If you will recall, we have been talking about the Affidavit of Support that is required whenever a person immigrates based on his relationship to a U.S. citizen or lawful permanent resident. A sponsor (discussed several weeks ago) needs to establish that he can keep the immigrant off welfare. It used to be that all you needed to do to satisfy this requirement was provide an Affidavit of Support. By signing the Affidavit of Support, the sponsor or joint sponsor was guaranteeing that he would fulfill the requirements of being a sponsor.
However, that all changed under President Trump. Under his new regulations there are no clear rules — the Department of State (at the embassies and consulates) and the USCIS are supposed to look at the big picture and decide if they believe the immigrant will not go on welfare. As part of this process, they look at the relationship between the sponsor and the immigrant to see if the sponsor is likely to keep his promises.
How do they do that? They look at a number of factors. Chief among them are how close is the relationship between the sponsor and the immigrant, can the sponsor really afford to help the immigrant and will it cause too much hardship to the sponsor to help the immigrant? In a sense, these questions were always important, but they never looked too closely at them. Now, under the new rules, they are supposed to look at these factors more carefully.
Practically, speaking these factors are not too important when the petitioner/sponsor is the spouse of the immigrant. They most likely will assume that the petitioner wants to fulfill his duties and will sacrifice for the immigrant. This would also be true if a parent is petitioning for a dependent child or elderly parents. However, the further the relationship gets attenuated, the more closely immigration will look at these factors. How likely is it that a brother will sacrifice to help keep his sibling’s family off welfare?
This question becomes more important if you are looking at a joint sponsor. Is there a strong enough relationship to induce the joint sponsor to sacrifice in order to keep the immigrant off welfare? If the joint sponsor is only a friend of the petitioner and is only doing it as a favor to the petitioner, that could raise questions in the mind of the reviewing officer.
Therefore, when I am submitting an affidavit of support from a petitioner, I look for a strong affidavit of support so that it is clear that the sponsor can easily support the immigrant. If it is not a strong affidavit of support, we submit an affidavit of support from a joint-sponsor.
However, when we are looking for a joint sponsor, I look for three qualifications: 1) there is a strong relationship between the joint sponsor and either the immigrant or the petitioner, 2) the joint sponsor has income and assets significantly exceeding the required minimum and 3) the joint sponsor does not need to use the value of his home or business. We can use the value of the home and business to provide additional support, but I think that immigration will be doubtful that a joint sponsor will sell their home or business in order to keep the immigrant off welfare.
One thing that I always do at this point — because it has been requested by immigration a number of times — is to include a letter from the joint sponsor stating why he is sponsoring and how he is committed to fulfilling the responsibilities of being a sponsor. The main point of the letter is to show the close relationship between the joint sponsor and the immigrant and/or sponsor. It usually talks about how often they see the immigrant and/or sponsor and why they feel so strongly about making this commitment.
How important is this now that we have a new President? I don’t know. The Department of State (embassies and consulates) was requesting this type of evidence after President Trump was elected and before the new rules went into effect (I felt that they were using a backdoor to apply these rules before they were rules). Currently, since July 2020, the Department of State was forbidden by a court order to apply these new rules — but how they will follow the court’s order is unclear — especially in view of the fact that they were sort of applying the rules before they were rules. Also, of course, will President Biden direct them to return to pre-Trump practices or will it just sort of be left to each consulate how they will adjudicate these Affidavits of Support.
Likewise, things are just as unclear with the USCIS. President Trump introduced these new requirements and made them regulations. There were court orders forbidding the USCIS to implement the new rules, but they have all been overturned. So officially, President Trump’s new rules are the law at the USCIS. However, so far, in my clients’ interviews I have seen no evidence that the USCIS is really doing anything different from what they were doing before — but I still need to prepare to satisfy the new rules because you never know when an officer might decide to be strict regarding the new rules. Again, President Biden might officially change the rules, but that could take a while, and as of today, he has not changed these rules.
I hope this is interesting and helpful. Remember that this is not legal advice. It is just a summary of certain aspects of immigration law which may or may not apply to your situation. I encourage you to consult an attorney if you think any of this may apply to your situation.
Gunnar Armstrong