wazzujoel

My fiancée is in Cuba and our NOA1 was Oct 18 2021. I filed i-134a on Friday. To be honest, I hope this parole happens first. I like the idea of her coming sooner and us having a little more time to plan a better wedding. With K1, we are trying to plan like 3 different weddings - Will we be getting married in winter, Spring, or summer? Where I live, those seasons really impact the sort of wedding you have and since we don't know when our 90 days will start, it makes wedding planning a bit difficult. Now if she comes within the next couple months, then we can check out wedding venues together, and pick the ideal date we want for our wedding. Such a better immigration path than K1 imho.

Thanks very much. I filed i-134a on behalf of my fiancée. Hopefully it processes more quickly.

Is there any reason why I should not be doing this right now? 1. Do I want to support her for the entire 2 year parole? Yes! I want to marry her and spend the rest of my life with her. 2. Do I plan on marrying her within the 2 year parole? Yes, probably within 6 months. If we have more time to marry, than we might pick an ideal season/day. 3. Once married, we apply for AOS and advanced parole so we can travel outside of the USA if we want. Is there anything I am missing to this? Can I do this while allowing the i-129F to continue just in case this ends up taking longer than i-129F? I am very close to NOA2 right now

From what you can see, this would be perfectly legal path for immigration even though our plans are to get married? I see that she would be paroled for 2 years, however we would want to marry within the first year anyways. Before I go this route I want to make sure that this route isn't going to cause additional headaches for her immigration, or cause issues if her i-129F case happens to go first since like you said they limit it to 30k per month. Can this be a parallel path with i-129F and then we just cancel whatever path ends up taking the longest?

I am engaged to a Cuban and we received NOA1 on Oct 18 2021. We have not received NOA2 yet. Yesterday Biden announced they were extending the Venezuelan immigration program to Cubans (and Haitians and Nicaraguans). https://www.uscis.gov/CHNV My basic understanding of this is that I should absolutely do this. All I need to do is complete a free i-134a application for my fiancée, she will then get security cleared (which she meets all the requirements I am sure) and then she will be able to come to the USA and file for EAD and a Social Security number. Then I was thinking once she arrives, when we feel the time is appropriate, we can then get married and file an AOS and file for her green card. Is there anything here that I should be concerned about? I am going to talk to a lawyer.

This is a good question. When did you submit your i-129F? From what I understand, you need to show stable income and one of the required documents that is listed in the i-134 instructions is tax transcript from the most recent year. Although it's not said, I would think they want this transcript to verify income threshold. I found this link that talks about the income requirements more that might help. https://www.immi-usa.com/k1-visa-income-requirements/ If you submitted your i-129F after ~June 2022, than you probably have nothing to worry about because you wont be getting NOA2 until roughly Dec 2023 anyways so you will be able to quickly do your 2023 taxes and have that for the interview. If you submitted before it I personally would recommend either finding a joint sponsor just in case, or consulting with a lawyer. If you find a joint sponsor you can tell them that i-134 isn't even legally enforceable (at least from what I read), and that by the time you get married, file an AOS and i-184 that you wont need them as a sponsor then. I believe i-184 is legally enforceable by family courts but by that time you shouldn't need a joint sponsor. Disclaimer - I am not a lawyer or an immigration expert. This is just what I understand since I am also going through the i-129F process. Ultimately the final decision is going to come from the person at the embassy conducting the interview and looking at the documentation you present. There is variability in what different people in these positions accept. I admit it's entirely possible you can get approval without a tax transcript, however it's entirely possible you get a denial because that person feels a tax transcript is a requirement for the process. I am only saying I would not take the risk of denial if this person doesn't like your story/situation and lack of documentation around it.

@mw & rg k1 I am curious... how do you get these numbers? Is it just a script that is run against https://egov.uscis.gov/casestatus/mycasestatus.do that checks every possible case number and then pulls this together? NOA1 - Oct. 18th 2001. I hope my turn comes soon.

This seems ridiculous and if I was at USCIS I would want to RFE your submission and ask you to submit a reasonable packet that only included what was asked for. My submission was 35 pages for reference and I included only what the i-129F packet asked for. Cover letter, 13 pages of completed and signed i-129F application, 2 signed letters of intent, two passport style photos, My birth certificate, G-1145, divorce decree for petitioner, divorce decree for beneficiary + translation + translation certification, evidence of meeting in the last two years which included airfare boarding passes, photo of passport stamps, hotel receipts, 5-6 time stamped photos of us together. 500+ pages is a daunting submission that will cause the agent to have to hunt for the relevant parts to make a determination. You've made their job very hard, and I would imagine they will be grumpy handling your bug killing packet. Good luck though. wish you luck in your journey.

I completely agree with you here also. There are so many people in the K1 process that should really be looking In the original message that I posted, and then I reposted above following the site's rules - The motivation of that message was to discuss the ability of a K1 petitioner living below the poverty line and being able to have and maintain a healthy long distance foreign relationship that will end up in marriage. I wasn't saying what I did in that message due to the potential increased tax payer burden. One thing I have learned from having children in my first marriage is that you need to pick your battles. Although I would absolutely agree with you that I don't think it is right for immigrants to come to the US and then live off the taxpayers and contribute nothing to society, I also realize that in the grand scope of the US's budget that's not the first thing to get all bothered by. Yes, I would absolutely love a government that is fiscally conservative and had to manage the national budget (and debt) the same way any responsible adult would. Yes I would like more accountability from people living off the system, and would like to remove all possible cases of fraud. But this isn't a perfect world or perfect government, and so you should pick your battles on where to start first with fixing our fiscal accountability. And the biggest elephant in the room that is bleeding us dry is the budget we allocate for military spending. This doesn't mean I don't agree with you. Sure I would also like more accountability from people living off the taxpayers (both citizens and immigrants), but it's not worth fighting about that when there are much bigger problems in our budget. My opinion anyways.

This was my fixed original post that was deleted for violating the language rules. Changed the word I used to more appropiate. Am I an [Jerk] for thinking if you can't meet the minimum poverty guidelines than you shouldn't be considering marriage with a foreign national? Long distance relationships are already difficult enough, and personally I don't think meeting someone one-time and talking to them on the phone or texting them is sufficient for really getting to know them. It's certainly enough to get infatuated with them and certainly enough to know that you want to get to know them better, but that "knowing them" happens by spending real, in-person time together with them. We are talking marriage here, it's not a legal contract that people should be so quick to leap into with someone they really don't know. Since my romance started, I've had 11 trips with my fiancée where each tip was between 5-30 days, and even with that much time together I recognize that when I am living with her full time there are going to be negative things we learn about each other and hopefully we can overcome those obstacles. Anyways, if you are living below the poverty line, how can you even afford to see this person? How can you afford to care for this person when they arrive and can't work for a year or more? If you are below the poverty line, how many trips did you actually take to see this person? If I was in charge of this process, I think the one change I would make is that I would require no less than 6 in person trips prior to the interview in the embassy (with exceptions for places like Ukraine that are under active war). My goal with this change would be to try and weed out those who are infatuated with the idea of being in love with this person, verses those who are actually in love.

@rich rich Yes you're correct I was more specifically addressing K1 as opposed to other types of immigration cases. Since I am going through K1, I am plugged into a lot of communities that are also going through the same K1 process. And I am personally amazed by the number of people that are going through this process, but get the one-time meeting requirement, and then think they are ready to marry this person. It seems that there are many people living below the poverty line that think the K1 process is a good idea, and that's what I don't understand or agree with. someone in capital intensive businesses are still filing taxes and still have an AGI and thus aren't below the poverty line probably. You know someone working full time at minimum wage will be above the minimum poverty line. Good point on bringing your wife's parents or siblings here and I agree with you this sort of immigration where someone comes and is supported by the government is a rounding error on our massive military budget. The motivation behind my post wasn't that I was concerned about the taxpayer burden. My motivation was more coming from the K1 perspective where I feel that if you are living below the poverty line than you wont have the means to really get to know your partner in the way you should before marrying someone.

I am probably going to print out a few years of chat logs to bring with to the interview because I'd rather error on the side of cation.... That said, I don't at all consider these chat logs proof of my relationship. I document every trip I take to spend time with my fiancée, saving airline tickets, and visa stamps, and pictures taken during the trip. To me this is really all the evidence I need. I did not include proof of relationship in my i-129f packet, I only included proof that we had met in person within the last two years.

Personally this sounds like you are making excuses to not comply with the requirements of this process. There is not "only one" Chaperon that you could use, and so this chaperon not being able to travel due to medical reasons isn't really a very good reason to get a waiver. Let me also say that personally I think you might want to reconsider marrying someone you have never even met. There is a HUGE difference between having an online romance, verses having an real life romance. I met my fiancée for the first time when I traveled to Cuba for a cultural experience 6+ years ago. This meeting ended up turning into a friendship that lasted the next 5 years. During Covid we realized that the friendship was something more, however in 2021 there was absolutely NO flights from the Americas to Cuba. The only flights that were reliably going to Cuba was this one flight from Madrid to Havana. I considered filing i-129f and asking for a waiver because there was no flights to Cuba due to Covid.... However instead of that I flew from New York, to Madrid Spain, I spent a couple days there and then flew from Madrid to Havana, where I spent a month with my fiancée and then flew home traveling from Havana->Spain->France->Iceland->NY. We then filed for i-129f upon my return. I have since traveled back to spend time with my future wife 10 times since we filed in Oct 2021. This time has been great at continuing to build the foundation we needed to make our marriage last for our lifetime. My only complaint is I wish USCIS would have some mechanism in place where beneficiaries from countries that typically can't get tourist visa's (Cuba for example) are able to get some sort of fiancée tourist visa such that her and I could spend even more time together. I am saying this because of the ridiculously long processing times, and the US government shouldn't be keeping families divided for so long simply because they can't adequately process applications. Anyways, I wrote all this so hopefully you can see you need to stop making excuses and find a way to actually meet your partner. Yes you can find a chaperon in your partners country. Yes you will have to pay money to travel there and pay for this chaperon's time. But this is only money and we are talking about one of the more important things in your life. If you are going to marry someone, you absolutely need to do everything you can to get to know this person in real life. I am glad I traveled half way around the world twice to see my fiancée, and I am incredibly gratefully I have got to see her 10 more times since then. It wasn't until the 6th trip or so that my relationship went from unrealistic honeymoon phase, to a real relationship where we can see each others flaws and understand no one is perfect but want to build a life together. As much fun as the honeymoon phase was, Im so grateful that my relationship is in reality now.