Form I-130 “Petition for Alien Relative” Best Way to Submit ‘Additional Evidence’

November 16th, 2023

Photo by Cobalt & Chrome Photography

The “Additional Evidence” section of the Form I-130 “Petition for Alien Relative” is arguably the most important section of the I-130 submission. This section is vital to the application because this is the opportunity to prove that the marriage in question is bona fide.

There is plenty of information available as to the different types of evidence that one can submit and there is even information that will rank these forms of evidence from highest to lowest in terms of value. However, there is not very much information about how to submit this evidence especially if the application is submitted digitally.

Most of the higher valued forms of evidence are financial. Things like putting your foreign spouse’s name on a lease agreement or credit cards and joint bank accounts. These financial forms of evidence are better suited for those applying for the K1 Fiance Visa. Having legal permanent residency is essential to most financial forms of evidence which the K1 visa recipient has throughout his/her adjustment of status period. It is very difficult to add your spouse’s name to anything financially related when he/she does not have a social security number, an ITIN, legal permanent status, or reside in the country. Because of this, we relied on the wealth of our other forms of evidence.

The USCIS website allows multiple file uploads with a maximum of 20MB per file. Although we have the ability to upload multiple files, it is amazing how much evidence we quickly accumulated. Ideally, we would upload EVERYTHING that we recorded, however, if this was done individually, I would have had to upload approximately 97 individual files. The idea of an agent simply having the patience let alone making any sense of 97 individual files was terrifying.

Apple’s “Keynote”

We made the decision to organize and condense all of our additional evidence into one pdf file. This allowed our application the convenience of one file download for all of our evidence in hopes this would make things easier for the agent who reviews our file. This also allowed me the opportunity to add important context to our evidence and in a way that is much more aesthetically pleasing; my strategy was to present an evidence file that was appealing and interesting enough to keep our reviewing agent not only engaged and focused but also clear in understanding.

In order to do this, I used Keynote, the Apple equivalent to Microsoft’s Power Point. I am definitely no expert on Keynote, however, with some time, dedication, and the aid of YouTube videos, I was able to construct a respectable evidence file. After building my pdf slide show, the final exported master file was over 222MB in size, far too large to submit. I use an app called “PDF Expert” in order to downsize our master file to 5.4MB. Of course, the quality of the images and text were lessened, but, I made sure to size all of the images and text so it was all still recognizable even at the smaller downgraded file size.

For our evidence file, we included:

• txt message correspondence on both WhatsApp and iMessage,

• past social media posts,

• airline boarding passes,

• travel itineraries,

• a wedding invitation made in both of our names that was dated, stamped, and mailed to my address (the same one on our application),

• the receipt from my engagement ring purchase,

• txt message correspondence between myself and Jessica’s mother (translated, of course),

• Affidavit letters of evidence,

• photos… lots and lots of photos.

Unfortunately, we experienced complications in adding Jessica:

• as a dependent on my health insurance plan through my employer,

• as the sole beneficiary to my life insurance package and pension through my employer,

• as the sole beneficiary to my retirement account,

Fortunately, we were able to successfully add Jessica as my dependent and beneficiary, however, not in a very timely manner. At the time of submission, Jessica was not added as neither a dependent on my health insurance nor the beneficiary to my life insurance and pension as it was an unnecessarily painful process. However, I included paperwork that proved that I had started the process of adding Jessica to my work related benefits. The other two things we attempted after our marriage but could not and have not completed yet is adding Jessica to my car insurance policy and adding her as the beneficiary to my retirement account. Her Brazilian drivers’ license will not be accepted by my car insurance provider and I will be able to add her as soon as she acquires her American drivers’ license. The retirement account is just a matter of finding the right one; I will be opening an additional retirement account in which I can add her as my beneficiary. Not all retirement accounts allow non-citizens or non-legal permanent residents to be listed as the beneficiary. This is not too concerning as I am confident that we provided enough evidence to prove our marriage bona fide. If anything, this will give us some ammunition for Jessica’s NVC interview or in the situation we receive the unfortunate and dreaded RFE notification; “Request for Evidence.”

Example of an “RFE” Request for Evidence notification

Failure to present enough evidence to prove a marriage bona fide will result in an RFE notification: “Request for (*more) Evidence.” This will delay the marriage green card process.

For our particular situation, the time was brief from the moment we met until the day we married: we met on October 29th, 2022 and were married a year later on November 1st, 2023. Our relationship history is brief enough that I thought it best if we presented our evidence in sequence. I felt that this detailed chronological order would also show the natural progression and growth of our relationship. At the very least, it would also show four individual trips to Brazil from myself and three to Los Angeles on behalf of Jessica, all documented and paid for.

First slide after my intro in our “additional evidence” section of our I-130 application

I started our evidence file with our meeting in Mexico City where I included our first picture together, our first WhatsApp correspondence in which we organized her transport to the airport for her return to Brazil, and her first social media post a month later where she also tagged me for the first time. I then proceeded to document each individual trip to Brazil and her trips to LA. I included all photos of us together in each individual trip as well as corresponding airline boarding passes, travel itineraries, and any other correlating social media posts or txt message correspondence.

Pictures depicting iconic restaurant and landmark in Porto Alegre, RS. Missed photos with Jessica’s mom and grandma but got one with her dog. Fortunately, dogs are family.

Photos of my sister’s wedding. Included are photos of Jessica and mom, and Jessica helping with the pick-up of my sister’s wedding cake.

The rumor is that photo evidence is not a very strong form of evidence, however, I disagree. Photos, especially recurring, with family and friends and in iconic and recognizable travel destinations that directly correlate to submitted matching travel itineraries and airline boarding passes are incredibly hard to fake. I submitted photos of us in the United States, Brazil, Mexico, Italy, and Peru and some of these photos were submitted via screenshot on social media so dates can therefore be cross-referenced. Simply put, authentic couples travel together. I, of course, also made sure to include the date and location of every single photo that was included in our evidence file.

Maybe my strategy of presenting a more “professional looking” evidence file is all for nothing. But I tried to see this experience through the eyes of the reviewing USCIS agent. I assume that his/her job is not always the most exciting and I’m sure that most of the evidence submitted is not only difficult to understand but boring to review. I would be much more engaged, focused, and inclined to give my best efforts toward a review if the content was simply presented better. I’m also hoping that they see the effort put forth in my presentation and that my effort may also count for something.

I spent one marathon 12-hour day putting our file together where I only stopped for bathroom breaks and to eat one meal. I was motivated and obsessed. Then, I collectively spent roughly another two hours across a few days amending our file after Jessica and I reviewed it multiple times. With all of this said, please know that, leading up to this application, I had already organized every photo that I had ever taken with Jessica over the last year and I had already accumulated all of the airline boarding passes. This took considerable time and I feel so grateful that I took the time to do this much earlier in the process. When considering how much time was spent retrieving all of the evidence along with matching it with correct dates, the total hours invested would easily reach 40.

After a couple drafts to edit misspellings, alter photo selections, and amend incorrect dates, our file was ready for submission. Our early preparation allowed me to build our entire evidence file in about one day and submit our form I-130 only ten days after our wedding date.

And so, our waiting game begins.

The last slide in our additional evidence submission