MCOBAQ

Non-immigration and non-family lawyer here. As others have said, and based on the facts we have, the child is not a USC and cannot become one unless your friend is willing to execute the proper papers and stand before a consular officer. No family court judge can confer US citizenship or even compel your friend to jump through those hoops. Likewise, the child would not be entitled to US social security or Medicaid benefits. Since your friend and Colombiana were never married, she has no claim to his house. Depending on what state he’s in, he may also have homestead protections which would prevent anyone (even a family court judge) from giving the house to Colombiana. Your friend may well owe child support, and there are international laws in place whereby a US family court could enforce the child support orders of a Colombiana court - if Colombiana ever got such an order. I doubt a Colombian court is going to award her the king’s ransom (appropriate word for what she’s trying to do here) that she’s asking for. Most importantly, and especially so in light of your friend’s government job, he needs to see a couple of lawyers (immigration and family). This will give him some good information, when knowledge is power. It should also give him some confidence and peace of mind. I wish him good luck.

Yikes. I won’t tell you to be patient, because I know I wasn’t! It took nearly 2 weeks for our case to go back into review from when the post office delivered our response, and then another week to get the approval. I bet you hear something soon - good luck!

Thanks! Yes it did go to our field office - they sent us an RFE in March because some paperwork had gone missing from the file. The approval comes about 4 weeks after we sent in our response directly to the field office. We did a fiancé visa and then AOS, so we we’ve been married a little over a year now.

Happy to report that my husband’s AOS had been approved! 1 year and 3 days from when we filed…no interview and they never asked us for evidence of a bona fide marriage.

We included a copy of the DS-3025 with the AOS packet and they still sent an RFE asking my husband to provide his medical exam record (which should have been in the sealed envelope he received from the embassy with his visa). He called the panel physician in his home country, but they would not release the records to him. He ended up redoing the exam here in the US and sent it in to our field office. You should be fine…worst case scenario is your spouse has to repeat the exam here and send in another sealed envelope.