Form I-130 Petition for Alien Relative Submitted. Start the CR1 Clock!

November 12th, 2023

Photo taken immediately after submitting our I-130. Jessica and I were on FaceTime when we submitted.

We finally submitted our Form I-130 “Petition for Alien Relative” online to the USCIS the afternoon of November 11th (https://my.uscis.gov/). We filled out the form, uploaded our files, and paid the $535 fee. We then received an email notification that our form had been received on November 12th. As of November 12th, we are able to download a “Receipt Notice of I-130” via pdf from my USCIS portal.

The Form I-130 “Petition for Alien Relative” is the first step in the actual CR1 Spousal Visa application process. The first step in our personal process was getting married since that is an obvious requirement of the CR1 “Spouse” Visa. The form can be filed online or mailed and it is lengthy and thorough. To complete the filing, one must also pay the $535 fee. We elected to submit our form online.

We discovered two different theories when researching if it is better to file online or by mail: 1) “the digital application is delivered instantly and was developed and designed to streamline and quicken the process,” and, 2) “the agents who review the I-130 are accustomed to handwritten, paper applications because that is the way it has been reviewed for years. Mailed applications go smoother and easier.” We elected for option one. We are confident that there is plenty of evidence that proves our marriage bonafide. Once again, time is our priority.

Not to say that we were not thorough in our application. We are not sacrificing quality in our marriage green card journey. The form I-130 requires a lot of information that takes a lot of time to gather and organize. To submit the form I-130, one will need:

1) “Evidence of U.S. citizenship, lawful permanent residence, or U.S. national status.” This translates to a copy of my passport.

2) “Evidence of family relationship.” This is our marriage certificate.

3) “Additional evidence of a bona fide marriage.” This, we will go over in detail later.

4) “Proof of legal name change (if required).” The marriage certificate will also satisfy this.

5) “Two passport style photographs.” One of both the petitioner and beneficiary.

6) Form I-130A “Supplemental Information for Spouse Beneficiary.” This form was predominantly (if not exclusively from what I remember) filled out by Jessica and most of the information was previously asked on our form I-130.

(https://www.uscis.gov/sites/default/files/document/forms/i-130instr.pdf)

Creating a checklist was incredibly helpful and beneficial. Highly recommend.

Official Form I-130 “Petition for Alien Relative”

The form itself asks for basic and typical information such as all names used, birth dates, addresses of past residence, work history, parents information, etc (https://www.uscis.gov/sites/default/files/document/forms/i-130.pdf). It is not the most difficult information to acquire but it may require some research (I did not know the exact cities of birth for both of my parents, for example). The form itself can be tricky even for native English speakers. I can truly attest as Jessica fortunately corrected me at least a few times when filling it out. We both highly recommend checking out Kseniya International on YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/@KseniyaInternational) as she has incredible step-by-step tutorials on how to fill out this form and more both online and by mail. The wealth of knowledge and first hand experience Kseniya shares is a huge aid to anyone on this journey and she provides this information as an open and free resource.

@KseniyaInternational on YouTube

For us, the marriage certificate was simply a waiting game. We were pleasantly surprised when I received three copies of our official marriage certificate less than a week after our wedding day for a total of $51 ($17/ea). I specifically wanted three copies because we needed one for our form I-130, one for our K3 application which must be sent by mail (more on this later), and one for an apostille that Jessica requires for validation in Brazil. She will use this document, a copy of our official marriage certificate with an apostille, when she begins changing her legal name on her Brazilian documentation. This would leave me with one more official copy in my possession in case we had something unexpected come up and it was required at some later point in this process. At the time, I did not want to wait for the third copy in the mail so, in total, I spent $68 in marriage certificate fees. After including the filing fee for the I-130, as of now, the total spent on our green card journey is currently at $658.

The two passport photos were quite easy. There are step by step directions on the USCIS website. There was a link to a free US government “photo tool” in our online application portal where it simply accepted photos taken with our phones, cropped them, corrected the pixel size to the requirement, and exported the new cropped photo in a convenient jpeg format available for download.

An example of how I presented our “additional evidence” in our form I-130. Included is past airline boarding passes and picture with date confirming the location.

All of my time, energy, and focus went into the additional evidence part of the application. Unfortunately, there is not much information in regards to what additional evidence to include in our I-130 for our CR1 application, however, there is far more information that disclose the valued and proper additional evidence to include in an I-130 submission for a K1 Fiancé Visa application. A lot of what is suggested involves finances like adding names on leases and adding the beneficiary’s name to the petitioner’s bank account. These financially based changes are quite difficult when your spouse does not have a social security number, an ITIN (and applying for an ITIN during the application process is not advised according to our research), or even have permanent legal status in the same country. We decided to submit photos complete with short summaries for context, txt message correspondence history, social media posting/tagging history, flight itineraries, travel itineraries, receipts, and affidavit letters of support. We will cover this part of the I-130 in much more detail in our next post as this is not only the most time consuming but also arguably the most important part of this first step.

2023 has been an incredible year. I married the love of my life, have spent over 140 days abroad, and visited four new countries, but, my industry has also suffered the longest union strike in our industry’s history. I have been hemorrhaging money and I am not financially healthy at the moment. It is beginning to give me anxiety.

However, I try to focus on the positive of this time we have been on strike. The strike allowed me to spend roughly 25% of 2023 with Jessica across four different countries and it allowed our relationship to grow organically and at a natural pace. It gave us far more time together than I ever expected given our situation and it allowed me the time to pour myself into this marriage green card process and prepare. It allowed me to put so much time and effort immediately after our marriage that we were able to start our CR1 Spouse Visa/marriage green card application only 10 days after our wedding.

The worst financial year of my career immediately following the best financial year of my career and my marriage to Jessica has put a lot of things into perspective. My business suffered yet my personal life flourished. For the first time in my life, I think I can honestly say that I truly realize and believe that money doesn’t buy everything; it buys a lot of things, but money does not buy happiness or love.

2023 was truly a blessing in disguise.