Good afternoon, good evening, wherever you may be watching us from whatever time zone you're
in. Welcome, my name is Attorney Vanessa Ruiz and you're joining us for today's live immigration
attorney chat. For those of you who are new to our firm and our Facebook page, our firm is dedicated
exclusively to helping couples navigate the U.S immigration process. We do assist couples from
across the world, across the nation, everywhere. We have clients from all over and it's one of
our favorite parts of the job. We regularly host Facebook lives just like this one to provide you
with important information updates in the world of immigration for couples, things like that,
and just sometimes some fun topics. I think today's topic is going to be a little bit of
fun. For those of you who are joining us live, please feel free to leave us some comments,
feel free to let us know where you're watching from. If you have any questions and if we get
a chance to address it a little bit later, I definitely can and if not, that's okay. If you're
watching us recorded later on, we still welcome you and we're thankful for you taking the time
to watch and we ask that you definitely like and share this video and that way we can reach more
people across different platforms and definitely just put out some good information that hopefully
will help someone even if it's something that you might not have any questions about right now,
it may come along later on or somebody else that you know might be having this question.
Definitely let us know and feel free to leave us some comments. If we don't get a chance to
address it today, that's okay. We'll try and address it in later videos or we can definitely
set up a consultation with us, things like that with our office. Let's get into it. I'm having
a little bit of fun with today's title, USCIS They Know What You Did Last Summer.
It's a little bit of a joke but I don't know if you have ever seen the I think it was like
a 95-97 movie, I Know What You Did Last Summer. It was about a bunch of teenagers who were being
stalked by somebody who knew a secret about them so it's just kind of a little bit of a play but
essentially what we're going to be talking about is what information does USCIS know about you?
Anytime somebody applies for some kind of benefit with immigration, with USCIS specifically,
you're giving them loads of information. You're giving them everything that they need to know
about you. Your immigration history, your employment history, your previous addresses,
your family history, your name, your social, your number. Everything they have everything on you but
a lot of people forget that they can go beyond that. They can go beyond the black and white.
They can go beyond what's on those applications. A lot of times people think it's very clinical.
Whenever you go to a doctor's office, you fill out an intake form, you give it to them, and you think
that they have the information that I'm giving them. Later on doctors can do different kinds
of tests, finds out things that might be going on, but that initial information that they get
from you is pretty much all that they have to make you know some assumptions, to make their diagnosis
based off of what you're telling them. USCIS is a little bit different in that they actually
are part of the US government and I think that's sometimes something that some clients also gloss
over or potential applicants don't really think about it. They don't sit down and think this is an
actual U.S government entity that I am presenting myself in front of essentially and they have loads
of information about me. They can know a lot of different things that you just don't think about
on a day-to-day basis and sometimes we find out about those things when we're sitting in an actual
interview talking to an officer or we receive a request for evidence or a notice of intent to deny
a case and sometimes when we read those, we're shocked by the amount of leg work that they have
actually put into getting to know this person. There are actual investigators. There are people
who will go out into the field to learn more about the things that you're telling them. One of
them recently, that I talked to an officer at an interview that I attended, he was letting me know
that there's a government database where they can look up cars, their license plates,
and they can actually see where these cars have been parked. Whenever you're talking about
couples specifically and it's a marriage-based petition or an application that's pending,
they want to make sure that this couple is married in good faith. They want to make sure that their
lives are actually united, that they have things together, and so we do present this packet of
information with a lot of evidence. We try and make it as clear as possible to them but of course
they're not going to take you at your word all the time. They need to do their own investigation so
this officer was telling me how they actually can look at these cars, they look at these houses that
people are saying, this is where I live. They look to see if it's actually a house, if it's actually
an apartment, or is it a business. If it's a business or if it's not really related to anything
other than a mailbox, they're going to have some questions. They look to see whose cars are parked
out there. They make sure that the applicant and the petitioner if they say that they live together
and they park outside that both of those cars are parked outside at different periods of the day.
Sometimes when we've gotten some requests for evidence or notices of intent to deny,
they actually are very detailed and very specific about certain things. They actually say we sent
an officer to your apartment complex to talk to your landlord. We talk to your apartment complex
manager, we talk to your neighbors, they said that they've actually never heard of this person.
We actually visited someone's house that you guys said
was your sister. We visited your workplace and they've never heard of things like that.
When you stop and think about it, this is the US government. You're dealing with an
entire country's government. It can be scary the amount of information that they know about you.
We always warn people not to post things on Facebook that can be seen as offensive,
that is anti-government, that has any kind of involvement with drugs, weapons, illegal
substances, things like that and it's not just because it looks bad in general but because even
if you think you have the most private of settings on Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, YouTube, any of
those social media sites, even Snapchat, Twitter, we don't know the reach that the US government has
and they can definitely find ways to look at your information. We're always telling our clients,
please be careful with the information that you're putting out into the world. The things that you're
tagged in, the things that you're posting, the things that you're reposting. You're putting
that out there not just for what you think is your limited following to see but it's there for if the
officers or the government wanted to look at that stuff, they definitely can. It's not even just
social media. It's them diving deep into people's lives to make sure that the information that
you're giving is accurate. We always strive to tell people give the most information as possible.
Be honest, be upfront about certain things, and that is really why you do need an immigration
attorney to help you with these kinds of processes because we know things, we talk to people, we see
it daily in our practice that somebody who did one application once, your friend, your cousin,
whoever might be, they might not know the little intricacies. We especially here in Immigration for
Couples, we take a holistic view. We're going to look at everything about your case, we're going
to look at about everything about your history and that way we can be sure to actually guide you and
give you advice on what to say, what to put out there. Definitely you have to protect your image,
you have to protect all that but also know that there are things that the government can find out
even if it's something that you didn't think about, something you didn't know. At the end of
the day, it's the reason why we always recommend having an actual immigration attorney just to be
safe and just to know that you're taken care of because it's it's your lives and at the
end of the day, you want to make sure that you're going to get the most favorable result possible.
We have Alex here who is saying, "Saludos, feliz viernes" which means "greetings, happy Friday"
Alex, thank you for watching. We have a couple of things just every week to talk about with
you guys, we change the topic. We try and keep it fresh, if there's any kind of update, if there's
any kind of information that needs to be put out sometimes. We kind of have a little bit more of a
fun topic like today and we ask that you guys like and share this video and also if you ever have any
questions you can definitely visit our website immigrationforcouples.com. We have some free
resources there but also it'll give you the actual links to set up a consultation with us. Nothing is
ever going to beat having a consultation with an actual attorney and so if you are engaged, you're
about to be married, you are already married and you're looking to start an immigration process,
we would love to get to know you, we'd love to see if that's something that we can help you with and
so again just letting us be a part of your lives and letting us guide you and help you throughout
this process, that's what we love to do as well so thank you for joining us and we will see you
at our next scheduled live weekly attorney chat on Monday. You guys have a great weekend and be safe!