Marrying My Spouse on a Tourist Visa - In Need Of Advice

[emiswarts]

Hi all!

I recently sent in my concurrent filing i-130, i-485 and etc. for AOS for my husband on 03/28/2018 and it just arrived today 03/31/2018 to the USCIS lockbox facility in Chicago.

I am incredibly stressed about my application as my husband and I are not only young (he's 20 and I'm 19), but he also originally came just to visit for holidays and we decided afterwards to change our minds about doing long distance. We decided to get married on our one year anniversary in Jan.

I would love to hear some advice and/or experiences from people who have gotten married while their spouse was on a B-1/B-2 visa and have attempted to adjust status.

We got married about 75 days after he arrived in the US and filed about 140 days after his arrival.

Do I have anything to worry about or should I just sit back and relax??

[azblk]

Hi all!

I recently sent in my concurrent filing i-130, i-485 and etc. for AOS for my husband on 03/28/2018 and it just arrived today 03/31/2018 to the USCIS lockbox facility in Chicago.

I am incredibly stressed about my application as my husband and I are not only young (he's 20 and I'm 19), but he also originally came just to visit for holidays and we decided afterwards to change our minds about doing long distance. We decided to get married on our one year anniversary in Jan.

I would love to hear some advice and/or experiences from people who have gotten married while their spouse was on a B-1/B-2 visa and have attempted to adjust status.

We got married about 75 days after he arrived in the US and filed about 140 days after his arrival.

Do I have anything to worry about or should I just sit back and relax??

At this point there is not much else you can do but collect more evidence of your relationship. It is going to be a long ride.

[emiswarts]

At this point there is not much else you can do but collect more evidence of your relationship. It is going to be a long ride.

Are you speaking from experience or perspective?

[UScitizenFilingforspouse]

Hi all!

I recently sent in my concurrent filing i-130, i-485 and etc. for AOS for my husband on 03/28/2018 and it just arrived today 03/31/2018 to the USCIS lockbox facility in Chicago.

I am incredibly stressed about my application as my husband and I are not only young (he's 20 and I'm 19), but he also originally came just to visit for holidays and we decided afterwards to change our minds about doing long distance. We decided to get married on our one year anniversary in Jan.

I would love to hear some advice and/or experiences from people who have gotten married while their spouse was on a B-1/B-2 visa and have attempted to adjust status.

We got married about 75 days after he arrived in the US and filed about 140 days after his arrival.

Do I have anything to worry about or should I just sit back and relax??

I think your timeline displays you two did not intend to violate any rules or laws. He married a US citizen within 90 days of his arrival. That is not great. However, if you examine that by the previous 30/60 (day) rule, 75 is outside of that time frame. Therefore, it's not ideal but marriage didn't happen within 60 or worse, 30 days. To your redemption, you did wait to file until 140 days after his arrival.
You have to demonstrate good faith. If there were a lot of text conversations, those are key. I would recommend getting iExplorer. It's an iphone/android manager which allows you to download text messages/imessages quickly and in a format that can be used for legal purposes. ***I have no association to this software*** $39 for 1 license and $49 for 2 licenses.
It displays Date & Time the conversation started and ended. Displays the time of each text message within the conversation. Some people take screenshots but that is very time consuming and also it's not in a legal format. That's ultimately an image that can be fiddled with if you're good with computers.
The program will also allow you to search for words. Thus, you will be able to easily locate the texts that show how it all unraveled and how you two simply decided you could not wait to be married and start a life. If there are texts that show you were clueless about the process and the law, those are great, too. That shows good faith. You did not know. I bet you didn't know you could have done a k-1 visa which actually has a smooth AOS process which gets the interview waived for literally every case.
My spouse and I sent conversations for every month since we met in June 2016 until the day we filed. It was a solid stack of 400 pages at least.
For your interview, bring all the evidence that you have of bona fide marriage by then. Most importantly, do not make the timing of your marriage the focus of the interview. If the ISO asks or even realizes that marriage happened within 75 days, then you address it and pull out the stack of evidence that addresses that. But don't walk in there and incriminate yourself by bringing it up.
Be prepared for additional scrutiny, and that is OK, your response to extra scrutiny is "sure, here it is" and you pull out another stack of evidence. It's possible to make evidence out of everything. That's how we sent USCIS a 13lb AOS package. Why did we do that? Well, we have an age difference that to us means nothing but sometimes it takes a while for people to realize we are a couple. They assign fraud levels to cases and an age difference is right up there. So we front-loaded all the evidence we could. And we are already collecting evidence for the interview. We are just adding the next bill, cancelled checks from our joint checking, HSA transactions.
Did you send a lot of evidence? What did you send? If you did not send much, that is OK. You filed 65 days after getting married. So how much could you have by then. Now if you show up at the interview with just a lease and a bank statement for 3 months at the interview, expect to be told to reschedule or you might be separated right there. So you must be prepared.
You can make evidence out of anything:

- Text messages - any time you send him a text reminding him to get milk at the store on his way home, you print that conversation and you keep that receipt. Share your location on your texts and pictures. There you have a text asking for milk on x date and time along with a receipt for the milk that matches that date and time.

- Your google maps location history also shows where you usually are. You can take screenshots of that.
- We use an August lock and we each have an owner account that grants us access to our home 24/7 with our home. We printed the log history of 2 months. We had to make it a point to not open/close the door manually. It shows our names opening and closing the door every day at different times of the day.

- If you are not texting your in-laws yet and vice versa, get what's app. It's free and you can text anyone in the world. You will take screenshots of those conversations when you say hi to your in laws.

- joint checking account - paychecks or a portion of them that's enough to cover your share of rent/utilities should be direct deposited into the account. Check cards for both. Make a copy of both cards and use them. Show that you are using them.

- Cell phone, internet, utilities. Call the companies and ask for the bill to display both names. Tell them you two want to be jointly responsible for the account. However, they can accommodate that but you want both names to show on the bill.

- USPS informed delivery - this shows scanned images of your daily mail. You can have one or two accounts. Your choice. We did two separate ones. Then printed the emails with the scanned images from my account and then from my spouse's. It does not only show me my mail. It shows me anyone's mail coming to my address. That shows we both have access to it and that we are comfortable with seeing each other's mail. We printed those emails from November 2017 thru mid march 2018

- We got a joint email that combines both last names. [email protected] for example and we use that email for the checking account, notifications, reminders from internet, electric, gas, cell phone, all go here. If we go to home depot, we have an electronic receipt sent to this email address, too. The August lock account is also registered to that email account so we get reminders that batteries are low and need to be changed. Using 1 email account is something very old couples do but I figured why the hell not? It helps you run your household. Payment confirmations also get sent to that. It's neat because that eliminates having to ask - did you remember to pay for this?

- Make sure you take turns signing the rent checks and you must both be on the lease. So try to make that happen however you can.

- health insurance at work. You must both be on it if you can. Try to sign up for benefits. I know it's hard but just make it a priority.

That's my humble two cents and of course, a lot of it is unsolicited advice. But I felt compelled to because what you said reminded me that my former spouse and I we were just as young, when we first went through my AOS 20 years ago, and neither one understood the process. It was very confusing. My spouse was not working and I did not make much working two jobs. I did not know how to put together evidence to tell the story of our marriage. So we showed up with very little and I can tell you that is not a position you don't want to be in. Not in this day and age. We were approved with very little. They cornered us and our first instinct was to reach for each other's hand. That's when the ISO backed off.

Back then people would tell you to just bring your evidence to the interview. But by then, the ISO has a preconceived notion about your case. No evidence = likely fraud. I'm digressing here. That's why I recommend front-loading. None of this is legal advice as anything else anyone shares on this forum.

[UScitizenFilingforspouse]

Hi all!

I recently sent in my concurrent filing i-130, i-485 and etc. for AOS for my husband on 03/28/2018 and it just arrived today 03/31/2018 to the USCIS lockbox facility in Chicago.

I am incredibly stressed about my application as my husband and I are not only young (he's 20 and I'm 19), but he also originally came just to visit for holidays and we decided afterwards to change our minds about doing long distance. We decided to get married on our one year anniversary in Jan.

I would love to hear some advice and/or experiences from people who have gotten married while their spouse was on a B-1/B-2 visa and have attempted to adjust status.

We got married about 75 days after he arrived in the US and filed about 140 days after his arrival.

Do I have anything to worry about or should I just sit back and relax??

Joint tax returns. Even if you are not required to file a tax return because your income is below the threshold, you should still file taxes jointly. This serves two purposes. First, shows that as a married couple you two are comingling your finances. Second, when the IRS does audits, they can only go a few years back. Thus, if you throw in there a year that you did not make much and were not required to file but still filed taxes, then, you used up one of those total years that they can audit.

Best of luck!