How We Prepared for I-485 (Green Card) and Other Paperwork After K-1

6 min readMar 2, 2020

Even before we started our K-1 visa journey back in August 2018, we had been hearing scary stories about how slow the process could be. In our case, it took 18 months in total from the start of the I-129F petition to the approval of I-485 (application to register permanent residence or adjust status), despite some small hiccup. We feel grateful that our case went through fairly quickly.

If you are at the stage of the I-129F and K-1 visa application, please refer to this previous post on how we prepared. My K-1 visa was approved within 8 months. Although the processing time depends on many different factors, hopefully, our experience can give you hope. You can check out details on what evidence we included and have free access to templates we used.

In this post, I’d like to share our experience and lessons learned during the preparation I-485, I-765 (employment authorization), I-131 (advance parole).

Our Timeline

End of August 2018: We started the I-129F petition.
April 18, 2019: K-1 visa was approved.
May: I moved to the US
June: We got our marriage certificate at the San Francisco City Hall (I believe you already know that one needs to get legally married within 90 days after entering the US on K-1)
End of June: I filed I-485, I-765, I-131 at the end of June 2019
July 2: Application was received on July 2, 2019 (We got the notification a few days later)
July 12: I got the notification for a scheduled biometrics appointment
August 2: The biometrics appointment was very smooth.
September 2, 2019: Got Request for Initial Evidence for I-864 (Affidavit of Support) that was filed with I-485

We had 87 days to reply. We didn’t respond right away because we were busy with the preparation for our wedding celebration (this time with our family and friends) in October.

October, 27: I responded to the Request for Initial Evidence
November 7: USCIS online case status updated that my I-485 case was “ready for interview”.
December 9: I-765 and I-131 were approved
December 16: I got the notice of approval for I-765 and I-131 and got the Employment Authorization Card.
January 12, 2020: I got the notice for the initial interview for I-485
February 10, 2020: Interview was done

After the interview, USCIS online case status remained as “Interview Was Scheduled” the whole time before the next update

February 27, 2020: USCIS case status updated that “New Card Is Being Produced”
February 28, 2020: USCIS case status updated that “Case Was Approved”

As you can see, there was a two-month delay (September~October, 2019) in the middle of the process due to a silly mistake we made on the I-864 (Affidavit of Support), which I will talk about later in this article. With the delay, it took us a bit over 4 months from sending out the I-485 application package to receiving the approval of I-765 and I-131, about 7 months altogether until the scheduled initial interview.

Filing For I-485, I-131, and I-765

A few things I’ve learned:

The application fee for I-485 includes the fee for filing I-131 (advance parole) and I-765 (employment authorization).
Whether it is safe to leave the country and come back in without issue with the advance parole, while waiting for the I-485 approval, is a different topic that will require some attorney’s advice.
If you don’t have a social security number yet, you can apply for that on the I-765 form. (Alternatively, according to immihelp.com, you can apply for your social security number at the local social security office even before you get married with your I-94 form within a certain time window. I didn’t do it that way, because I planned to take my husband’s last name and didn’t want to deal with changing the name on the card again.) Will talk about social security numbers in more detail in another post.

Filing package: The following are the documents we sent in our I-485 package as an example. Please see the Cover Letter template for the full list we submitted for I-485 with I-131 and I-765 filed concurrently.

I-485 Form and Supporting DocumentsImmediate Relative (Spouse) Family-Based Adjustment of Status

Form G-1450 for the payment in the amount of US$ 1,225 (Filing+Biometrics fee)
Form G-1145
Duly accomplished I-485 form
Copy of I-797, Notice of Approval for the I-129F petition & NVC acceptance letter
Certified copy of marriage certificate
Copy of birth certificate (translation included)
Copy of biographical page of the passport
Copy of K1 visa page
Copy of Form I-94, Arrival-Departure Record
(2) 2” X 2” size colored photos with name and A# on the back
Form I-864, Affidavit of Support from my husband along with the following documents:

Employment letter
Recent six (6) months pay stubs
IRS tax transcripts for the past one (1) year
Biographical page of the passport of the petitioner
Copy of birth certificate of the petitioner

It is really important to read the official instructions and the filing tips of each form very carefully!

I-864 Affidavit of Support and RFE (Request for Evidence)

My husband’s income meets the minimum requirement for the Affidavit of Support (See criteria on I-864P) for our household size, so we skipped the sections about assets or joint assets, etc. on I-864, which made the application fairly simple and straightforward.

Be careful with the household size!

However, we made a silly, yet critical mistake on “household number” on the I-864. Here is what happened: Some of the USCIS forms have blanks that cannot be filled in, and we had to manually add text boxes to fill in the answers. It happened before during the K-1 visa application too. It’s annoying but it is usually no big deal, until this time in the I-864, the total household number is automatically populated based on the numbers you put in the boxes above, some of which are not fillable. The number we put in the text box that we manually added wasn’t counted into the sum. The auto calculation said our household size was “1”, and both of us were negligent enough to overlook the fact that our household size is obviously “2”.

However, the RFE was so vaguely and generally written that we weren’t sure whether somehow we didn’t provide enough proof of income or we should have included information about our assets. It took us a few weeks of research and debate between ourselves, as well as a free consultation with a lawyer, to know for sure that we met the minimum requirement, we didn’t need to add any information on assets, and it was the mistaken household size that got us in trouble.

If you, unfortunately, get an RFE for any reason, make sure you do the best investigation and highly recommend a consultation with an attorney, because it seems you’d only get one chance to respond with all the proof. If it’s helpful, here is the template of the cover letter we used for our response.

If you are taking your spouse’s last name…

I took my husband’s last name because both of us wanted it that way. I used my new last name as the primary name in my I-485, I-131, I-765, and social security card application, and wrote my maiden name in “any other names used after birth”. And the marriage license with my new last name on it was sufficient as proof.

I also went to the Consulate General of my country (China) in San Francisco (where I live) to have an “Observations” page on my passport added, saying “The passport holder’s name can also be spelled as (my married name with my husband’s last name.)”. I did it this way because it takes much longer and costs more to get a new passport than adding an “observations” page. This practice may differ based on your home country, but this has proven convenient in many cases for me.

Interview

The interview experience itself was a whole different rollercoaster that I’d like to share in a separate post. Please stay tuned!

Next Steps

The I-485 approval leads to a conditional green card, and I will need to go through another process to remove the condition before the two-year period expires. Glad that we can focus on our life instead of paperwork for almost two years! I hope our experience so far has been helpful to you. Please feel free to ask me any questions or share your own experience!

Please also note that everything shared here is based on how we prepared for our case. We are not giving legal advice and not responsible for any of the advice given here.