S2N

No.

Both, as they’ll have to scan them in anyway if you only show up with them in person. Makes their lives easier.

That tracks more than a CO denying, which I guess is possible, but the U.S. government is usually good with mistranscribed records in my experience…

You’re over 3x in liquid assets, which should in theory be fine. Counselor officer could interpret the Israeli job as either counting towards income or not counting towards liquid assets depending on how they view the continued availability of funds in the United States. Your situation is a bit different than most as you’ve been living between countries with the income. Honestly, I’d line up a joint sponsor to be safe as this is an edge case (only slightly above 3x income in assets and foreign job), and I’m usually one of the people who is more understanding of trying to avoid joint sponsorship. @pushbrk is the expert on the I-864 and is familiar with the IV consulate in China, so pinging him.

K-3 visas aren’t issued. At best the I-130 gets approved faster and they close out the I-129F. Current median processing time is 10 months for I-129F and decreasing. Current median processing time for I-130 is 13 months and decreasing. People who apply for I-130 today will most likely get approved in September or October 2026. I-129F for K-1 would probably be July or August. All based on current intake and processing (both are processing faster than they get applicants currently.) That’s to say: whatever benefit there might have been to K-3 is quickly being eliminated. Also, in terms of if it works, in the last year or so the only cases where there’s any evidence of K-3 helping had the I-130 originally at Texas when the I-129F was filed. There’s virtually no datapoints showing it helping people at other service centers recently.

Having been through multiple government background checks, and having served as a reference during TS/SCI investigations where they actually do come to your house and ask you about your friends, you’re vastly overestimating the scope of a government investigation below the TS level. This isn’t a clearance, I know, but the ordinary scope is going to be less than what you’d expect on an SF-86. Edit to add: I think they should be prepared to address this, but it’s not a dealbreaker and it’s certainly not something needing proactive disclosure. If the government asks, tell the truth and have a good explanation.

It’s a fairly normal situation for divorced fathers to pay for the housing of their children. I agree the ex living there is a bit odd, but given the context of the relationship (he owns a house and lives overseas; no reason to pay multiple housing payments in the U.S.) I don’t think it’s that out of the ordinary and is something I’ve seen within the US when one parent moves states and the kids and ex don’t. It would be a huge red flag if he was living with the ex, but she has custody and he’s supporting the children. It might even be within the terms of the custody agreement. These are all things we don’t know, and more to point, the government doesn’t know or have any real way of finding out without disclosure. Yes they can send agents, but in a consular case with both parties living overseas that’s extraordinarily unlikely; even more so than the already low odds of it for AOS. Discussing the unlikely worst case isn’t that helpful. There’s no proactive disclosure requirement on this, and it’s bad advice to tell someone to change their entire financial relationship for the upkeep and care of their children because a theoretical issue with the government in the future. They should be prepared to address the issue if it comes up with a good explanation (custody agreement, etc.) and it might make sense overall to change their entire financial arrangement with the ex-spouse, but I wouldn’t let immigration be the driving factor.

I’m aware they have people they can send. That’s not ordinary course of business. Should have stated that asterisk. People overestimate what the government knows and also overshare beyond what’s legally required. That’s not just an immigration thing, but it applies in this case as well. Unless OP gives the government a reason to investigate it, they won’t, and it’s not misrepresentation not to proactively disclose it.

The government wouldn’t have a way of knowing that. USCIS doesn’t physically go to former residences to see who is residing there and there’s no question on the forms asking about who resides in the various properties. Only way USCIS or the consulate would know is if it was proactively disclosed, which it isn’t required to be and shouldn’t be. I agree it would raise questions if the government became aware of it, but there’s really no reason they should. Even in the interview it’d be easy to discuss “we plan on living with his sister until we’re more established.” if the residence question comes up.

Interesting since you wouldn’t expect it because they wouldn’t meet the IR-1 criteria, which is what AOS is based on under the statue. The new love interest plus the current administration makes me skeptical AOS would be allowed here regardless.

This. OP isn’t going to be able to adjust status, which for reasons already spelled out is impossible (the ex does not have the legal right to sponsor as the familial relationship upon which the I-130 was based no longer exists.) They're talking about a way to stay in the U.S. in some form of legal grey area for years while a consular I-130 and any applicable waiver makes its way through the system. A lawyer may be able to help with that, but I don’t see the current administration finding it cute. They don’t like any of the grey area statuses.

What is the consulate? This seems like a really odd request. Normally minor orthography issues aren’t a problem. Especially for people who were born in the 20th century, where so many records were written out with pen and paper and then *maybe* digitized in the early 2000s My usual advice is “just do whatever the government official says rather than prove you’re right”, but this just sounds odd.

Also to put it in context why this isn’t discretionary: discretionary AOS on weight of the equities is a thing. It’s most common usage is for spouses who arrive with immigrant intent. Despite the doom and gloom people have on that topic online, there’s BIA precedent allowing it, and it’s a power USCIS has even if it’s not always exercised. K-1 AOS after divorce is not a case where USCIS can exercise discretion and grant AOS on the weight of the equities. A circuit court of appeals published an opinion on the topic after BIA held that the IJ could not grant AOS. That means BIA cannot change its position as a quasi-judicial Article I administrative tribunal, because an Article III tribunal has now settled the underlying law, and BIA is bound by it. USCIS has even less authority than BIA. What that means is if AOS was granted, it could very well come back to bite you all because it would be USCIS acting unlawfully. They could revoke LPR status when and deport when time comes to remove conditions or naturalize.

There’s no reading between the lines in immigration law. While immigration law is not as black and white as people sometimes make it out online, what areas are discretionary and what areas are not is clearly defined. This is not a discretionary area. Lawyers will take on difficult cases to find alternate solutions, but that alternate solution isn’t going to be adjusting status.

Sounds good. I’d consider including a listing of all exhibits in the first upload and then a table of contents on each file to make it easier for them to follow, but not strictly necessary.

This doesn’t always get it small enough to fit all in one, and I wouldn’t recommend it on items where the image needs to be seen (i.e. passport stamps), but yes. This should help. Combing will be helpful here though. Yes. You can include a table of contents and section breaks. My suggestion would be to have the passport and boarding passes combined in one PDF in order to maintain image quality. Then try to condense the others into one or two files using lower quality images in the save option in order to save space. Also you can follow Edward and Jaycel’s advice above.

Can you combine some of the exhibits into one PDF and stay within the file size limits?

I found that hard to use with my passport because of the fold, so went with the library a block from my house!

I saw this to, but they said CR-1/IR-1 in their post so assumed the profile was a misclick. Useful confirming either way.

Yes. Do exactly as they say.

By case accepted do you mean approved or that you sent it in? Assuming you mean sent it in, current timeline is a median time of around 13 months with upper 90th percentile at around 17 months. API data dumps have cases being approved faster than being filed, so you likely will see that drop to around 10-11 months median over the next year if nothing changes. Things can change though: a year ago the median time was around 17 months with an upper 90th at around 21 months. If you want the widest range of possibilities for how long you’ll be waiting to hear back from USCIS it’s 10-21 months. That captures pretty much every median time of the last 10 years.

This is one of the cases where they can go straight to denial if not initially uploaded. Typically USCIS is fine with uploading additional evidence later or fixing submissions via unsolicited evidence. The one exception is for required initial evidence — which a marriage certificate is.

Right, but my point was six months is coming up. Tickets are usually relatively cheap the December 21-25th internationally (as everyone has already flown.) Might be a good idea to have them make a holiday trip back if they can swing it.

There are a ton of EAD uses, but the ones that the administration is going to care about would be: C08, C10, C11, C14, C18, C19, and C33. They could exempt some of the codes, but from an administrative standpoint it’s easier just to do a blanket rule. The administration has made it fairly clear it doesn’t see much difference between people here in what’d I’d call the grey area statuses — ones where someone asks for a temporary benefit that is not a change in overall immigration status but prevents unlawful presence from accruing — and those here out of status. Most of the people that would fall into the categories I mentioned above would fall into what they broadly (and incorrectly) paint as “illegal immigrants.” And I think there’s pretty strong overall evidence they want people to leave on their own: the president has said on multiple occasions that people should “self-deport” so they can have a chance at coming back. You also have a lot of that type of rhetoric coming out of the surrogates. They’re not going to come out and say “we’re making this harder in hopes people leave and don’t continue seeking benefits within the U.S.” that’d get them sued. From the State standpoint, they’ve also been providing more guidance to embassies and consulates on vetting, while speeding up embassy and consulate IV scheduling times — doesn’t mean an approval, but wait times to go from NVC to a consulate are down from 6 months ago. The clear trend in everything is to push the responsibility for vetting immigrants to State, who are widely viewed as more competent than USCIS by pretty much everyone, so that the vetting can be done overseas rather than while the person is in the US. The approach of doing vetting outside the US only works if the people leave. And of course they don’t like immigrants, but that also doesn’t mean they don’t have a strategy on this or that they’re not trying to build systems that furthers their goals. Stephen Miller is actively involved in regular calls with the State Department officials that lead visa processing in DC. Do we really think the man doesn’t have a coordinated approach to his plans between DHS and State?

CBP has been documented getting pissy after 6 months. Might be worth seeing if they fancy a holiday trip state side.