Why won't USCIS accept my original documents? Hi, I'm Jim Hacking, immigration lawyer practicing law throughout the United States at our office here in St. Louis, Missouri. Just had a nice call with a man named Josh, and Josh has been trying to bring his wife over here from Europe. And he was married once before, and he was married once before in Germany, and he got divorced in Germany. And on his new case, he has submitted the divorce decree twice now, and he's wondering why won't USCIS accept this divorce decree. And one thing that people really miss out on is the visa reciprocity table.
The State Department and USCIS have gone through country by country and identified exactly what documents that they want from those jurisdictions. They give a description of the name of the document, what it looks like, where the seal is, where it's available, who the issuing authority is for each and every kind of document. Birth decrees, marriage certificates, divorce decrees, death certificates, all these things you can look up visa reciprocity table.
All you have to do is let's say you want to get a document from Germany. You want to know what the divorce decrees look like. You type in visa reciprocity table of Germany, and then you scroll down and look for divorce decrees, and they tell you exactly what it was that you need. Now, interestingly this man I was talking to had an attorney and this attorney had mailed in that a document that he had twice now, and USCIS had rejected it twice. I suspect that they haven't been sending the right document. Now, this potential client was really smart. He hired an attorney in Germany to go after the documents that he needs, so hopefully he'll be able to get that and get his case back on track. But the moral of the story is that people forget about that these reciprocity table. They don't know all the work that the State Department has done to identify exactly what documents are available.
And especially now, if you don't get them the documents that they want, your case is going to be delayed and/or denied. Now, he's lost months and months fooling around with this. Hopefully now that he knows about the visa reciprocity table, he can get the documents that he needs and get his case moving. If you have questions about this, about proving up your case or getting the right documents for your case, give us a call at 314-961-8200. You can email us at [email protected]. Be sure to join us in our Facebook group, which is called Immigrant Home. And you know we're going live Tuesdays and Thursdays at noon central in Immigrant Home and on YouTube, answering immigration questions of the day. And finally, make sure you find us on Instagram at Hacking Immigration Law, LLC. Thanks a lot. Have a great day.
