I received an RFE for my Adjustment of Status marriage based green card application. The RFE is regarding my husband petitioner’s I-864 Affidavit of Support. The RFE is a generic letter asking that we respond with evidence of a joint sponsor or assets. In the original petition, we submitted evidence of the petitioner’s assets, which are 5x the USCIS assets requirement. These assets are: over $150,000 average cash balance maintained for over 12 months + proof that the petitioner’s home is owned almost free and clear. The immigration company we hired did a poor job of organizing and presenting this asset evidence, leaving many things unexplained, like, for example, the reason some bank statements were missing on one of the petitioner’s accounts (a/c was only opened 5 months ago / info not on statements – we’ve since obtained a bank letter showing the account open date).
The immigration company refused to look at evidence of my own substantial assets, claiming that beneficiaries were not permitted to submit asset evidence. I later discovered that I could have submitted evidence of my income producing US investment properties (duplex + a single-family residence, both held for over 10 years) + large sum of USD, which would have brought the total of our assets to 10 x the USCIS requirement. For reference, my husband runs a business and shows low “total income” on his past year’s tax returns since taking many business deductions, although his actual cash flow is much higher. The immigration company submitted 3 years’ worth of these petitioner tax returns that don’t meet the USCIS income requirements, when they only needed to submit one, highlighting the weakest element of our case. My husband has earned above the required income this year, but won’t have a 2024 tax return by the RFE deadline.
We have since secured a joint sponsor at the advice of the immigration company who handled our case. My question is, should we submit evidence of both our new joint sponsor + assets rebuilt with clear explanations and perhaps the inclusion of my own substantial income producing assets? The immigration company argues that we need only submit evidence of the joint sponsor in the RFE response, claiming that the asset evidence is now irrelevant and will not be considered by USCIS. However, as I mentioned, only half of our asset picture was presented, and poorly at that. One large concern I have, is that my I-485 states that we have household assets worth over $700,000 + $52,000 annual household income. This info is correct, but again, only half of these assets + $17,000 worth of annual income evidence was submitted first time around. To me, the application seems very inconsistent and I’m reluctant to take further advice from the company who submitted our flawed application in the first place.
