Will USCIS revisit the issue of the affidavit support at the green card interview? Hi, I'm Jim Hacking, immigration lawyer practicing law throughout the United States at our offices in St. Louis, San Diego and Washington, D.C. So whenever you sponsor a family member for a green card for lawful permanent resident status in the United States, you have to demonstrate that you make enough money to support them so that they won't become a public charge. They want to make sure that you have enough financial wherewithal to financially support the person who will be receiving the green card. And you do that by signing a form called an I-864, which is an affidavit of support.
The affidavit of support is a complicated form. I was saying on the show the other day how happy I am that I own my own law firm, because I don't have to fill out the anymore. We have people in our office, they spent a lot of time really getting good at filing that I-864. And the question is when this is submitted to USCIS, do they adjudicate that at the service center or do they adjudicate that at the interview? And in my experience, USCIS gets satisfied or not with the affidavit of support prior to the interview being scheduled.
In other words, all that work is taken care of at the service center. The issue of the affidavit of support does come up from time to time at the actual green card interview, but that is very, very rare. When you go to your interview you need to make sure that you bring updated proof of employment, updated taxes if you've changed over calendar years, and you have a new tax return since when you first started. But it's very unusual for USCIS for the frontline officers to ask at a green card interview for your affidavit of support to be updated or supplemented.
They might send out a request for tax returns if you didn't submit them as marital evidence, but for the most part, USCIS only schedules the interview. Once they're satisfied that the affidavit of support has been properly completed and that the petitioner, the person sponsoring the foreign national for a green card makes enough money or the co-sponsor makes enough money to properly file and have 485 approved. So this means that if you're going to have an issue, if you're going to have a problem usually it's going to come in the form of a request for evidence, and that's going to be sent from the service center. It's going to slow down your case and keep you from getting your interview date.
But it's very unusual that you have the issue of the eligibility of the petitioner of the US citizen or green card holder sponsoring their spouse or loved one. It's very rare that that comes up at the actual green card interview. Usually it's just follow information. They might ask who is the co-sponsor. They might ask how do you know the co-sponsor. They might ask for some supplemental financial records, but that's pretty rare. I would say it happens in less than 5% of the cases. So hopefully this makes sense. Hopefully this helps you out. Hopefully it helps you understand where and how your I-864 affidavit of support is going to be adjudicated.
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