazy Cat will be along here shortly with a better comparison of the two options.

I am not familiar with a "self-uniting marriage" but if, as it implies, it does not involve some kind of officiant who is legally authorized to perform marriages then I could see how it would run afoul of Philippine laws. "Presence of the solemnizing officer" is an absolute core requirement for any marriage to be considered valid by the Philippines. That was originally a sticking point on legality of Utah online marriages in the Philippines before they finally decided that an online virtual "presence" did satisfy the requirement. I assume it must be recognized by the US since it seems your wife is here???? https://www.officialgazette.gov.ph/1987/07/06/executive-order-no-209-s-1987/ If that is the issue with the consulate(??), I am not sure how you go about fixing that???? In terms of the name issue. It is not really a problem for traveling. People do it all the time. She should probably just use the name in her passport when purchasing airline tickets and then if she needs to show the green card as proof of the right to enter the US at either check-in immigration, show it and the passport with maiden name along with the marriage certificate to explain the difference.

The I-130 was submitted by the petitioner so it should be exclusively in the petitioners account. The beneficiary or anyone else that has an interest could track its progress with just the case number at https://egov.uscis.gov/ Creation and mailing of the green card, as well as future USCIS cases such as removal of conditions and/or naturalization are filed by the beneficiary and should be in the beneficiary's own account rather than the original petitioner's.

As @Edward and Jaycel mentioned, it HAS always been listed as a possiblity on various lists of requirements from CFO. However, in the past it was rarely actually required. Even now, although there has definitely been a recent uptick of antidotal reports of CFO asking for police reports from the petitioner I think it is still only a small minority of cases. They might ask for one but most likely they won't. For CFO, they do have a huge amount of discretion and make up rules as they go along. It is what it is. The best strategy for dealing with them has always been appeasement followed by grin and bear it. In terms of what your fiancee can proactively do. They are probably judging her by how confident, mature and worldly she presents herself. If she goes in there confidently and maturely able to discuss exactly what she is getting herself into, how well she knows you, what she would do if anything went wrong etc. She would probably get through trouble free. If she seems young, naive and unsure of what challenges she might face then they may ask for more. Americans tend to look for a check list, fulfill the requirements, and thus have complete assurance of the expected result. The Philippines in general has less certainty about everything. I have seen CFO delay and hassle applicants for a week or so and even up to the day before a flight. But it's been pretty rare that they actually, really, forced anyone to miss a flight if they have a US fiancee or immigrant visa. Even if they are hassling someone they generally do come through at the last moment.

Probably not much at the POE. Other have reported variable experiences with county health departments contacting them later. Every county in every state is probably different but experiences have ranged from, never hear anything ever again, to called in for an IGRA test or chest X-ray or even another round of sputum testing. Presumably there is no actual active TB if they got the visa so it should be no big deal and nothing to worry about.

We uploaded our 2023 transcript after it became available. We also uploaded additional bank statements and updated vehicle registrations and insurance that renewed after my wife filed. I have no idea if it was even looked at or considered in any way, but my wife’s I751 was approved without interview in record time so I can definitely say no harm came from submitting additional unsolicited evidence online.

What might happen in a month or so is she could get called for biometrics. But she would probably find out shortly after filing if they were reusing old biometrics so there would probably be advance notice on that. If she recently had biometrics for removal of conditions there is a better chance they would just reuse those but no guarantees. How long it takes to get called for an interview is highly dependent on which local USCIS Field Office you have. They all have very significant differences in backlogs, so to make anywhere near an accurate guesstimate you would have to compare experiences of others who recently interviewed at your specific local office. My wife did travel to the Philippines for about 3 weeks while waiting for her interview and it was trouble free. But we were also ready to fly back early if needed. There is a pretty decent chance you would get notice of an upcoming interview around a month before the actual interview so you would at least have time to adjust your plans if necessary. If I were wagering, I would bet that a N400 filed right now does have at least some chance of getting called for an interview in April or May. Last year allot of N400's were moving really fast. Much faster than 6-9 months. If you are leaving mid-April then maybe filing about a month from now would improve your odds.

You could include a copy of the actual filed 2024 return with your packet and you could always upload a transcript to the online unsolicited evidence tab at a later date .

It is normal. The new IOE number is so you can track the creation and mailing of the green card itself. The "case already registered to another account" error is because the new IOE number would be associated with your husband's account rather than your own. To get online access your husband would create his account and add the new case number.

"China Airlines" is Taiwanese and while not the absolute best airline in Asia they are certainly very good and far better than any US based airline. Taipei is a very easy and efficient hub for a layover and I have always found their Taiwanese clientele to be mostly very polite and well behaved. The airlines with China in the name and the rough nature of the clientele to which you probably refer would be the mainland CCP airlines, Air China, China Eastern, and China Southern. All VERY different from the friendly Taiwanese China Airlines.

As far as I know, the only option for non-US Citizens to order a replacement Social Security Card is a personal appearance at a Social Security Office. Even LPR's have to show up in person to order a replacement card.

This. ^^^ They might charge you an extra $10 or $20 for ticketing over the phone but they can usually book any oddball itinerary you can come up with at whatever the published fare is. For Turkish Airlines specifically I have also found that the ticket office in Manila can get stuff done and get prices that even the phone reps in Istanbul cannot do. Try e-mailing ticketing@thy.com.ph . Though that was for outbound from the Philippines so I cannot say if they have the same options for flights originating from the US.

That kind of supports thinking that maybe it is only for ROM's filed at the DFA ASEANA office in Manila(??). But I can't think of anyone recently that filed that way to test the theory.

I just stumbled across this interesting web site, although I cannot find any instructions and cant get it to work, It seems to imply that it might track the status of a Report of Marriage. https://consular.dfa.gov.ph/crd-application-tracker If there are any inquisitive persons who recently filed a ROM maybe you might play around with it and see if you can get it to do anything useful. Based on our ROM from 2021, our "reference number" is formatted slightly different. Maybe it might work on a more recent ROM???? Our reference number is MX-00-2021. "MX" is obviously the Philippine Embassy in Mexico City where we filed the ROM. "00" corresponds to the "Doc. No." in the lower left and 2021 is obviously the year it was filed. In the form they give the example reference number "OCR-ROB-00000000-0000". In their example "OCA" probably refers "Office of Consular Affairs" "ROB" probably refers to Report of Birth. "00000000" might be the "Doc. No."(???) and "0000" the year(???). The web form is titled "CRD Application Tracker" and I assume "CRD means Consular Records Division. As I said, I cant get it to yield any information on our old ROM but maybe someone with a more recent ROM can figure it out. The other possibility I considered is that maybe it only works for ROM's filed with the DFA ASEANA office in Manila.

I think changing middle names can vary on a state by state basis. Many states allow it and some states may not. For instance I know California state law specifically does allows changing maiden name to middle name on marriage. With social security often being the unofficial arbitrator of name changes in the US, they officially could literally care less about middle names. Their policy states. https://secure.ssa.gov/apps10/poms.nsf/lnx/0110212001 Philippine law does not require a married woman to change her name at all or to change her last name to middle name. Although allot of Philippine government agencies would try to automatically do it. Philippine law specifically allows a married woman to take only her husband's surname. https://web.senate.gov.ph/lisdata/4156237843!.pdf https://pcw.gov.ph/faq-use-of-maiden-name

It was 2021 when my wife did CFO and at that time they had just introduced the digital certificates. Then you could pull up ALL of the information that had been submitted to CFO online with nothing more than the name and e-mail address and no kind of password or security whatsoever. I would hope that by now they added some level of basic security (?) but I suspect BI can still pull up everything you submitted to CFO based on the e-mail address. However, I also suspect that if someone legitimately only had a paper printout that BI 'could' begrudgingly call someone or something and authenticate it some other way if they had to. Asking for the e-mail is probably just easier for them. In my wifes case, even though she had CFO, exit immigration didn't even ask for it or look at it at all. Presumably because her passport was full of many stamps from previous travel. The Philippines is the land of inconsistency.

The Philippines does not recognize same sex marriage but for US immigration there is no requirement for them to. You need a marriage certificate according to the requirements of whatever foreign country you got married in since there is no Philippine marriage option. For the Philippines you will also need a CENOMAR even though it will say you are not married. It's not a problem but the the embassy still wants it. Utah online marriages are legal for US immigration with an in person meeting after the marriage and are quite popular.

Assuming they arrived on IR2 visas(????) then it sounds like they became US Citizens automatically the moment they got those visas stamped by CBP on arrival. They don't need an actual green card. The stamped visa is a temporary green card. They should apply for their US Passports immediately based on the endorsed IR1 visas, mom's proof of US Citizenship, their birth certificates that proof mom has legal custody, and evidence they are living with her such as school enrolment records, health insurance etc. The sooner they apply for their US Passports the better.

Even decades ago when travelers checks were a thing they were almost impossible to cash in the Philippines. To be honest, that advice coming from an attorney sounds about as suspicious as if he advised you to transfer it in bitcoin. Where did you find this guy? There is no $4500 bank balance requirement to travel on a K1 visa. It simply does not exist. Philippine Immigration can be very difficult and unreasonable in many ways but not like that.

For a Filipina traveling alone as a TOURIST, Philippine Immigration will often ask about available funds and may even ask for proof. Filipinos call it "show money". But even then, not such a large amount as the oddly specific $4500, and that is only for traveling as a tourist. Traveling on fiance or immigrant visas, there is no such requirement. As others have said, the only reason I ever heard of any K1 or CR/IR visa holders being denied boarding by Philippine immigration if for not having completed CFO or some glaring discrepancy in their paperwork or passport. That happen somewhat regularly. Never for not having funds. I agree with J.M.'s assessment of the possibilities, or she had not completed CFO and misunderstood why she was denied boarding. But the facts matching what was stated at face value simply is not possible.