One of the toughest areas of family based immigration is proving the bona fides of a relationship. In order to bring your husband, wife, or fiancé to the United States or to get them a green card, it is not enough simply to have a marriage certificate or to say that I intend to marry this person. It is not enough to say that I love this person and that I want to spend the rest of my life with this person. The burden is on both members of the couple to prove that this is a bona fide relationship. They must prove to the satisfaction of the adjudicating officer, whether it is the USCIS interviewer or the consular officer if the spouse or fiancé is living abroad, that these two people really love each other and that they intend to live together for the rest of their lives as husband and wife. The law presumes that all petitioners and beneficiaries are lying. The law presumes that every couple that petitions for such a visa is engaged in immigration fraud and that they do not love each other, or at least do not have a marital type relationship and are really just filing the petition to get a green card. What is more, some consular officers in particular, and immigration officers in the United States as well, have developed a very jaundiced view towards these applications. For example, the United States Embassy in Phnom Penh, Cambodia is rejecting some eighty percent of all husband, wife, or fiancé applications. That is a huge percentage. The consular officers there are quite glib about all of the fraud that they see. They have actually become desensitized to the fact that they are adversely affecting people’s lives. Everybody there has too jaundiced of a view. As such, this idea that the burden is on the petitioner and the beneficiary to prove the bona fides of their relationship is a heavy burden, and one that people need to take seriously. Simply filling out a form and having all the required documentation is simply not good enough anymore.
What is more, the government now has significant resources to enable them to do background checks on the applying couples, and they do so. I have been quite stunned at times when I have spoken with consular officers about some of the information that they had acquired on a client. It was apparent that they had done a significant amount of work, although in some cases they did a significant amount of work to feed incorrect predispositions. Nevertheless, given that it is now obvious that they are doing significant background checks, why would anybody be surprised that some portion of that background check would involve looking at people’s social medial posts? It costs nothing to go to Facebook, Google+, Twitter, or Pinterest and see what comes up. Sometimes all you need to do is Google a person’s name and all of the social media they have will come up.
Of course, if somebody does not engage in social media then nothing will come up. That is not a problem. I am not saying that if you wish to sponsor your spouse or fiancé from a foreign country, that you need to go create a social media presence so that the embassy will have something to look at. What I am saying is that if you do have a social media presence, then the person that you are saying is your one true love, the person who you say you want to spend the rest of your life with, had better be featured. Do not be telling the consular officer that you are engaged but telling all your Facebook friends that your status is single. Do not be posting pictures of yourself with other people you appear to be dating or otherwise involved with. And, of course, make sure that you have an appropriate number of postings of your one true love.
“An appropriate number” depends on how much you post. If you are somebody who puts up pictures and other posts five times a year, then clearly you do not need to put up a lot of material about your fiancé. On the other hand, if you are someone who is posting every day, you need a substantial amount of material. If you have put a thousand pictures a year in your albums, there needs to be a lot of pictures of your fiancé. Similarly, I have a lot of clients from Cambodia, so I have a lot of pictures of my clients in Cambodia when they are visiting their husbands, wives or fiancés. They come into my office with photo albums full of pictures of the two of them, but during the time that they were in Cambodia they have put three pictures on Facebook, one of them at the airport going to Cambodia, one of them at the airport going back, and one of them standing in front of Angkor Wat. The explanation is “I am not really a Facebooker” and I can look at their wall and see that they are not. They are just letting their friends know that they have left, that they are coming back, and a picture in front of Angkor Wat is de rigueur. I understand. I am not so sure that the consular officer will understand when making a decision about whether or not to grant this visa. More importantly, the Facebook wall is not helping the client at all. We can mitigate the damage. However consider the context. I have a client who has traveled half way around the world to be with the woman that he loves. I have a client who is traveling all over Cambodia with the woman that he loves. I have a client who has, at least on a very limited basis, accessed Facebook, and I have a client who has not seen fit to post one single picture of the woman he loves while in Cambodia. On top of all of that, I have this being looked at by a consular officer who takes a very jaundiced view of all of these things and believes that everybody in front of him is committing fraud unless, and until, proven otherwise. This strongly re-enforces that consular officer’s expectation of fraud. What is worse, it will reinforce the consular officer’s view before any interview takes place. Regrettably, what that means is that the case may be lost before the interview even starts. I spend hours with my clients. I know their true hearts. I understand what is going on and I know how to advocate for it. However, I have had people come to me after their spouse’s visa has been rejected who told me the interview lasted less than five minutes. That means the consular officer made no effort to find the true heart of the person being interviewed. That means the consular officer’s mind was made up before the interview even began. Seeing such a Facebook wall, the consular officer will not only conclude that this person is not the love of your life, but will further conclude that you are trying to keep this person a secret because you have or seek a relationship with somebody else in the United States. If you want to put a final nail in this coffin, go ahead and post a picture of you hugging some other girl. I do not care if the girl is your first cousin and the occasion is her birthday, you are done.
There is another issue that comes up with social media and the internet in general, and that is communication. A lot of my clients communicate by various messaging services, including Facebook and Skype. One of the things that you need to do to prove the bona fides of your relationship is to prove that you are in communication, and that that communication is constant and significant. If you are messaging, then these messages need to be saved. If you are tech savvy enough to download them onto a CD or DVD, that is great. If not, then print them out. This would be true of every messaging service, including Facebook and Skype, or even the old AOL messenger if anybody is still using that. If you are using the internet to make phone calls, then it is necessary that you save the meta-data. These companies, such as Skype, do save what numbers you have called, when you called and how long you spoke, and there is a way to download this information. It needs to be done. Obviously, the more you are talking to your significant other, the better it is when you are trying to prove bona fides, regardless of how you engage in communication. As there is a presumption that there is no relationship, it is imperative that that communication be documented. By the way, I do not care what language you are communicating in. I am not even that particular about what you are talking about. When it is internet messaging, I do not even read it. Most of it is sickening. I do not believe that the consular officers read it either. The issue is, are you in communication, or are you not? If you are spending three hours a day Skyping or messaging each other, then there is probably something going on with you two. If you never communicate with each other, then there probably is not. Everything in between, of course, is in between. If you are communicating with each other for three hours a day however, I do not think that it matters whether you are talking about sports, talking about sex, talking about your future lives together, or talking politics. The point is, the two of you are bonding and sympathico and thus your relationship is probably bona fide.