Hi, Rahim Dhanani with The Dhanani Law Firm. Today, we’re going to be talking about marriage based green card applications and what evidence the immigration service looks at to determine if you’re really a married couple or not. So you may not be surprised to find out that the immigration service is not going to take your word for it. They want to see documentation that you’re actually a married couple. So what kinds of documents are they looking for? Well, they’re looking for things like joint bank accounts that have both your names on it. Joint credit card accounts. They’re looking for things like health insurance documents that have both of you listed through the same carrier. They’re looking for also auto insurance that has the same carrier and list both your names on it. Also things like if you have a retirement account, are you listing your spouse as the beneficiary?
If you have life insurance accounts, are you listing the spouse again as a beneficiary? They’re also looking at things like your tax returns. Did you file as a married couple or did you file a single. If you filed as single, then that’s problematic for the marriage based cases because obviously it says you’re single on your tax returns and the immigration service wants to see proof that you’re married. So it raises a red flag for them. They’ll also want to see things like affidavits from friends and family that know the both of you that can verify that the two of you were living together as a married couple. They’ll also want to see some photographs over a period of time with the two of you together in different settings. So maybe your wedding pictures, some vacation pictures, pictures with friends and family, just at regular gatherings and outings.
That might be a little bit tougher to do with the COVID outbreak right now. But just overall, they’re looking at what’s the big picture. And that’s another point is the immigration service is not looking at necessarily one document in particular as proof of your marriage. What they’re looking at is what’s the big picture. Do all of these documents together help to show that you’re actually a married couple. Little bits of documents from, from each category that I mentioned earlier are very helpful, but those are not the absolute essential documents that you need. You don’t need any one of those documents in particular, except for maybe the tax return, depending on when you were married. The rest is just basically a hodgepodge of different documents that you can add in to basically show the immigration service that you’re a married couple. Okay, I hope that was helpful and see you next time.