A1. So far it appears to me and again we don’t have the details yet. The very least you will need is proof of marriage and birth certificate. I don’t think that is the normal requirement but I believe proof of relationship should be acquired and kept. Then the question what if the names on the birth certificate and passport are different.... we still don’t know lot about these issues. I would say an affidavit explaining the discrepancy and probably making efforts to remove the discrepancy whether you want to have the passport issued under the correct name or whether you want to have a Indian court give a declaratory judgment of some kind that the name X and Y are the same person. Something like that would be a good idea. But it is not going to stop you H-4 EAD application at least in my mind. I think even education certificates are irrelevant because the H-4 EAD is not given based upon what degrees you have, it is given based upon your relationship with the H-1  holder who is at a certain level of maturity in the green card process. I am not worried about the laminated original document. That doesn’t bother me. 

A2. First of all USCIS just roughly follows the first in, first out rule. They are not always bound by that rule because there are so many variations within the processing times if it is given to a particular officer, which depends on what is their case load is and what if they have to take a couple of days off. It’s not always predictable that you will always be first in and first out.  

A3. Under the regulations USCIS should adjudicate EADs within 90 days. But in case you don’t know they are finding it very difficult to keep to that time. I will be surprised if they are able to keep to the 90 days process, but if it is merely administrative process and there is not a whole lot of investigation involved then I don’t see why not but I really don’t know. 

A4. The government has said as long as you have one I-140 that remains unrevoked they will give us the H-4 EAD. But if the I-140 is revoked then H-4 EAD will not be given.

FAQ Transcript:

Green card which is employment based does not require you to enter into slavery.  It requires only this. On the date your green card was approved it was your intention to work at your job indefinitely, not permanently. So if I got my approval today and today I continue working indefinitely for the next few days or years but a week later I got a better job can I leave and the answer is yes. I think you can. But let’s say I already have an offer at hand and I got my green card and I want to go and would that be considered indefinite.  Probably not.  The government can take an objection but even there if the job was same or similar to what the green card job was I think a good argument can be made under AC21 portability. Currently the law requires only to have indefinite intention but on the date you got your green card. However once the green c ard is approved and if your intention changes, then I do not see any problem with it. 

FAQ Transcript:

The question here is can I have permanent residency in more than one country?

Answer is No, unless you meet the following requirements. If the job being offered to you as a Green Card job is more than 50% qualitatively different than the software engineer. If you join as a software engineer you got 3 years of experience then next job offered is Project Manager for example where more than 50% of your time spent in managing projects not a hands on architecture or development. Now you can use the experience you gained because job offered is different than the job you had before. There is common sense reason for it. When you joined this employer you had zero experience, after three years employer claims that they require 3 year experience for the same job. USCIS or DOL would want to know what changed that their requirement changed. 

PD (priority date) date transfer is supposed to be automatic. We don’t have to do anything about it and it is my understanding what USCIS does is they do periodic sweeps in fact several times a month. They do a sweep like queries of their database and whoever is entitled to whichever priority date at the earliest they automatically assign that to you. So if you have one I- 140 approved earlier another I-140 going on or approved they will automatically assign you the earliest priority date to which you are entitled. That may or may not reflect in your approval though. So just because it does not reflect in your approval it doesn’t mean that you are not going to get the earlier priority date. You can confirm it by opening a service request. You can confirm by asking them your priority date.

Hence the answer is you are eligible for filing I-485 automatically when the 2009 date becomes current. All you have to do is attach a copy of the earlier approval notice with it along with the current approval and you should be fine.

If you have criminal conviction, lot of times you can have criminal convictions for minor problems for example you got into altercation with somebody  or some kind of public nuisance conviction, in  this  case selling alcohol to minor did not check the ID. So the question is how does that impact my immigration status?

First of all, there are 2 categories of crimes misdemeanors and felonies. Felonies are anything which are punishable don't have to receive that punishment but punishable by more than a year. They are more serious crime and other is misdemeanor is year or less than a year.

So we look at the crime is misdemeanor or it is a felony, then we look whether there is moral turpitude or not. Moral turpitude is the term for dishonesty, reckless, disregard or safety of other people or attack on other people. So these are typically they call them offenses of moral turpitude. So if there is moral turpitude and there is felony chances are, you got the problem. But if there is only one misdemeanor even if it’s turpitude crime it is exempted by something called Petty offense exception. Petty offense exception says if you have only one misdemeanor and the sentence actually imposed upon you was less than 6 months, whether you actually served it or not. Even if it’s a suspended sentence it is considered to be sentence than we leave you alone, give you H-1, F-1 or Green card so petty offense exception. So once again we look at the crime if it is a crime of moral turpitude or not, if it’s not chances are you are going to be OK. If it’s a Felony of moral turpitude you have a problem. If it is only one crime misdemeanor you don't have problem, very generic overview.

Normally when I look into these cases, first thing I do is try to see if we get away from conviction. So if we get the case settled with the government, plea bargain entered without the conviction. 

What is conviction under Immigration law?

A conviction under immigration law is where you admit having committed the offense. If you have to admit the offense then it is conviction, no matter what kind of deal we make. First of all we try to get away from conviction, if there is no conviction there is no crime. If we can do that then we are safe. If we are not able to do so we bargain for misdemeanor. That’s the way typically we handle these cases. . Make sure it is misdemeanor under the state law. You say that it is misdemeanor C. I don't know what that means. State law has to be checked. But it looks that you are going to be OK.