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- Bonita asks, I'm curious about being a sponsor.
How long do I need to be at my job for proof of income,
and how do I use my home to sponsor my spouse?
Okay, so we get a lot of questions about sponsors,
being a sponsor.
You don't really say if you're the,
if you're petitioning somebody,
or you're going to be a joint sponsor for somebody else.
But the rules are similar.
So what a sponsor is,
just to say for the other listeners,
you have to have the sponsor
who's sponsoring an alien.
An alien, of course, is the foreign individual
who's coming to the United States.
If I want to bring a foreign individual here,
be that a spouse or a child or a parent,
or a brother, sister, whatever,
I have to prove that I have the means to support them.
The concern of the government
is they don't want an alien coming here
and then immediately being
what they would call a ward of the state
meaning that now you need public assistance to eat and live
because you don't have any means of supporting yourself.
So they have these guidelines that you have to meet
and it varies, it can vary a little bit by states
and whether you're active duty military or not,
but basically, for most people,
it's 125% of the poverty level for your household size.
Household size is you, the alien,
and if there are any children that you're responsible for,
or other people, those, too.
So having said all that,
your question was, how long do I need to be at my job?
Well, there's no exact time.
Basically, it's almost like getting a loan.
You need to be able to prove to the government
that you have the means to support this individual.
So there's no set time.
You could have been at your job a month,
two months, six months.
What's probably going to happen is,
they're going to look at your work history.
If you haven't worked in five years,
and you've been on public benefits yourself,
and now you just got a job three months ago,
yes, you may have trouble.
Because they may look at this and say,
you only got this job to get through this application.
Or, you're not regular in employment
and for some reason you weren't working for a long time.
Now, how do we know you're going to stay at this job
or be able to maintain this job or whatever, right?
So they're looking at your creditworthiness, basically.
And so if you've have a long history of employment,
but now you've changed jobs,
even if you've had some brief periods of unemployment,
that's fine.
Through the years you consistently are a working person,
you're probably not going to have any trouble
as long as the income, of course, of that job
meets the requirements.
Again, if you've not worked in forever,
and especially if you've been receiving benefits yourself,
and now all of a sudden you just got a job,
yeah, that's gonna be a little tougher.
Now the second part, you say,
how do I use my home to sponsor my spouse?
So, yes, you can use assets
as all or part of the income requirement.
But that's a little tougher.
So the number one thing I'll say is,
they only count the asset as one third the value.
So if you have an asset worth $100,000,
they're only going to give you credit for $33,000,
$300, whatever a third is of one hundred, right?
So the second part I'll say is,
with a house, you know, most people when they have a house,
it's not paid for.
They've got a mortgage on it.
You can use the equity,
but you're going to have to show
a third-party appraisal for the house.
You can't just tell them,
hey, my house is worth $250,000 and that's my opinion.
You would have to show a third party.
And then you would have to show your mortgage statement
showing, hey, here's a third-party appraisal
that says this house is worth $250,000.
Here's my mortgage statement
which shows that I only owe $150,000.
Therefore I've got $100,000 in equity.
Yes, that is applicable.
Now, that's harder than having a job, of course,
because they've got to look at it
and they've got to determine the availability.
And then the question in their mind is gonna be,
yeah, but you can't realistically sell your house,
because then you've got no place to live.
So it is tougher.
And a better example would be, if you had a 401(k)
or something that could easily be converted to cash.
That's gonna be better.
So if you're down to using assets,
then you're in a tight situation,
and my recommendation would be,
you might want to look at a joint sponsor.
A joint sponsor is any adult,
legally residing in the United States,
age of 18 or over,
who's willing to sign.
It's kind of like a co-signer.
Who's willing to sign an affidavit of support
for the intended immigrant.
So that's another option, too.
But yes, you can use equity in your home.
And there are other assets you can use, too.
But you mentioned home, so specifically that,
yes, you can use equity in your home.
But you will have to prove it.
They're not going to take your word for it.
And yes, it's OK to have a new job.
And if you have a history of, you know,
most of the time being employed,
that's even better.
But there's no rule that says,
you must have been on the job a year,
you must have been on the job six months.
There are no rules like this.
A lot of this, other than the number you're trying to hit,
that is a number you can look up.
Look it up on our website, our calculator, whatever,
the income required.
Everything else is kind of subjective.
They don't say, if you have this,
you absolutely will be approved.
If you have a job, you've been there two years,
we're absolutely going to approve you.
They don't say that.
What they say, is, show us what you've got,
and we will decide if you meet the income requirements.
So there you go.
You know, those finance questions are always tough.
A lot of people use a joint sponsor, it's quite common.
It's definitely not an anomaly.
I don't know what the number is.
I haven't looked it up lately,
but probably 25% of the petitions we do
include a joint sponsor.
So it is quite common.
So don't be afraid of that,
if you have someone willing to step up and do that for you,
if you know there's not a way you can do it.
But if you've got this new job,
if you're just now applying,
you're not going to need the financial information
for about six, seven, eight months
if you're doing a spouse or finance visa,
because it will be that long
before you'll be to the stage where you need it.
Now, if you're doing adjustment of status,
you need that immediately.
But if you're doing spouse or fiance visa, one of those,
you've got time to increase your tenure on that job
before you'll need it.
So if you've only been there a few months now,
you will have been there that much longer by then.
Maybe that helps, too.
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