20 Issues You Ought to Detect If You’re Going to Submit a Marriage-Based Permanent Residence Application

If you’re a foreign-national spouse who has applied for marriage-based permanent residence, the USCIS Green Card interview might feel like the Super Bowl, the NBA finals, and the Olympics—summer and winter—rolled into one. You want to do well, of course.

But, at the end of some interviews, the USCIS adjudicator will initiate a fraud investigation. Not good.

Here, we’ll look at some pieces of your case that the USCIS adjudicator may consider in deciding whether to initiate a fraud investigation. (The list is far from being exhaustive.)

At Fintus Immigration, we have systems and tools in place to spot the issues that might lead to–if untreated, so to speak–a fraud investigation. Then we treat them.

So, here are 20 pieces of your case that might a USCIS adjudicator say, “hmmmm … red flag”:

  1. A preparer who is known or suspected or under investigation for fraud,
  2. A tip phone call,
  3. Abandonment or withdrawal of a previous petition or application after USCIS issued a request for additional evidence,
  4. The closeness in time between divorce and the date of the new marriage,
  5. Documents issued immediately before interview,
  6. Documents issued immediately after interview,
    A USCIS adjudicator may look at many factors–many more than are listed here–to determine whether your marriage deserves a fraud investigation.
  7. Unemployment or underemployment of the petitioner,
  8. Multiple applications by the applicant,
  9. Multiple petitions by the petitioner,
  10. Over-submissions,
  11. The petitioner’s previous marriages to foreign nationals,
  12. Staged photos,
  13. The petitioner and the beneficiary having the same employer,
  14. The closeness in time between the applicant’s entry and the marriage,
  15. Suspicious filing history of the applicant,
  16. Unusual cultural differences between the petitioner and the applicant,
  17. Unusual dates on submitted documents,
  18. An unusual marriage history,
  19. An unusual number of children,
  20. An unusual difference in age between petitioner and beneficiary.

It’s important to emphasize this is not an exhaustive list of what might make the USCIS adjudicator sit up in her chair at the interview. And it is just as important to note that, if possible, you should have worked to mitigate the negative effects of any weaknesses in your case before the interview.