[Please note: The Client’s name and case key details may have been altered to preserve the identity of the client. This Success Story is not intended to be an offer of service or case plan. Every case is unique. The Success Story is presented for information purposes only.]
In May of 2016, an adventurous young electrical worker named Zoe came to the United States from Argentina on a tourist visa expecting to see as much of the U.S. as she could before returning to where she lived in Rosario.
Along the way, she stopped off in Cleveland because an acquaintance of hers worked for Cleveland Public Power and had offered to take her on a tour which because Zoe wanted to someday become an electrical engineer.
Accompanying them on the tour was a freelance journalist named Tom who lived locally and wanted to refresh his memory on the history of CPP as well as learn about its internal operations because he was doing a series of articles on private and publicly owned energy sources.
As fate and love would have it, Zoe and Tom immediately hit it off and Zoe re-arranged her travel plans to spend the bulk of U.S. visit in Northeast Ohio. Within a month, Tom and Zoe became engaged and Zoe agreed to a quick wedding in November because Tom’s beloved mother was dying and wanted to see her son get married before she passed.
Just a few days after the wedding, the couple booked an appointment with the Cleveland team of [nap_names id=”FIRM-NAME-1″] because, after much discussion and research, Zoe had decided that she wanted to stay in the United States because of opportunities regarding her education and future employment. Plus, Tom’s vocation involved a lot of traveling around the United States and she was eager to accompany him while taking online classes towards her advanced degree in electrical engineering.
For us, Zoe’s case was easy because she was so well organized; she kept all her pertinent records in a cabinet at her sister’s home in Rosario, so all her sister had to do was load up a box and ship them here.
Subsequently, our team was able to file a package before the end of November which included an I-130 (Petition for Alien Relative); an I-485 (Application for Legal Permanent Residency); an I-765 (Application for Employment Authorization Document) and an I-864 (Affidavit of Support). For sure, Tom made enough to support his wife during the entire immigration process, but Zoe was anxious to complete her education, open her own consulting business, and contribute to their income.
In March of 2017, Zoe breezed through her USCIS interview so within two weeks she became the holder of a two-year-temporary-marriage-based green card.
Not long afterwards, she and Tom were off on their journeys although Zoe was careful to stay in touch with our office to keep track of new developments in the immigration process that might affect her especially since Donald Trump had just become the President of the United States.
Over the next two years, Zoe and Tom traveled the United States as Tom took on various journalistic assignments and Zoe completed her education by taking online classes at a notable learning institution where she made friends/acquaintances with engineering students from all over the world.
Of course, their travels prevented Zoe from finding a permanent job, but she and Tom agreed that within the next few years they would re-settle in an agreed-upon U.S. location where they would start a family and Zoe would start her own energy consulting firm.
By March of 2019, Zoe had provided our team with enough information, such as photos and personal records wherein she and Tom’s names both appeared, that we felt comfortable filing an I-751 (Petition to Remove Conditions on Residence) so that Zoe could obtain a permanent green card. In February of 2020, we received notice that Zoe’s permanent green card had been approved.
However, it took a long time for Zoe to receive the green card because she and Tom had recently re-located to a different city and we had changed their mailing address only two days before the card was mailed out. To be sure, our team placed several inquiries to USCIS to see if Zoe’s permanent green card had been returned to them and in September of 2020, we filed an I-90 (Application to Replace Permanent Green Card) reflecting Zoe’s most recent address.
In November of 2020, Zoe contacted our team to inquire about what she could do to obtain a new driver’s license because the effective date on her temporary green card had expired. We instructed her to make an infopass appointment at the nearby USCIS office wherein she would present the original receipt for the I-90 and get a I-551 stamp for her passport; this would be temporary evidence of her legal permanent residency and acceptable for obtaining a driver’s license.
Eventually, all would be well because just days before Christmas Zoe’s permanent green card arrived in the mail and she and Tom were relieved.
The last time we spoke with Zoe it was January of 2021 and she told us that Tom had arranged to make Cleveland his focus point for future journalistic ventures, so they planned to live here. As for herself, in terms of founding her firm, she had been in touch with several international investors and prospects were good.
Moreover, Zoe looked forward to sitting down with our team once more when she could apply for U.S. citizenship in three years.
