Applying for my wife's green card.

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costaricageorge

Registered Users (C)
Hello. I am a US Citizen who has been married to a Costa Rican for 12 years. We have a 7 yr old son who was born in CR but is a US citizen. We have lived together for the past 14 years in CR. 4 months ago I received a job offer in the states so we came up to give it a go. My wife came up on her b1/b2 visa because we really weren't sure if the job would work out or as a family we would enjoy and want to live in the US. We still own a home in CR so it is pretty clear we didn't abandon CR and come here with the clear intention of staying. Well after 3 months the job is going well, my son loves his new school and my wife is happy here. We spoke to a lawyer today who said my case is very simple and she would file for us for $2400 plus the immigration fees. One thing is I do need a co-sponsor which my sister has agreed to be because my job history is so short and I have kept up on filing taxes while overseas. My question is can I do this on my own and if not does $2400 lawyers fees plus the $1365 immigration fees fair? So far I am out the $80 consultation fee which is applied to the overall bill if she takes the case.
 
The USCIS website has instructions and forms in the family based immigration section. It should be straightforward. Baring anything like a criminal history when an attorney should assist with any filing, IMO, you should be able to do it yourself. Obviously, if you are having trouble with completing the forms (not likely), get legal assistance.

One option is do do all of the work of completing forms and collecting evidence yourself and have the package reviewed before submitting it to see if anything needs to be corrected or included. That should reduce the cost to just a couple of hours of attorney time.
 
A case simple as yours, getting a attorney for that is like throwing the money down the drain. All the required forms are very straight forward to fill and come with detailed instructions.
 
costaricageorge said:
Quick question. Having my sister co-sponsor. Is it 2 seperate forms or do we file one together.
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Why do you need a co-sponsor? You have a house in CR that can be used as an asset for the I-864 (unless you owe so much on it that your net equity is very small or negative), and you sound like you have a pretty good job. The income requirement for a household of 3 (other than Alaska or Hawaii) is just $22,888.

As far as the lawyer is concerned, you can do it yourself. If you want to get a lawyer involved, hire them just for a one-hour consultation to review the paperwork after you have filled out everything on your own, after which you can make the corrections and gather anything that is missing before you submit it yourself.
 
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