Alex T

Hi All,

Myself and my USC Wife (Newly wed as of 2 weeks ago) are now starting to compile our I-130/I-130a forms now online and I'm just looking for some advice, specially:

• What evidences do we need to provide? We've got around 8 Affidavits proving a bona-fide marriage from family and friends on both sides, but we haven't got any kids, shared financial records or properties. What else can we do to show a valid relationship?
• Are there any typical slip ups when filling out these forms that we can avoid now? We've check, and double checked but don't want to miss anything.
• Any other advice/recommendations that anybody has would be great.

Thanks everyone - excited for this journey ahead.

os306

Congratulations!

My wife and I recently completed and sent our petition to the London office. From reading these forums, it looks like submitting evidence to demonstrate that you and your spouse "have combined your financial resources" are considered the strongest by USCIS. Even if you don't have any shared financial records, do you rent a house/flat together? If so, do you have a copy of your tenancy agreement? We submitted the first page of ours. Do you have any utility bills that have both your names on them? We submitted two of those. A letter from your local Council will also work.

A common mistake with the I-130/I-130a forms are forgetting to write "N/A" or "Not applicable" in boxes that don't apply to you. It's tempting to leave these blank, but people have received RFEs for doing so.

Good luck!

Alex T

Thanks for the advice.

Unfortunately because we've been long distance for the duration of our relationship, with only brief visits, we do not have any utility bills or tenancy agreements. The best we have is the occasional PayPal transfer when we send each other money. I think we're going to send details about the flights we've taken over the duration of the relationship (around a flight every 3 or so months), along with the affidavit's from friends/family, call logs, message logs, pictures from the duration of the relationship and whatever else we can find. Hoping this will be enough.

For the I-130 forms, we're filling in the online form for the I-130 and the PDF form for the 130a and there doesn't really appear to be many fields that allow N/A or "Not Applicable" because of character and length requirements. So hopefully what we have filled out will suffice.

Pulaski

You are worrying too much - in practice there is little more than a marriage certificate that is required - in other words you can only submit the records you have, and what you have listed that you have is plenty, more than enough. If you have records of your wedding, if it was a family gathering, that is going to be pretty good, and what ever you have about when you first met and the times that you did spend together, even if that was only a few times.

The rarely mentioned "dirty little secret" about transatlantic relationships is that neither the US nor the UK experiences much marriage visa fraud with people crossing the Atlantic, and you are rather unlikely to have much trouble asserting that your relationship is genuine. .... The risk for both the US and UK, is with marriages where the immigrant spouse is coming from Asia, the Middle East, Africa, or Latin America including the Caribbean.

os306

Sorry, I got confused and thought you were applying via the DCF route at the London Consulate. It sounds like you have plenty of supporting evidence there Good luck!

vivid291

I was in the same situation as you in that my husband and I were always long distance so didn’t have any shared financial assets. Our i-130 was approved without receiving an RFE and this is the sort of stuff I included in the bona fide marriage pack:

- Screenshots of conversations from the beginning of the relationship to the point of submission (not tons, just a variety of stuff from across the span of the relationship)
- 4 affidavits (3 from my side and one from his)
- Proof of all travel to and from (flight bookings showing dates of travel)
- Photos (this was a big one. We included photos of us together, wedding photos, photos of me with his family and vice versa).
- Amazon orders (when gifting things we’d always order on amazon so we printed receipts showing orders made and sent to one another)
- Photocopies pf receipts of payment for the wedding. We had a small wedding so it was easy to keep track of receipts for things
- Wedding invitation.

Your submission sounds similar to mine so I’d say you’re on the right track.

Other posters are right in that it’s tempting to leave inapplicable boxes blank but filled all of mine in. Though, are you online submitting everything? Or are you just filling the i-130 application in on the computer to then print off and send? We printed everything and sent it to a lockbox and I had the same issue in that some boxes won’t allow you to put the right “not applicable” indicator in when you type out the form. What I did was fill in as much as I could on the computer, printed it and then filled in the bits that couldn’t be typed in black pen. I was nervous about this and figured I’d air on the side of caution and just fill in everything and it paid off in the finished for me. I looked in the accompanying instructions pdf for the i-130 to see what “not applicable” marker to use for each one.

Hope this helps and good luck with your journey!