OldUser

Yes, new fees were introduced on April 1sr 2024. The minor children are included in parent's I-751 for free as long as they became a Conditional Resident on the same day, or within 90 days of their parent.

Great, that's much better than I thought. All evidence should be separate for each separate I-130 and I-485. Including separate I-864.

It would have been much better if you filed two I-130s per each beneficiary as required by US citizen. One I-130 with other derivative applicant on I-129F is a messy case. USCIS will likely be scratching their head...

Do you have separate I-130s for each beneficiary (wife, stepdaughter)?

This is too important to delegate to online services in my opinion. Mistakes in forms can derail your case. I'd say either do it youserself and spend good amount of time on it. Or hire a lawyer (you'd still have to check everything). Do not pay online notarios who may do a sloppy 10 minute job filing your N-400.

No attorney is strictly required for your case. If you have evidence and prepare well, everything should go smooth. A good attorney in your case can only help keeping conversation and questions to the point. E.g. if IO asks irrelevant question, your attorney could help by pointing this out to the IO so then they'd stick only to what is necessary to adjudicate the case. If you have money to spend on attorney, there's nothing wrong with hiring one. But not required and optional in your case.

You only need to provide trips in the last 3 years if applying under 3 year rule. Note that officer will review entire immigration history and may ask you about prior to 3 year history. The safest bet is to apply on 3 year anniversary of December 2021 date you were back in the States. You can technically apply 90 days prior to that date, but then your case will have a little more moving part. More moving parts => more potential for errors by IO and you may have to do more explanation to get approved. You probaly received an automatically generated courtesy email to remind you to naturalize. I don't believe it's based on any analysis. USCIS probably looked at your GC expirarion date and determined, since you got GC in 2014 it's about to expire / expired and you can apply for citizenship because you've been LPR for over 5 years. Did you renew your GC?

I hope there's no question about naming all 50 states? I'm yet to go through this process in the future 😅

Just one asnwer you need to know. For example, when asked about federal holidays, you can name Independence Day.

With years passing by it gets harder and harder to provide adequate documentation as it gets lost, parents pass away, chasing school archives becomes a bigger hassle etc. I'm sure people get N-600 done decades after but it would probably require way more effort (and more expensive in the future as fees don't go down). The best time to get N-600 is as the kid becomes the citizen. Then you only need to care about keeping one paper safe vs stack of papers.

My $0.02 on N-600: It is optional, but highly recommended. Just search VJ, Reddit and the internet. You'll find a lot of good examples of people struggling to prove they are US citizens and thus having issues with passport renewal or getting other benefits. Here's recent example of somebody trying to get US passport for 7 (or 8?) years: Not sure how proactive they were, but if they had N-600 on their hand I can bet money the process would have been smooth and simple.

One detail though. Expungements mean little to USCIS. The applicant will always have to disclose arrests and provide all paperwork even if the case was based on false allegations and in the end, the charges were dropped.

Adding @mindthegap as the expert in I-751s / Divorce Waivers. You don't need to pay the fee, but I cannot give good instructions on switching to divorce divorce waiver. You probably have to write a letter to service center where your case is pending.

Agreed, no benefit to withdrawing now. Fees are paid and not refundable. There's definitely risk of issues with I-485 when withdrawing I-130 on the other hand.

Travel between interview and oath is different to travel after oath and before getting US passport.

I hope @Nashmusah was actually going for naturalization (naturalisation is UK / Australia business). Looks like OP's case was treated as case under 3 year rule. What boxes are checked on your form @Nashmusah?

You can continue travelling with GC and extension letter. As long as your physical presense doesn't get affected of course. You will get asked about trips between interview and oath before your ceremony begins.

This definitely helps

You can expect the same for I-751 / N-400

Converting I-751 to divorce waiver is extremely necessary. If USCIS approves your I-751 on wrong premise (thinking you're married removing conditions jointly) - you would put your LPR status into question when attempting to naturalize. I'd focus on divorce / I-751 before atrempting N-400. As you may know, N-400 cannot be approved before I-751 is adjudicated properly.

I do not have experience using Zelle / Venmo for evidence. Maybe others can comment whether this is a good idea or not. It may work both ways in my opinion. If you have public transactions on Venmo, by submitting account information you're potentially inviting USCIS to scrutinize your transactions with other people.

If you pay by personal check, cashiers check or money order, you don't need G-1450. This is only needed for credit card payments.

This is a good start. Other than filing taxes together, how else do you comingle your finances? Do you have joint savings / checking accounts?

I highly recommend paying with personal check to avoid credit card transaction getting declined and causing all sorts of delays. If you read VJ, you'll see people report issue paying with CC because bank flags transaction as fradulent.

Good evidence can require 500+ pages. But not all 500+ packets contain good evidence.