Friend moving to USA with US citizen DH and US citizen baby on ESTA

[esta2024]

Asking all british spouses of US citizens.

My friend has decided to go to the USA with her American husband and baby on an ESTA (they were living abroad for years, baby born abroad), live with family while remote working for her current employer (not a US employer and money paid to overseas bank account), and on day 91 apply to adjust her status to a green card.

based on what i have read online, it is likely to succeed despite the fact that she would be overstaying on esta but it seems to have succeeded for many people as they are married to american citizens and in bona fide relationships and its difficult to establish intent to immigrate from the onset (as people say they are just visiting and then 'changed' their minds).

is this true, I can't quite get my head around this. Why doesn't everyone just do this and they wait 1-1.5 years for consular processing? I understand that by doing it this way, you give up all rights to appeal and if it goes wrong, you would be deported and banned from the USA.

Republican or not, she won’t find a policy in the whole country that will cover her whilst she is living in the country without the correct paperwork. If it’s likely she will need subsidies if and when she is legal, she probably wouldn’t get residency granted as this is the type of stuff the state is looking to avoid. This is the sort of stuff sponsors promise to pay for and have to show evidence they can pay for.

Everything you have told us about the situation suggests their plan is very bad and it’s not like they don’t have other options.

Just let them get on with it, OP. They clearly don’t want to apply the “proper” way so they’ll have to take their chances and see what happens.
I don’t have much sympathy given that she could live in London while everything's processed, tbh.

They are about to get a very rude awakening. They'll find themselves sitting in a dingy office in some cut rate strip mall near a Ross Dress For Less store, a premises with heating at full blast that is heaving with the huddled masses from Ukraine, Sudan, Poland, Ghana, and Pakistan, each one holding a number, sitting on a hard plastic chair while staff call applicants up number by number.

I second everything ZZ said about the people they employ in USCIS. They are apparently answerable to nobody, and if you call the 800 number to try to talk to someone to help you iron out your problem, make an inquiry about the 15 month delay on processing your paperwork, etc, you will end up trying to have a conversation with a not fit for purpose phone bot.

The only agency I'd rank worse is the US customs.

My aunt tried something similar many years ago and was deported and banned from returning

I know someone else who moved to the US on a visa, got married to an American, had children, her visa expired and she didn’t renew it

She was deported, her husband stayed with the children. She is now banned from the US and hasn’t seen her kids for 4 years

Oh my god. Did the marriage break down too

That's correct. The income-based exemptions from filing a return are much lower than $100k, no matter what the source of the income.

https://www.irs.gov/newsroom/who-needs-to-file-a-tax-return

And there's often a state-level income tax return that must also be filed. Deep doodoo indeed.

He has been filing, I know it. His wife told me he earns far less than 100k living overseas so this impacts his filing in some way.

What I didn't realise is he needed to put his British wife's name on it and he claimed to dh that irs doesn't know his wife exists. They have been married since 2019!

Sorry to resurrect this thread but I just got told an incredible piece of information. I was told they sought legal advice and the lawyer said it could work because she is white and not black from an Arabic speaking country (don't even want to unpack the latter statement)..

Whatever that means. Is it even a thing for lawyers to give such advice which sounds like a matter of opinion. We all know that there are higher rates of rejection from certain countries based on the data but if uscics was anything like UKVI, they would not dare to comment on the impact of someone's colour on their application as it could open up a lot of potential for litigation. Isn't america quirw a litigious country?

It sounds as if the lawyer was full of balloon juice, and it also seems that this man hears only what he wants to hear.

There are many different categories of resident-status seekers. Asylum seekers from bona fide war zones pr places where the rule of law has broken down constitute a large proportion of current day applicants. They come from various parts of Africa, Ukraine, Syria and the Middle East, and Central and South America. Someone arriving with a spouse who has basically done the immigration process backwards (i.e. arrive first, sort out the details later) who isn't a refugee from a war zone, will have to take a number and get in line like everyone else, and hope for the best.

You can't sue USCIS, per se.
You can get the best immigration lawyer you can afford to represent you when they deny your petition and issue a deportation order, and file an appeal. Meanwhile, your life is in limbo. There is no guarantee that your appeal will succeed. This couple is taking a massive chance, and as has been stated so many times before on this thread, the wife is taking the risk of her husband or his mother deciding the baby will stay in the US with them.

If he hasn't included his wife on the return, has he been claiming the exemptions he is entitled to? Has he claimed the baby as a dependent? It makes absolutely no sense from a tax pov to not opt for "married filing separately" on his return, and if he hasn't been claiming his baby as a dependent, he's shooting himself in the foot.

The only way this tax nonsense makes sense is if he wants to mess up the wife's claim to be truly married, to be living together in the same household - to have a genuine relationship in a shared household, in other words.

Is this his game?

How good is she at lying? Because she will have to bare-faced lie to US officials from the very moment she sets foot in the US. And they are VERY good at telling if someone is lying.

It seems they got through! Tbh she has been a bona fide visitor to the usa in the past.

When you arrive on esta you lose all right to appeal. It's why I hardly hear of couples with babies doing it, they are usually newly married couples trying their luck and who would probably plan to move if their gamble doesn't pay off.

She needs to apply before travelling to the USA. They are really strict and may not let her in at border control even if they suspect she is entering on a temporary visa intending to stay. We also needed to be outside of the country to change visas and it took months

She’s already in the US on an ESTA, @mitogoshi , she’s planning overstay and then apply.

All of us have advised her to go to London (she can live with her Mum there) and do it properly, but it’s falling on deaf ears.

I have heard similar. But it was 20 years ago.

A British friend living in a third country (Asian country I think) and there was some unrest so the family were making plans for if they had to leave in a hurry.

Queuing up at the US consulate to get a visa, the person in front was being asked for more paperwork and a large deposit. Friend's mum who is in the queue was thinking, "we don't have that, we don't have the money" and getting worried.

When she got to the front of the queue they stamped her passport and those of the family. She asked about the paperwork and she was told, "we don't ask for that for people like you".

They didn't say it was because she was white but that was the implication.

I guess the important question is whether it's still like that..

I’m a white Brit and this was not my experience during my dealings with the London US consulate or USCIS (although it was called the INS then) 25 years ago.

Nor was it my experience when I went for citizenship 14 years ago here in the US.

Nor was it our experience when registering the birth of our children abroad at the London US consulate two decades ago. We jumped through an absolutely incredible number of hoops to make that happen.

This thread is making me so stressed! Even when I took my kids on holiday to the US last year I was intimidated by border control!

I have RTFT so my main question OP @esta2024 is what did your friend think of it all? She is obviously there now - is she quite cavalier and “it will work out” about the whole thing or did she have misgivings?

I’m similar to @ZZTopGuitarSolo , white Brit married to an American.

I was not given any preferential treatment by USCIS as is right and proper, what an appalling thing for your friend to wish for.

DH and I did everything the correct way, applied in the UK while he went ahead to start his new job in the US and I had to do everything by the book.

Your friends sound entitled and horrible.

She doesn't think its risky at all, she thinks she will get her green card in 5 months. and employment authorization in 3 months. After she applies after 91 days.

I am thinking of going to visit her but what am i supposed to say at border control when they ask me purpose of visit. what if they ask me her name and she would be on the system right.

I remember reading your thread at the beginning and my jaw dropping lower and lower, thinking surely everyone knows how hard the US comes down on this kind of thing? I've got no special knowledge but I can't see it ending well and the fact she has a young baby is the killer complication.
Please let us know how she gets on. I really hate hearing about mothers separated from their babies, I couldn't believe she was being so cavalier about the risk of being deported without her child.

You can check the processing times at https://egov.uscis.gov/processing-times/.

Processing time for I-485 Application to Register Permanent Residence or Adjust Status at Dallas TX (for example) is currently taking 17.5 months for 80% of cases. Atlanta is 24.5 months. Memphis is 19 months.

As they are not a straightforward case they should not expect to be in the 80% but to take longer.