Submit AOS with birth affidavit copies (instead of originals)?

[verbose]

Hello gang,
I mostly have everything ready to submit the AOS application for parents (I-130, 485, 131, 765, 864 and 944) but the birth affidavits for them (we don’t have their birth certificates and non availability certificate is not required since both were born prior to 1970) are yet to be shipped from India (could take 5-7 days possibly to reach)

If I submitted good quality scans of the same while the originals are in transit, do you think that will cause any problems? I can provide originals if asked for via subsequent RFE, or bring them to the interview (if and when we get to that stage.)

I’m feeling a little apprehensive about some upcoming Executive Order adding more conditions atop the newly introduced I-944, or creating more roadblocks to a successful AOS so want to submit soon.

Please share if you have had experience with this, or if you can guide me. Thanks!

[verbose]

I am submitting my birth certificate copy and matriculation certificate as well as copy of parents’ marriage certificate as well as self affidavits from both of them about their birth dates (since all grandparents except my maternal grandmother have passed and there are no other older relatives to provide affidavits for them except her and I got one more from a close family friend for my father. These are yet to be mailed from India but I can get coloured scans of the same before they are sent out)

So, relating to proving relationship and birth dates etc, I will be submitting

1. Petitioner's birth certificate (copy)
2. Petitioner's matriculation certificate (copy)
3. Affidavit from parents declaring Petitioner's birth date and parent names (copy)
4. Parents Aadhar Cards (mother and father) (copy)
5. Parents PAN cards (mother and father) (copy)
6. Parents Marriage Certificate(copy)
7. *Maternal grandmother affidavit certifying my mother's birth
8. *Maternal grandmother affidavit certifying my father's birth
9. *Close family friend's affidavit certifying my father's birth
10. Parents passports (mother and father) (copy)
11. Father's self affidavit certifying his own birth (original)
12. Mother's self affidavit certifying her own birth (original)

Items 7, 8 and 9 are yet to be shipped from India, and I am thinking to include them as scanned copies for now.

[pigrew]

In general, original documents (other than I-693) should NEVER be sent to USCIS. You should only send copies. The RFIE form we recently received told us to submit a COPY of a birth certificate.

The normal process would be for you to bring the original documents to an interview.

(As for the list of documents, I'm not sure.)

[verbose]

I found this article which describes flexibility provided by USCIS. This suggests it should be ok to submit scanned copies for now.

https://www.uscis.gov/news/alerts/us...onal-emergency

[danny32]

You don’t have to wait for originals to arrive because even if you had originals on hand, you would only send scanned copies. So you’re good on that. But I’ll advise you to not send so many documents initially. Reason being, if a RFE is issued pertaining to birth certificate, you would’ve already sent all the documents and you would have nothing left to respond to RFE. So hold back PAN and Aadahar card and if you have their school leaving certificate. You can use them as secondary evidence in response to the RFE.