AOS vs. CP -- Spouse vs. Parents

Questions about I-130 for parents: Johnny Cash, jenimmi or anyone else pls help

Sorry for double posting this. But I have a couple of questions regarding sponsoring GC (thru CP route) for my parents after I get my citizenship:

1) When we checked on the birth certificate for my mother, the registrar office found that her birth was registered on a different date (that is different from all the other documents). We were actually thinking that the birth was not registered and were planning on getting the affidavits. But since the birth is already registered, we would not be able to get a non-availability certificate. Any idea how we can handle this?

2) Looks like we need our parents' marriage certificate as a supporting document for my father's 130. My parents are sure that the marriage is not registered. Would an affidavit work in this case also?

Thanks in advance for any of your inputs.

-Rajesh
 
Got the info from I-130 instructions

Thanks Johnny Cash for your reply.

From the instructions to fill the I-130 from USCIS.GOV website, it states the following:

------------------------From I-130 instructions---------------

7. What Documents Do You Need to Prove a Family Relationship?

...

F. A mother: Submit a copy of your birth certificate showing
your name and your mother's name.

G. A father: Submit a copy of your birth certificate showing
the names of both parents. Also give a copy of your
parents' marriage certificate establishing that your father
was married to your mother before you were born, and
copies of documents showing that any prior
marriages of either your father or mothers were legally
terminated. If you and your brother or sister are related
through adoption or through a stepparent, or if you have
a common father and either of you were not legitimated
before your 18th birthday, see also H and I below.

------------------------From I-130 instructions---------------

Pls correct me if I am wrong, but from the above it seems that I have to submit my parents' marriage certificate for my father's 130, even though I am sponsoring his GC.

Now the question about my mother's birth certificate as the registered date is not the same as other documents: Should I get the birth certificate (with the different date) and get affidavits or are we better off just getting the affidavits without the birth certificate?

Again, I really appreciate all your time and energy in answering my questions.

-Rajesh
 
Yes. You are right that you need to submit a marriage certificate of your parents' marriage. INS now needs a marriage certificate which they never required 6 yrs ago, It is needed just to find the legitimacy of the relationship between a child (you) and the father as US immigration laws don't recognize an illegitimate relationship between a father and the child.


About your mother, then it would be BEST if she can obtain a BIRTH CERTIFICATE. The date of registration means nothing. Registration date only says about when a birth was registered, and it has nothing to do with the date of birth of the person. Thus, don't be too fuzzy with all this confusion. If somehow your mother is unable to get a birth certificate then there is no other option except just to submit an affidavit. But you should try your best to obtain a birth certificate for her.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
JohnnyCash said:
About your mother, then it would be BEST if she can obtain a BIRTH CERTIFICATE. The date of registration means nothing. Registration date only says about when a birth was registered, and it has nothing to do with the date of birth of the person. Thus, don't be too fuzzy with all this confusion. If somehow your mother is unable to get a birth certificate then there is no other option except just to submit an affidavit. But you should try your best to obtain a birth certificate for her.
Johnny,
rajeshsivan wrote:
"When we checked on the birth certificate for my mother, the registrar office found that her birth was registered on a different date (that is different from all the other documents). We were actually thinking that the birth was not registered and were planning on getting the affidavits."
Why would the registration date be on the other documents? I am under the impression that he is talking about his mother's date of birth rather than the registration date of her birth.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
It is the date of birth that is not correct

Thanks JohnnyCash and Anahit for your responses.

Anahit is right. It is the date of the birth that is not correct and not the date of registration. Would getting such a birth certificate cause any problem with USCIS? Or would it be a good idea to get affidavits instead? The problem with affidavit is that we would not be able to provide any non-availability certificate.

-Rajesh
 
Since Rajesh did not clearly mention what specific INFORMATION is contained on his mother's birth certificate which is DIFFERENT than on other documents, then it is very hard to speculate something else. However, when I replied to him earlier, I was under the impression that he is talking about the registeration date, and not the date of her mother's birth, unless he has used a wrong terminology here to convey his point across. Registeration date is not same as the date of birth.

Nevertheless, if THE INFORMATION IN QUESTION is about a registeration date when her mother's birth was registered with local registrar then that date means nothing. But if he is referring a registeration date as to his mother's birth date then such date MUST need to be corrected with local registrar. It is not that hard to correct such information. Registrar office might require a court order to do so. Submitting an affidavit to INS in lieu of a birth certificate just because her mother's birth certificate contains incorected information is not a good idea and it also shows that Rajesh is just looking an easy way to circumvent thing around so that his mother could get green card without any problem. The best thing to do is-try to correct the incorrect information on the birth certificate.

Also, it seems to me that Rajesh or his family MIGHT have submitted/mentioned a different date of birth about her mother to INS (most probably; otherwise why they are afraid to present her mother's birth certificate) other than what actual information is, which is now conflicting with the information on the record with local registrar. Anyway, they need to correct the wrong information first unless they want to submit an affidavit, which they can do that but INS MIGHT require Non Availiabily of Birth Certificate issued by local registrar then.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
JohnnyCash said:
But if he is referring a registeration date as to his mother's birth date then such date MUST need to be corrected with local registrar. It is not that hard to correct such information. Registrar office might require a court order to do so. Submitting an affidavit to INS in lieu of a birth certificate just because her mother's birth certificate contains incorected information is not a good idea and it also shows that Rajuest is looking a way to circumvent thing around so that his mother could get green card without any problem. The best thing to do is-try to correct the incorrect information on the birth certificate.

Also, it seems to me that Rajesh or his family MIGHT have submitted/mentioned a different date of birth about her mother to INS (most probably; otherwise why they are afraid to present her mother's birth certificate) other than what actual information is, which is now conflicting with the information on the record with local registrar. Anyway, they need to correct the wrong information first unless they want to submit an affidavit, which they can do that but INS MIGHT require Non Availiabily of Birth Certificate issued by local registrar then.

RajeshSivan -

Try what JohnnyCash has mentioned above to get the registrar to change the date on the birth certificate, by getting the Court order. My Dad is trying to do the same thing for his Birth certificate in Chennai. I am telling you his experience. See if it helps.

What happened in my Dad's case is the exact same thing as your Mom's. First he checked with the Municipality in Chennai to see if his birth was registered. They asked him "for which year" and he gave his Birth year as xxxx (which is his Date of birth in all his school/ College certificates and also his passport). They said no such birth was registered in his name and his year of birth. So, he got a Non-availability certificate from them. Also his parents are not alive so he could NOT find out exactly when he was born.

One of his uncle or some one told him to check with the Municipality for a different year "yyyy". My parents who are already aged, before the INS thing, never bothered to find out when or where they were born. So, this time he checked with the the Municipality for the "yyyy" year and guess what? - His birth was registered with the Municipality with the "yyyy" year. But all the documents including his passport has the "xxxx" year. He still thinks that when it was registered with the Municipality, they made a mistake and put the wrong year "yyyy". The bottom line is we don't even have any one to check when his actual date of birth is. So, he spoke to a lawyer or someone and they advised him to get a Court order showing all the other docs, that his birth certificate should be changed by the Municipality to show the date of birth as "xxxx" as it is in all the docs.

You may want to do the same thing for your mother. It might work.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Sorry for the confusion

Thanks JohnnyCash for a quick response.

Apologize for any confusion from my earlier posts. Let me elaborate the situation a little bit so that it is clearer. My mother's school documents, passport, employment documents etc show that the date of birth is Aug 1. My mother (and all of us) have been thinking all along that Aug 1 is the actual date of birth. We also thought that her birth is not registered with the local authorities. So we got a big shock when my parents went to get the non-availability certificate and found out her birth was infact registered with a different date of birth (July 22). It even had my maternal grandfather's signature. So as per the local authorities, that is the correct date of birth and they are asking us to change the other documents (such as passport etc) to the new date of birth.

We are not afraid of presenting this birth certificate to USCIS but it would contradict the date of birth in the passport (Aug 1) and also with the earlier visitor visas. From JohnnyCash's response, it seems correcting the information at the registrar's office is the way to go. Anyone who has done this before, pls let me know your experiences.

Thanks,

-Rajesh
 
rajeshsivan said:
(2) Looks like we need our parents' marriage certificate as a supporting document for my father's 130. My parents are sure that the marriage is not registered. Would an affidavit work in this case also?

-Rajesh

OMG.. I can't believe there are so many similarities in our parents' cases. My parents marriage was also not registered. So, they are getting affidavits of their marriage - one from my Mother's side and one from my Father's side as per the link below. Even if one of your grandparents are alive, both Paternal and Maternal, then get the affidavits from your grand parents. In my case, they are not - so, we are trying to get the affidavit from relatives such as Uncle / Aunt of my Parents.

Check the section under "Marriage Certificate"
http://travel.state.gov/visa/reciprocity/Country Folder/I/India.htm
 
jenimmi said:
OMG.. I can't believe there are so many similarities in our parents' cases. My parents marriage was also not registered. So, they are getting affidavits of their marriage - one from my Mother's side and one from my Father's side as per the link below. Even if one of your grandparents are alive, both Paternal and Maternal, then get the affidavits from your grand parents. In my case, they are not - so, we are trying to get the affidavit from relatives such as Uncle / Aunt of my Parents.

Thanks jenimmi very much for sharing your experience and thanks for the link to the info on marriage certificates.

It is indeed very heartening to hear from others who are going through the same thing that you are going through. I will ask my parents to get the date of birth corrected in the registrar's office, which seems to be the best way to proceed at this point. Can you pls let me know the approx. timeframe for getting this done in your dad's case?

My grandparents are not alive also and so we will be getting affidavits from my relatives who would have attended their wedding. Were you able to get the non-availability certificate for your parents' marriage easily?

-Rajesh
 
Rajesh,

You may ask to your parents to have them registered their marriage with the local registrar as well than thinking about submitting an affidavit for this one too. It's always better to have legal documents than affidavits, not only for immigration purpose, but also for any other purpose. You don’t know when you might need those legal documents. And, registering a marriage/birth is not that hard as I said earlier.

In India, your parents or someone can file a petition with a court for the required relief. After receiving a petition from them, Judge will issue an order to local police to verify all the information that contained in the petition. Once Police would verify that information, Judge will issue an Order for municipal registrar to make necessary changes or issue certain documents as per the relief asked in the petition. Since you cannot achieve anything in India without offering bribe to govt. officials then your parents might think to offer bribe to many people along the process; otherwise they might be waiting for so many months or even year to get the required document.

Those people could be-Judge's clerk who is responsible for giving the case to judge for judge's signature; otherwise clerk might not give your parents' case to judge for many months in the name of having heavy workload. The Police officer who will come to your parents' house to verify the information who might report negatively in the absence of getting any money from your parents, which will result a denial of your parents’ petition. In India, almost every Police person expects to receive money for even a little job. The clerk in registrar office will also need the money to do his job who will issue the marriage or birth certificate right away if money is floated around to him than delaying it for many months for different reasons. I'm telling you all this based upon my personal experience in India when I was trying to gather all these documents for some people in New Delhi.

Further, there is no any rule on who can furnish an affidavit to attest your parents' birth certificate, but US govt. always prefer it from parents or grandparents of beneficiary. If parents or grandparents are not alive then govt. prefer it from either from uncle/aunty/or someone very close. Of course, the person who would attest the affidavit MUST have to be at least 15 yrs older than the beneficiary to attest the fact of beneficiary's birth.
 
JohnnyCash said:
Since you cannot achieve anything in India without offering bribe to govt. officials then your parents might think to offer bribe to many people along the process; otherwise they might be waiting for so many months or even year to get the required document.

Absolutely :D
Well said JC.. I see that you speak from your experience. Just to get 2 Non-Availability certificates legally - in a couple of days, my father had to spend a lot. I was upset when I heard this, I didn't even bother to find out exactly how much he spent.

JohnnyCash said:
Of course, the person who would attest the affidavit MUST have to be at least 15 yrs older than the beneficiary to attest the fact of beneficiary's birth.

I thought the person attesting the affidavits should be at least 10 years older than the beneficiary, when they are attesting Birth Certificate. That is what, I read some where in this forum. Will you be able to tell us if USCIS says on its website or some where about this 15 years thing?
Thank you.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
jenimmi said:
Will you be able to tell us if USCIS says on its website or some where about this 15 years thing?

USCIS doesn't say anything on it, so obviously there is nothing about it on any website; rather it is a common sense. Attesting a fact about a birth from a person who is 10-15 yrs older than the person whose birth is being attesting is a logical point because more older this person would be, more his/her testimony would look credible; otherwise INS knows well a young person who is younger than 10-15 yrs could not possibly remember the exact date of birth of someone.
 
rajeshsivan said:
Thanks jenimmi very much for sharing your experience and thanks for the link to the info on marriage certificates.

It is indeed very heartening to hear from others who are going through the same thing that you are going through. I will ask my parents to get the date of birth corrected in the registrar's office, which seems to be the best way to proceed at this point. Can you pls let me know the approx. timeframe for getting this done in your dad's case?

My grandparents are not alive also and so we will be getting affidavits from my relatives who would have attended their wedding. Were you able to get the non-availability certificate for your parents' marriage easily?

-Rajesh

My Dad still did not get the Court Order. B'cos there is no hurry now. His process is going to be CP, just like your Parents. For filing I-130, you don't need Birth Certificate of Parents, only your BC is needed with their names on it. Parents birth certificates / Non-Availability will be needed somewhere in the middle of the process - may be when Packet 3 (or whatever that is called) is sent to them by the Consulate. I'm not sure exactly at what part of the process it is required, but definitely NOT at the time of filing I-130. I'm still trying to find out what are the steps involved in CP. But, they would definitely need to take the originals with them to the Consulate at the time of interview.

So, I told my Dad to take his own time to get the Court order. My Dad also told me that before applying for the Court order, there is a formality where some thing about the birth needs to be advertised in a local newspaper. The copy of the newspaper with the advertisement should be submitted when petitioning for the Court order. He consulted an attorney locally to find out the formalities. He was told that this might take anywhere from 2 weeks to 1 month.

Like JC mentioned, it might be better for your parents to register their marriage now. At least they should try it first. They may be able to get it showing their wedding invitation which shows the date and place of marriage. In addition to that, because it was registered late, you may want to support the MC with affidavits from your parents' close relatives who are older than them.

My Dad tried to get the Marriage Certificate, and he was even ready to pay a lot for it, but he was told that it cannot be done, unless his wife was present to sign it. But since my Mom is currently in the US and I'm starting the I-485 process for her, that was not possible. So, he is going with the affidavits for proof of Marriage. As far as I know, there is no Non-Availability certificate issued for Marriage. I'll check with my Dad again, on this.

If you find any link or info explaining the step-by-step process in CP, please do post it here.
 
JohnnyCash & jenimmi,

Thank you very much for the great help from you both regarding my parents' I-130. I will ask my parents to get their marriage registered and will definitely post here any new developments in their cases.

-Rajesh
 
Is interview rejection possible?

Hi everyone,

I also have a couple of questions regarding sponsoring GC (thru CP route) for my parents after I get my citizenship. I'll be really appreciated if someone can shed any light on them.

1. My parents have been rejected multiple times when applying for visitor's visa. The reason given by visa office is immigration intension. Aftern I get my citizenship, I feel it may be more difficult for them to get visitor's visa. Seems like the only option is to apply GC for them. However I'm concerned about rejection even for the immigration visa interview. Suppose everything goes okay such as parent-child relationship verification, financial support, background check and so on, what's the chance for them to pass the interview at consulate? I heard from someone that if they still have other children in their home country, they will be rejected immigration visa, which is exactly my case as I have a sister (over 25-year-old) in my home country (China). Could this be true?

2. I heard about DCF from this forum. Anyone know whether there is such practice at China-GuZhou consulate?

3. Suppose I go ahead with the GC application, can I use the fillable forms downloaded from web? I found a lot of good forms for consulate processing at immihelp.com. I'm wondering whether I can use them instead of the forms sent by NVC.

Thanks a lot in advance!
 
Top