Jim Hacking: For today's video. Bob in Boston wants to know, how do I file the strongest I-751 case as possible? Hi, I'm Jim Hacking, immigration lawyer practicing law throughout the United States out of our office here in St. Louis, Missouri. Bob in Boston, this video is for you and it's also for anyone else who wants to get their loved one a 10 year Green Card. So, of course, when you file an application for a Green Card, if you've been married less than two years, your loved one's only going to get a two year temporary Green Card. This is one of the ways that they cut down on marital immigration fraud. And so what you need to do is file an I-751 at the end of those two years. So there's a little three month window between the one year and nine months and the two years on the Green Card you have to file this form called an I-751.
And the couple of files it jointly, the U.S. citizen signs the form, the foreign national signs the form, and you want to submit as much evidence as possible. So you're going to want to submit evidence of the marriage that it's still continuing, the lease or property that you've bought together. You want to get all the same kind of marital evidence that you filed before. You don't need as much as you filed before, but you're going to need to demonstrate that you're spending time together, that you're commingling your money. Obviously, if you've had children, that's the best evidence of all so you want to include those birth certificates. You want to show demonstrations of trips, of money that you spend together, cars, anything like that, any kind of evidence that you can show that it's a real marriage, that it's a real life together, and that you're sharing that life together.
You can show text messages, you can show emails, you can show any kind of communication between the couple, photos with family members, photos without family members, photos of trips. All these things are the kinds of evidence that you're going to want to overwhelm them with. You want to submit as much as you can. You don't want to be sending in a very thin I-751 packet because the goal is to try to avoid an interview, and even in these days of extra interviews you can avoid an I-751 if you file a strong enough case. So we have a free download you can get from me if you send us an email at [email protected]. We can send you our evidence of marriage checklist. We should probably just go ahead and make that available on our website, but for now, we'd be happy to send it to you.
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