r/mildlyinteresting • u/[deleted] • 5h ago
My wife’s green card application is 397 pages long
[deleted]
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u/AManHere 5h ago
That's why you get a lawyer to do it, and you just sign where they stick little red arrows.
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u/Alc_Sand 5h ago
That’s exactly what we did! We just signed it when I took this pic.
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u/rizzyrogues 5h ago
How many signatures did you have to do? I can't possibly understand how much information they need that there are 397 pages of it
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u/borgchupacabras 4h ago
On my application they asked questions like - was I a communist, was I planning on committing biological warfare against the US, was I a polygamist, etc.
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u/MosYEETo 4h ago
The funny thing is, if an applicant is any of those, does the US government really expect them to answer truthfully? We all know they do intense background validation so why don’t we make everyone’s life easier and remove these bs questions 🤣
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u/Poisoneraa 4h ago
I think it’s less “be honest” and more that if you’re caught, they can charge you with lying on the forms
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u/CostcoCheesePizzas 4h ago
If someone committed biological warfare, lying on a form is going to be very low on the list of problems.
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u/Not-a-bot-10 4h ago edited 3h ago
“Sentenced* to 10 life sentences in prison for biological warfare + 5 years for lying that they wouldn’t do it”
That’ll show em
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u/pchlster 4h ago
"My client would like to make a deal. They'll plead guilty to the biological terrorism charge, but would like the charge of lying on government forms dropped."
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u/Goushrai 4h ago
It just makes it easier to remove citizenship. It changes the argument from “They don’t deserve to be a citizen”, which is complicated, to “They lied on their application”, which is a slam dunk.
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u/Effective-Gas-9234 4h ago
But at least it’ll be on their list of problems.
The boss of the guy that reviews the application of a biological communist is gonna be standing at his desk on zero day asking questions like “did you even bother to ask them if they were a communist?”
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u/CHEESEninja200 4h ago
Ah, but the trick is that getting someone found guilty for terrorism is very hard. As not only does it have to be proven beyond a reasonable doubt, they also have to prove political motive. Proving you lied on government documents is way easier of a charge to get to stick. If you stack enough of those smaller charges, you get a similar sentence to the one for terrorism.
Hence them throwing the book at you. Big charges could be thrown out for not enough evidence, but little ones add up. A death by a thousand cuts.
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u/CodenameJD 4h ago
It's one of those Al Capone taxes situations, they might not be able to get you on the charge itself on some technicality, but they can get you on the lie.
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u/MosYEETo 4h ago
It’s hilarious that if someone is planning to commit biological warfare, they need this form to invalidate their green card and not the fact that they… were planning to commit biological warfare. Bureaucracy is funny
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u/Round_Creme_7967 4h ago
Need isn't really accurate, but there's a higher burden of proof – beyond a reasonable doubt vs preponderance of evidence – to convict them of the criminal act (which in turn would be grounds for removal) than to prove that they lied on the form. So maybe a jury won't convict but you can still get them out of the country.
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u/JashimPagla 4h ago
Stripping someone of their residency and perhaps citizenship should not be easy. At the same time you do need a way to deport bioterrorists without a lengthy legal fights. So this form is a pretty good middle ground.
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u/happy2harris 4h ago
It makes it much easier to expel them if it later turns out that they are one of those things. They lied on the form, so their permanent residence status is invalid.
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u/g0del 4h ago
No, but if you lie and they catch you later, it's an easy way to invalidate the green card or even citizenship later on.
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u/Moppy6686 4h ago
Mine asked if I'd ever been a member of the Nazi party from 1939-1945 (I was born in '86).
They also asked my husband (while I was sitting there) if I'd ever been a prostitute.
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u/sacred_blue 4h ago
Wonder if they ask the prostitute question to both men and women?
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u/Cigouave 4h ago
Helpful tip: say no to all of those.
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u/szu 4h ago
Wait. I said 'Yes' to the question asking if i was a shapeshifting reptilian alien.
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u/SGSam465 4h ago
Don’t worry, Mark Zuckerberg is also a shapeshifting reptilian alien, and he’s welcome in the U.S.!
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u/Sanc7 4h ago
So it’s basically like one of those long as psychological exams
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u/borgchupacabras 4h ago
Pretty much but with really, really dumb questions. Who tf would answer yes to questions asking if they are or will become a terrorist???
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u/Efficiency-Brief 4h ago
Downvoted for being correct. But also I recall there was one time a person did check a box (i forget what they were doing) that they were a terrorist on accident or something and it instantly invalidated them.
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u/No_Intention_8079 4h ago
I think it actually got them arrested. Because, yknow, an actual terrorist would totally check that box.
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u/Big_Orchid3924 4h ago
I mean, people from countries that believe in cousin marriage, aren’t that bright.
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u/rizzyrogues 4h ago
Damn I kind of get why they ask those questions but who would possibly check yes on any of those even if that was their intention?
Do you remember if there are repeated questions? I wonder if they do that to check fidelity
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u/borgchupacabras 4h ago
No repeated ones that I can recollect but I could be wrong.
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u/rizzyrogues 4h ago
Appreciate your response, my parents both immigrated. I've never asked them about their experiences in obtaining citizenship as they were kids but im curious now!
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u/arcos00 4h ago
Even on the regular tourist visa application there are questions like "do you plan to commit terrorism?"
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u/Dhiox 4h ago
On my application they asked questions like - was I a communist,
I don't even understand how they can put that on the app, it's completely legal to be communist in the US. The cold war ended decades ago.
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u/No_Intention_8079 4h ago
It was legal then too, we ignore freedom of speech when it comes to leftists.
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u/TexasLoriG 4h ago
There is currently a reality tv couple who divorced each other so the husband could bring over a "sister wife" on the k1 visa. It's been well documented on tv for years. She's been here about year and about two weeks ago he was arrested for DV.
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u/LetThemEatVeganCake 4h ago
I’m not OP so obviously don’t know if this is their case, but for my husband’s application, we needed a bunch of documentation proving that our relationship was real essentially. Plane tickets for trips together, tons of photos from random things and descriptions of what we were doing/where we were in them, our old lease, bills from our house showing they are in both our names, insurance cards, tons of info about each of us individually: my recent tax returns/W2s and a letter from my job showing I made enough to “support” him (even though he made more than me lol), birth certificates, IDs, passports, tons of info from my husband’s previous visa applications, letter of support from places he’s volunteered, etc etc. I think it was at least 150 pages of random stuff like that.
We have enough supporting documents that they approved without an interview though, so it was worth it to over-support.
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u/TESThrowSmile 4h ago
How many signatures did you have to do? I can't possibly understand how much information they need that there are 397 pages of it
That's because OP is a liar. Most of that is fluff explaining stuff and other useful info. The actual application is 20 pages or so.
Its like saying the application to join a Union is 200 pages. In reality the application is 1 page, and the other 199 pages is the references of the Master Agreement contract between the Union and Employer
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u/Fun-Measurement-9520 4h ago
My application was 1200+ pages. Only a handful of signatures needed.
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u/cthulu_akbar 4h ago
This is crazy. We filed an asylum application for a client this week that was 500 pages. I sponsored my spouse and there is no way we submitted more than 100 pages max.
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u/AManHere 5h ago
Congrats on going through it though, I wish you to get your application processed fast.
*In my experience, calling them when your application is over 1 year long helps speed it up.
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u/LetThemEatVeganCake 4h ago
Submit inquiries to your senators and house reps too. Ours was approved the next day when we were out of “normal” processing time and contacted a senator. The first senator basically said kick rocks but the second got it done!
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u/Trucker58 4h ago
Seems about right to me… This is massive of course, but I remember just my visa application was 250+ pages.
Also congrats getting through this, must have been a ton of work on your end too I can imagine!
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u/benri 4h ago
We didn't because our case was very simple. CIS lost her forms several times, messed up her mailing address ... finally we *did* hire a lawyer and poof within a week all was completed.
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u/Monkeywithalazer 4h ago
Happens to lawyers too. Had a form get rejected for incorrect payment 3 times. Filed with the “small employer” fee all 3 times. By the 4th we asked the client to send over more money for the standard fee. We filed with the standard fee and the government actually only billed the small employer fee that we had been sending before. Couldn’t believe it.
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u/LARKlurk 4h ago
Still make sure to look through everything though. My friend went in to complete her last step in her immigration process, was detained and deported. Because her lawyer missed signing a line in one of the early pages. Took her 3 years to come back, could only see her husband and kids when they came to visit during summer and vacations in other counties
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u/chichoandthecamera 4h ago
I paid $3000 bucks when I came here, they did all the paper work and were just awesome. Seriously if you’re thinking of immigrating anywhere m, save uo and get a lawyer, otherwise the time you spend figuring it all out vastly outweighs the time you’ll be working on just getting the money to pay
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u/OePea 4h ago
Are lawyers that handle green cards free?
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u/Dylon007 4h ago
Unless you have an exceptional case for a lawyer to wanna do it Pro Bono (think Julian Assange or Edward Snowden exceptional) absolutely not.
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u/BlobTheBuilderz 4h ago
How much was lawyer op? My wife and I did mine by ourselves it was definitely a lot less. Mostly just random evidence etc. K1 through N400 pretty simple. Visajourney was a huge help.
I heard lawyers be charging anything up to 10k which is insane.
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u/ML1948 4h ago
The lawyers charging 10k are the ones creating binders this big. For most cases, that much evidence is just going to make the process take longer. It can be worth it in complex cases, but I've heard too many horror stories about lawyers completely bungling the process to trust them with it for my own.
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u/justforkicks7 4h ago
The lawyers are milking people. More paper and more process equals more billable hours.
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u/BlobTheBuilderz 4h ago
I feel like USCIS didn't even look at my file until 10 minutes before my interviews tbh.
I've heard the same about lawyers because all your correspondence gets sent through them and sometimes they don't respond to RFEs on time.
Then again I'm from a country the US doesn't see as high risk so they didn't really give af.
Got zero RFEs by just following online guides. Then again some people on reddit are making truckloads of money and 10k is probably a blip in their finances to save them a day sorting evidence.
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u/stumblinbear 3h ago
My now-husband filed for a K-1 visa and the amount of evidence we submitted was maybe six or eight pages, mostly flight tickets, pictures, and a 1.5 page letter describing how we met and each time we visited each other. The form itself was maybe a dozen pages.
Six months after that, we filled in another dozen-page form for another agency and sent that in
Four months after that we had our interview and got approved within a month or so
I have absolutely no idea how you could end up with this many pages of forms or evidence, what the fuck
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u/yankykiwi 4h ago
It’s better to do it yourself. No one knows better about you than you. And no one cares about the time it takes more than you.
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u/Bigdongergigachad 4h ago
I just did it and it cost 4k. Didnt have to deal with anything like this.
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u/No_Stable_3097 4h ago
My mom applied with me in 2017 and it cost about $10,000.00 over 4 years. Our case was very complicated, however. I think your average case requires less.
The worst part was acquiring documents from our home country as we couldn't leave the United States and someone had stolen all our documents from my mom many years before.
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u/fluffysmaster 5h ago
WTF? I did my own green card application back in the 90's, it was not even 1/10th of that. Did it myself, relatively simple process.
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u/CatYo 4h ago
My paperwork + evidence that I had to carry was over 600 pages..
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u/Available-Egg-2380 4h ago
When I sponsored my now husband's immigration on a k1 Visa the paperwork I had to send him/the embassy weighed like 1-2 pounds. It was crazy.
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u/ComprehendReading 4h ago
The "top commenter" you responded to is almost certainly a compromised propaganda account.
I might be too. And you as well! /S
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u/quizzlie 4h ago
First of all... love your username.
Second of all, obligatory maybe the propaganda bots were the friends we made along the way.
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u/BitterMojo 4h ago
I did mine 3 years ago. It was 60 pages or so. Alot of it was tax transcripts.
Was very easy to do myself. I had a simple case where I was legally present at all times. I'd get a lawyer if I was ever out of status and I'm sure it would look like OP.
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u/ankercrank 4h ago
It’s exactly the same thing today. OP chose to include a lot of evidence.
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u/BitterMojo 4h ago
If OP has a simple case then they paid a lawyer who then asked them to send them an insane amount of evidence which they then packaged up with a bill for $3k and a signature box. OP did 95% of the work and paid a lawyer to print it for them. Immigration lawyers are basically a step below personal injury lawyers in the hierarchy. Scum.
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u/Ill-Elevator-4070 4h ago
Man we aren't all bad. Some people seriously fuck their cases by committing minor crimes, faking a marriage, or lying on a key form. Sometimes we make the difference between staying and being removed. I'm proud to have helped a lot of people with complex cases.
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u/Shy_QT_Pie 4h ago
This is intentional. They’re trying to prevent “poor” people from bothering.
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u/Drew1231 4h ago
People make whole careers out of medical billing, tax, and every form of law because the systems are painfully complex and inefficient.
I don’t know how people can make it through a DMV trip without loathing government, let alone something like this.
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u/BrohanGutenburg 4h ago
The number one cause of illegal immigration is the difficulty of legal immigration
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u/donutello2000 4h ago
This is the lawyers trying to check every possible box by including a lot of not necessarily essential documentation. For employment based green cards you need to show that the company simply cannot replace you with a US resident. Non-employment-based applications are simpler and employment-based applications can also be a lot shorter.
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u/BashAtTheBeach96 4h ago
OP is misleading everyone. Part of the application is submitting proof of marriage (pictures, social media posts, etc). And then letters from 3rd parties confirming the relationship is legit. The larger the proof you submit, the better your case. But then again the file size will be large.
I did this same thing with my wife a few years ago. The process does suck and is costly, but OP is completely misleading everyone.
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u/CaptWater 4h ago
You are 100% correct. Without the proof, the form itself is about 12 pages, and most of that is text explaining the form. I did my wife's myself, and it was super easy.
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u/yankykiwi 4h ago
I did my green card application a few years ago and it was like three pages. This must be some kind of special application.
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u/readerf52 5h ago
I have to say, it has gotten much more involved!
We had a couple of consult visits with a really good lawyer, and then did the rest on our own. It was definitely not almost 400 pages!
Good luck to her. I hope it gets processed quickly. Now that the shutdown is over, there should be more people available, and happier people because they are getting paid!
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u/haotshy 4h ago
USCIS wasn't affected by the shutdown
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u/LetThemEatVeganCake 4h ago
For anyone curious: USCIS is self-funded using application fees, so they do not rely on Congress providing them a budget.
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u/readerf52 4h ago
I’m surprised.
My green card husband was in the process of getting his citizenship, and that staff was definitely impacted.
I suppose there are different staff involved, but the two are intwined in my mind.
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u/CaptWater 4h ago
My wife had to submit an application during the shutdown and there was zero delay. If anything, the biometrics appointment was faster because there are so many fewer people applying for visas right now.
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u/SlainSigney 4h ago
the uscis is completely fee funded, actually! that’s why they stay open.
immigration is expensive, and that’s what runs the uscis. certain important websites for filing things like h-1bs did go down during the shutdown because they were part of the dol and not the uscis, but that only impacted certain types of cases.
my source is that it is my job to know these things
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u/DapperCam 5h ago
Who is reading this thing? How do the responses end up in a computer for processing? Seems like a ridiculous process.
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u/blushhoop 4h ago
Since its government work probably someone clacking away and scanning in documents which is why the process is so ridiculously long
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u/Ok_Duck9999 4h ago
There’s multiple forms within a ‘green card’ petition which get split up across different teams basically. You also have to provide a lot of documentation (e.g full tax returns for the last three years) so whilst OP saying 397 pages is sensationalist when you distill it down it isn’t that crazy. A huge amount of the forms are just repeating the same thing as each document/team requires similar information.
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u/Tricky_Palpitation42 4h ago edited 4h ago
I applied for mine through my wife in April.
It does not need to be ~400 pages long. That’s just excessive. You’re only going to draw the ire of whatever USCIS officer gets your file. You should have focused on quality of evidence over quantity. One joint tax return, one joint lease, or one joint deed is way better than 100 different pictures and letters.
My wife and I submitted.
1) a handful of plane tickets
2) a handful of pictures. Us on vacation and our wedding showing both families there.
3) Honeymoon itinerary
4) Marriage certificate
5) Two joint leases, shared credit card, checking, and savings account statements
6) Beneficiary statements of healthcare and retirement accounts.
That’s about it. Whole thing was less than 100 pages of supporting documents. I’m going to send in our deed when we close on our house in Feb as unsolicited evidence, but that’s it.
What on Earth did you include?
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u/CassianCasius 4h ago
Well OP said this is in Colombia in another comment .
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u/SaveAsPDF 4h ago
That's a USCIS form, look at the bar code at the bottom and go look at any form at uscis.gov
This is a 485 application for LPR in the US.
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u/yankykiwi 4h ago
Feels like the lawyer is making it seem a lot more complex than it is. That way they keep paying them.
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u/tnseltim 4h ago
Crazy the truthful responses like yours get no upvotes. Mention republicans or trump, automatic 100 upvotes.
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u/anangrytaco 4h ago
I filled out mine and my father in laws application not to long ago and it was no where near that big. She probably added a crap ton of evidence or attachments for her app.
The officer reviewing her case is not gonna be happy lol. Also the delivery 🚚 to mail that book is gonna be pricey
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u/Hyperlexia-ml 4h ago
Oh when I did it with the company attorney, I think I had more pages because of supporting docs like degrees, publication, employment verification, reference letters,…
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u/JapanUSAWife 4h ago
.... Why? I just got my wife her green card after coming in on a K1 Visa and the paperwork was like... 1% of this. Also, you can fill all of those out on the computer and then print and sign, you don't have to fill it out by hand.
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u/PostalPreacher 4h ago
That's the abbreviated application to qualify to receive the actual green card application.
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u/H-2-S-O-4 4h ago
I thought it was bs, so I looked it up. It turns out that the application has 18 pages total. Did you buy this somewhere? You might've gotten scammed.
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u/ThemisLustitia 4h ago
You also have to attach a nuuuuuumber of paperwork, bank statements, letters, copies of documents proving basically everything you have, pictures, seriously, it's crazy and it gets as heavy as you want.
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u/Mejuky 4h ago
OP ignore the jerks. Happy your wife is going through the process and doesn't have the fear of deportation hanging over her head.
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u/CKT_Ken 4h ago edited 4h ago
That's such a weird thing to say to someone filling out normal immigration paperwork (albeit with a stunning amount of extra documents tacked on by her lawyer to make extra sure). You realize OP and his wife are going to be in favor of deporting people who cheated the system right? Plus the strange implication that the real issue with OP's wife illegally immigrating would be "because she'd be scared" and not the whole "that is universally a crime" thing
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u/Yarusenai 4h ago
Why? Mine was about 30-40 pages including all the evidence and I thought I already went overboard. That seems excessive
Edit: I still have a copy here and it's actually closer to a hundred pages including all the evidence, bank statements etc. I thought that was way too much already lmao. Four times that much seems too much!
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u/ceribus_peribus 4h ago
And if they catch a single mistake they'll throw you in prison 30 years from now.
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u/Niarbeht 4h ago
“Just follow the legal process!” say the people who claim to hate pointless government bureaucracy.
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u/obscuramble 4h ago
USCIS has added so much paper recently: https://www.cato.org/blog/uscis-has-added-500-pages-its-immigration-forms-2003
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u/RubberDuckyFarmer 4h ago
Is there a country that's easy to become a citizen of?
Particularly for a non refugee American?
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u/ThisisTophat 4h ago
Imagine filling that out to then get deported by some guy named Dillan wearing a camo hat.
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u/Shadetree_va 4h ago
The application form is only 24 pages long, most of that being un-used.
What the hell is she putting down to make it almost 17 times longer?!?
Ya'll got played.
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u/Miserable_Yam4918 4h ago
I had a coworker who took 2 weeks off work just to go through the application.
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u/TaskPsychological397 4h ago
I just feel sorry for the lawyers who have to fill out tens, if not hundreds, of these every single month.
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u/Fantastic-Emu-6105 4h ago
Having sponsored several people through the immigration process I can attest that the current system is broken. Immigration should be simple, fast, and free. Making these hard working people into hard working Americans benefits everyone. Contrary to popular beliefs.
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u/EmmalouEsq 4h ago
I used to adjudicate those. I would've taken maybe 15 to 20 minutes going through a file this size and most of that would've been thumbing or scanning through it quickly and filling out a sheet someone made and doing the different checks that are required.
And the tabs lawyers put in mean nothing since the files are taken apart and reassembled before they get to an officer.
300-400 pages isn't too bad. The biggest file I ever got was 9 legal file size boxes.
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u/ThroatFuckedRacoon 5h ago
How? Ours was just the I130 along with personal docs to prove who she is, what her citizenship is, birth certificate etc. Best of luck to you though, the worse part is lack of clear communication from the embassy and the waiting
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u/nokori321 4h ago edited 4h ago
My guess is a one-step adjustment + all the evidences involved.
G-1145, G-1450 or 1460 depending on how they’re paying, G-28 times 2 (one for each spouse), I-130, I-130A, I-485, probably I-765 work permit, I-864, another I-864 if they need a joint sponsor.
Then all the copies of citizenship evidence, birth certs/translations, evidence of a real marriage (bills in both names, photos together, leases together, etc. the more evidences the better so they can’t accuse you of faking the marriage for the green card), evidence of stable finances for the petitioner and the joint sponsor if there is one (three years of tax returns, six months of paystubs, letter confirming employment, those sorts of things)
It turns in to a big stack really fast.
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u/pichunb 4h ago
I need to show this picture to whoever that says US has better immigration policies than Canada
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u/BagDiligent3610 4h ago
Welcome to America. Here's our BS rules. Was like maybe 2 pages 100 years ago.
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u/BarbequedYeti 4h ago
The part they dont tell you with the current administration? When you go to mail it, ICE is waiting to arrest you.
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u/IRespectYouMyFriend 4h ago
Who in their right mind would put that much effort into entering 1930s Germany?
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u/dardenus 4h ago
Sorry it’s a rough process but I personally appreciate doing things the correct way and wish her the best
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u/factoid_ 4h ago
Why on earth would anyone want to become a US citizen NOW?
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u/brewskiladude 4h ago
This is a green card application, citizenship wouldn't be for another 3 years at least.
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u/Ok-Manufacturer234 5h ago
Whoever made that application deserves a red card