Welcome to this week's live attorney chat. I'm Attorney Desiree Koger-Gustafson with
Immigration for Couples. If you are new to our firm or our Facebook page. We regularly do these
live broadcasts to discuss questions that we're hearing either on our social media platforms or
during consults or other questions that we may get just from the General Public so today I'd
like to discuss two different questions that we have received and so if you are watching this live
and you have questions while I'm on here live, feel free to put those in the comment feature
and if I see them I'll try to address them while we are live here and if not and it's something
that we can then address on an additional live talk I certainly will come back on and do that.
Today, we're going to talk about two questions that we've received from people through our
Facebook page one is about the Affidavit of Support and in particular, joint sponsorship
and what to do if both the US citizen and the spouse are living abroad.
The other will be regarding the redesigned green card and work authorization that USCIS
has recently come out and announced. Let's talk about the first and the Affidavit of Support. As
you might be aware of, if you are familiar with our YouTube channel or our website in particular,
we've done lots of resources and lots of videos on the Affidavit of Support,
even joint sponsorship in particular but that is one of probably the areas that I see the most
issues that people have during their petitioning process
and this the Affidavit of Support of course would come sometimes at different stages but
there it's along with some type of a petition for an immigrant to come and stay in the United States
and the reason behind that is because there is what's called a public charge of inadmissibility
so basically in the Affidavit of Support you are attesting to your income maybe assets if
needed past income in order to suffice with the government and satisfy their interest in
making sure that that immigrant when they come over is not going to fall onto taxpayer burden
so um you basically are attesting yes I have sufficient means to provide for this
person to be in my household therefore it has to be above the poverty level
and and you can find what USCIS designates as their poverty level right on their website
uscis.gov and that will give you an idea of course the income levels go up as the
amount of people in your household go up and every person that you've petitioned for or co-sponsored
for joint sponsored for would be then included in your household um your household uh number
of people in your household up to a certain date or time obviously that would eventually fall off
at some point but for the purposes of this video we're talking about just complete household size
um and those that you've also petitioned for so knowing that and what it's trying to prove you
do need an 864 which is the Affidavit of Support paperwork and so this would be most in line with
any adjustment of status or spousal petition so not the fiance petition although they're
very similar it's a different form for like a fiance visa that you would use to support income
but the 864 would need to be filled out by the petitioner even if petitioner is unemployed and
you know you're going to need a joint sponsor you still have to provide all of that documentation so
past taxes um current information and then all of the supporting documents we provide as well
then if you were to get a joint sponsor or even two co-sponsors then each of those people would
have to have a form an 864 filled out for their income in their household as well and all of those
supporting documents so however you're going to support that uh if you've got assets you'll have
to support those in a different way statements um whatnot pay stubs that kind of thing as well as
um proof of citizenship of course and the last part of that question was what if both the
U.S citizen petitioner and the spouse are living abroad you are still going to have to satisfy that
public charge of inadmissibility so you're going to um need to be maybe a little bit more creative
so it's definitely something that you'd want to talk with somebody who is experienced in doing
the Affidavit of Support but know that if you are a U.S citizen even if you are working abroad
um the or living abroad the us is going to still expect that you have paid taxes so
um you know trying to figure out who you've been working for and whether or not you owe taxes and
that kind of thing is something you'd want to talk with you know a CPA or somebody that does
taxes as well as have that discussion with your attorney just so that they are aware and they can
um definitely try to highlight any joint sponsorship needs before you end up at a
consulate for an interview and get turned away because you might need a joint sponsor
sometimes re-making those interview appointments or supplying documents to a consulate after the
fact is more problematic um so yeah so that's the the adjustment or the Affidavit of Support
through an adjustment of status type of process or spousal Visa type of process so I'll move to
the second question which was uscis's recent announcement that they are redesigning the
green card and work authorization so they did just announce this a couple of days ago and of
course it will contain new security features this is something they do with some regularity
um every three to five years or so it does not mean that if you hold an older green card
that that would be then in the ballad so your card would remain valid even if it's the old
featured old style for as long as either the expiration date or if there's some extension
um or some other type of notice from USCIS as long as it is a valid green card then it would remain
valid even if it's that old style additionally not everyone is going to be issued one of those
new cards quite yet they are still going to be using some of that old stock if you will to make
sure that they use that up and then they will all be switching to that newer designed Style
so I hope you have found this helpful again this is attorney Desiree with immigration for couples
certainly if you know of somebody who might be interested in
um some of the things that we talk about here like and share our page with them
if you're wanting to see more resources visit us at www.immigrationforcouples.com
click on the resources Tab and we have tons of videos and resources for you
to kind of explore and get some more information about your specific needs
if um we don't hear from you before now and then um I will join you right back here next
to Thursday at 11 o'clock for our next weekly live attorney chat have a great day everyone