element6

Hello,

Hoping someone may be able to shed some light on the situation we are currently in after submitting our massive packet at the end of September. We received an RFE on form I-485 in the mail today. Here's what it says:

I am the US born citizen petitioning for my UK born, UK citizen wife to be granted a visa.

We submitted a photocopy of her long form UK birth certificate. She was born in England, the birth certificate states her full name, DOB, parents' names, place of birth in the UK, etc, etc. Everything is there. The ENGLISH birth certificate is entirely in, you guessed it, ENGLISH.

Why on earth would they need a translation?

Pulaski

They don't, it's just a SNAFU.

Humour them, just send another copy of the birth certificate, because it isn't worth arguing about.

Noorah101

Just an error on USCIS part. Return the RFE with another photocopy of the birth certificate, with an explanation that since it's in English, no translation is needed.

Rene

mrken30

You may need to translate the dates. The US is full of Americans that can't speak or write English.

element6

Will do. Her biometrics appointment is tomorrow but I doubt anyone at the biometrics office will be allowed to provide any input on an RFE or provide an explanation. I think I will call the USCIS support line tomorrow morning just to try to talk to someone about it as well.. Nothing wrong with killing a few hours waiting to get through to speak to them.

I'll drop the letter in the mail with an explanation and another copy of the official BC and overnight it to them tomorrow afternoon.

tom169

Ensure you send it via USPS where it is trackable and you know it got delivered.

rpjs

Could it be that they’re not happy with a photocopy? Possibly ordering a certified copy from the GRO and sending that plus a photocopy might satisfy them. When you do the IV route they expect you to bring “originals” (for which the certified copy from the GRO meets the requirement) of all documents (and photocopies) to the visa interview

mrken30

You could also get a notarized copy at you local bank or UPS store.

element6

I don't think so. I'm definitely not sending them originals for anything unless explicitly requested (such as for the interview process). Taken from the official I-485 filing instructions, Page 9 of 42:

They received a photocopy of her birth certificate, issued by the appropriate civil authority from the country of birth. It is a long form birth certificate which lists at least one parent (it lists both).

They got what they asked for.

element6

We overnighted them another photocopy of her certified birth certificate, along with all pages of their letter, and an explanation stating, essentially, that English cannot be translated to English.

Definitely a weird RFE. We googled for other instances of this happening for hours before I even submitted this thread and came up empty handed. The only cases we were able to find of this happening to others were cases where the photocopy of the birth certificate that someone submitted with their RFE was either bilingual, partially in another language, or did not contain all of the required fields according to the I-485 instructions. None of those scenarios is true in our case.

I'm thinking they either made a mistake while processing things, misplaced the copy of the birth certificate after disassembling our neatly organized I-485 packet, or misread something on the BC. I'm chalking it up to human error until they either proceed in processing the I-485 or come back to us with more detail as to what the problem is. The RFE and explanation they provided to us is not applicable to the BC we submitted, so if something other than the generic response they provided is going on, they will need to be more specific.

Thanks for the replies and the help. Hopefully they pick back up on processing this at some point.

MidAtlantic

Why is everyone trying to second guess what happened? They asked for a translation of an English birth certificate. That is obviously a mistake. Write and point it out to them.

Pulaski

I don't even think it's worth arguing with them over. Just send them another copy of the birth certificate. I wouldn't do any more than perhaps sticking a Post-it on it saying "This is in English already."