Filing N-400

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Czech guy

Registered Users (C)
Hi guys, im preparing my N400 package based on a marriage to a US citizen after 3 years permanent residency and have a couple questions to ask.

1. Do I still need to include utility bills and joint credit cards and bank statements with my N400? I'm planning to submit just our tax transcripts along with w2s and 1099s.

2. Living close to the Canadian border I have crossed the border several times during past 3 years and there is no way that I would remember the exact dates. Sometime just for a few hours, sometime for a day or two. How accurate list of trips do they require? Is there a way of finding out the exact dates? Maybe by going to CBP and ask them for a copy of their record?

3. We had to file our 2011 taxes "Married filing separately". Is that going to cause any troubles?
 
Czech guy said:
Hi guys, im preparing my N400 package based on a marriage to a US citizen after 3 years permanent residency and have a couple questions to ask.

1. Do I still need to include utility bills and joint credit cards and bank statements with my N400? I'm planning to submit just our tax transcripts along with w2s and 1099s.

2. Living close to the Canadian border I have crossed the border several times during past 3 years and there is no way that I would remember the exact dates. Sometime just for a few hours, sometime for a day or two. How accurate list of trips do they require? Is there a way of finding out the exact dates? Maybe by going to CBP and ask them for a copy of their record?

3. We had to file our 2011 taxes "Married filing separately". Is that going to cause any troubles?
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1. First, you should do some homework: read the Guide to Naturalization, http://www.uscis.gov/files/article/M-476.pdf
particularly the Document Checklist section. For marriage-based N-400 applications it gives you three choices of things to submit, the easiest of which is an IRS tax transcript for you and your spouse for the last three years. So just do that, and bring all the other stuff (bank accounts, leases/mortgage statements etc) with you to the interview, in case the IO asks for it. Do not send more than is asked for with N-400.

For a marriage-based N-400 the marriage needs to be fully intact at the time of applying. Most likely the IO will have some questions about your marriage, but will not dig too deeply unless there is something obviously suspicious.

2. Trips under 24 hours do not have to be reported on N-400. Those over 24 hours do need to be reported. For a few of them approximate dates are OK, but if you have so many such trips that their total duration calls into question your satisfying the physical presence requirement, it is better to get the precise data from CBP, at least by the time of the interview.
You can file a FOIA/PA request with the CBP, see https://help.cbp.gov/app/answers/de...-of-my-travel-in-and-out-of-the-united-states for how to do that. I think it takes about 3 months or so.

3. That could be a problem and could be just the thing to raise the IO's suspicions about the status of your marriage. What exactly do you mean when you say that you "had to" file the 2011 taxes as 'married filing separately'?
As far as I know, the "married filing separately" tax status is the least advantageous filing status to use, and usually the reason to do it is when one spouse does not trust another or something of the sort. So you'd better have a good explanation for the IO as to why you "had to" do that.
 
Thanks Baikal. The reason for filing "married separately" is because my wife has some student loans that we were not been to pay and the agencies want to garnish my wife's wages and the amount they can take out of her paycheck dePends on her 2010 tax return. So we really needed to file out taxes in "married/separate" status even though it was not financialy beneficial for us at this time. It will make her payments lower, as oppose to if we filed married jointly, where also my income would be considered.
 
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