Processing Locations
The fiancé visa process is initiated with an application or a petition to USCIS which are mainly processed in California. USCIS always looks at their processing centers and reviews them. If there are too many cases being processed at one site or it’s really struggling and it appears like that might be long term where they feel like one is getting backlogged, they can always change that.
To say whether or not California is going to continue to process fiancé visas, we don’t know that because they do make those changes fairly regularly.
Joint Sponsors
After we get through that petition process and we get an approval from USCIS, then it moves to the NVC phase. That phase involves another application process that has a lot of different segments to it and two of those are looking at criminal convictions or police clearance records. It also looks at whether or not there is going to be support financially for that fiancé once they get to the US.
Can you have two joint sponsors?
The person who is engaged to marry that fiancé is the initial petitioner. That person is always going to have to fill out an Affidavit of Support. If they have no income or their income is very low, which happens quite frequently, those people a lot of times do need a joint sponsor.
If that joint sponsor does not quite make enough to support their family with the addition of that fiancé as well then yes, you can have an additional joint sponsor. There are forms and judge designations for that. They are going to have to satisfy all of those same requirements that you as the petitioner are going to have to satisfy. Domicile in the US, proof of citizenship, proof of employment, taxes, and all of those things are going to need to be satisfied by both joint sponsors if you choose to use both.
Minor Traffic Violations
Lastly, there was a question regarding traffic violations and whether or not that amounts to misdemeanors. Is that going to be an issue and as you may be aware, we
We have to supply police clearance records for every location that that person who is looking to come into the US has lived past the age of 16 or 18, depending on the country. If for some reason, those police clearance records are a result of a conviction of some sort, there is a likelihood of that causing an issue at a consular interview
There are nuances that vary with country. It really depends on how that foreign country has adjudicated or delineated that violation. If it is a misdemeanor charge, the likelihood of that causing an issue at a consular interview is slim.
But again, your consular officers have lots of discretion to take a look at that person as a whole and you’re looking at the totality of the circumstances to see whether or not there may be an issue criminally or security reasons on why that person wouldn’t want to come into the US. Usually, in the US, traffic violations are infractions and are not considered a conviction on your record.
Make sure you’re getting the correct police clearance because there are specifics to what place you can apply to get those police records. They are official documents and that’s all laid out for you so you want to make sure you’re getting the correct one and you want to see what it says.
If there is something on there, it would be a good idea to enlist the services of an attorney to look at that just to make sure there aren’t any issues at the interview or that you’re prepared for those issues or questions should they come up.
