Welcome to The Immigration Answers Show!
People sometimes want to know if USCIS will consider their non-citizen spouse’s income in determining the affidavit of support obligations in spouse based green card cases.
In this episode we discuss whether or not its worth it for your case.
Thanks for listening!
Transcript
[0:00] This is the immigration answer show with Jim Hacking Episode number 28.
[0:05] Welcome to the immigration answer show with your host immigration lawyer Jim hacking.
In each episode Jim will answer your questions about the u.s. immigration system. Discover why the New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, national public radio, and buzzfeed.com have all featured Jim
[0:24] and get the help you need navigating our complex immigration laws. Now onto the show.
[0:31] Welcome to the immigration answers show where we answer your immigration questions 3 days a week you’ve got questions and we’ll do our best to answer them every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday now on to today’s question about the U.S. immigration system.
What happens if my foreign-born spouse makes a ton of money, I make very little money, and I want to sponsor him for a green card?
Today’s question comes from LeeAnn. LeeAn is in Germany, she and her former fiance and now spouse spend a lot of time in the United States and they’re currently living in Germany and Leanne is wondering her spouse now he makes a lot of money.
He makes well over the 125% of the poverty guidelines and she wants to be able to sponsor him and she’s asking whether we can include his income In the calculations for the Affidavit of Support, and you might be wondering what is an Affidavit of Support.
In marriage-based Green Card cases the government wants to make sure that the foreign-born spouses not going to become a charge on the government in other words that they’re not going to be able to pay for their own expenses, and that the government is going to end up paying for their medical bills, or food stamps or things like that.
So they make the US citizen spouse sign an Affidavit of Support and if a US citizen makes a hundred 25% of the poverty guidelines then they are able to sponsor the foreign-born spouse and everything is fine it keeps the case moving the case moves along swimmingly and everything is fine so in those scenarios that’s pretty straightforward. But then we have scenarios where the US citizen for whatever reason has not been working maybe they’ve been in school.
[2:08] Maybe they don’t have a long journey history or maybe they’ve had periods of unemployment during the prior 3 years. In those scenarios the person often needs a co-sponsor.
And LeeAn is wondering what can we forget about the coast sponsor and can we just use the income of my spouse because he’s making plenty of money.
And the answer to that is probably technically that you can but it’s a huge hassle and it really slows down your immigration case so in those situations we strongly strongly strongly encourage the u.s. citizen to find a co-sponsor and not to try to rely on the income of the spouse who’s making plenty of money. The reason for that is that usas is simply not set up to calculator consider the income of the u.s. citizens foreign-born spouse that is that they just don’t look at the income of the foreign-born spouses.
They won’t consider it they send back request for evidence it slows down the case by months and months of the cleaner thing to do is just to find a US citizen or green card holder who is willing to sign on as a co-sponsor what that means is they promise that.
If the foreign-born spouse gets benefits that is if Leanne’s husband gets benefits and.
He can’t pay them back and Leanne can’t pay them back then they the cosponsor will pay them back. It does take finding someone who’s willing to do that a US citizen or green card holder it does involve them turning over their tax income statements to USCIS to demonstrate the day the coast monster make enough money, but you’re going to find that it’s much better to do it that way then it is to try to get them to consider the u.s. citizens income the US citizen spouse’s income because it just aren’t set up for it and it’s hurting.
They have this calculator that they use and it just seems that every time we try to do something creative either using the foreign-born spouses income or using assets or things like that it never works it always comes back to us having to find a co-sponsor.
And it’s just so much easier so our suggestion in these situations is to disregard the income of the foreign-born spouse.
To focus on your income and if you don’t make enough to Simply find a co-sponsor it might not be the easiest thing but at the end of the day it’s going to get your case approved a whole lot more quickly and that’s the whole shooting match that’s what we’re after is trying to get the case moving quickly. The thing is we can try to make a point, we can try to fight with them, we can try to argue with them, but at the end of the day they have the keys to the kingdom they’re the ones that issue the Green card or the Visa andt at the end of the day we just like to do what they ask because in all honesty it’s just a whole lot simpler for everybody.
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