Follow to join benifit for sopuse

[banerjeej]

I have a green card (GC) through EB1 (employment based first preference) category.  

I applied for an AOS (I-485) in Sept. 2013, and my GC was granted in Dec. 2013.  

In May 2013, I got married in India.  However, due to a short time frame, we could not register our marriage in that time.  So I did not have a marriage certificate during the time I filed my AOS I-485.  Because of this, I also could not mention my wife’s name in my I-140 and AOS I-485.

Later, we registered our marriage and obtained a legal marriage certificate in India.  Importantly, the marriage date on the certificate shows the original wedding date in May 2013.  Note that my Green Card was granted in Dec. 2013.   

My wife is currently in India.  

So, is my wife eligible for a follow-to-join benefit (i 824), as I got married before I got my GC, even though my wife's name was not mentioned in my AOS I-485?

 

[JoeF]

Yes, you can do a follow-to-join.

[banerjeej]

Thanks very much!!!

A quick question: Do I need to clarify this issue when I file i-824, by writing a cover letter to the USCIS?

 

Thanks again.

[JoeF]

Cover letters are irrelevant. Nobody reads them.

It should be written prominently on the application itself.

[banerjeej]

Okay.

As I have just started the process, I notice that, since I did not have the marriage certificate then, I mentioned myself as single on the AOF I-485.  IF I had mentioned myself as married, USCIS would ask for a marriage certificate which I did not have then.  That's why I mentioned myself as single .

 

So will this create any problem for my wife for the follow-to-join process? 

 

Again, as I mentioned before, we obtained the legal marriage certificate on which the marriage date shows our original wedding date in May 2013 which is  before my Green Card was granted (in Dec. 2013.) 
 

[Belle]

Well, you should not have marked yourself as single. It's like claiming you don't have a child if you have not received a birth certificate (i.e. makes no logical sense) or like my mother who once (long time ago) told me I could file for single mother benefits in my home country because I got married in Vegas and you know those Vegas marriages... LOL!

 

So... you can either just not bring up attention to the fact that you marked "single" on your application or you can talk to a lawyer and try to file an amendment to the approved I-485 petition - note that the later will lengthen your follow to join timeline considerably. Since it is not unusual to have a follow to join case when marriage occurs after the filing date but before the approval date, I would say, it is unlikely that the USCIS will have a problem with your application being filed as single, especially, since your marital status does not impact your eligibility (in cases when it does, the USCIS will dig this up for sure). Your best defense is probably "oh, shoot, I screwed up, and I forgot about it".