Information for sponsors

Are you eligible?

Here are few requirements to become a sponsor:

Be lawfully present resident or an U.S. person - one of the below:
- U.S. citizens or nationals
- Lawful permanent residents, lawful temporary residents, or conditional permanent residents
- Nonimmigrants in lawful status (actual nonimmigrant status without violation the terms or conditions of the status)
- Asylees, refugees, parolees
- TPS holders or beneficiaries of deferred action (including DACA) or Deferred Enforced Departure.
There could be multiple sponsors per beneficiary, all of which should satisfy above requirements.
Sponsor must provide a statement from bank showing the transactions and balance.
Sponsor could provide assets that they would use to cover beneficiary's financial needs.
Sponsor must provide their employment statement and a federal tax income transcript.

Income eligibility calculator

Your state

Household size (all ages)

Total income (pre tax, with subsidies)

Asssets net value (cost - debt)

Fill out form to get results

USCIS might include beneficiary into sponsor's household even if beneficiary will live separately. We do not store or send values you enter here to any third parties, or even to our servers. We do not guarantee the accuracy of the eligibility. Data is taken from Federal Poverty Guidelines

Do you want to become a sponsor? Click here

What counts towards income and assets?

There are some sources of income that you can specify:

Employment with W-2.
Non W-2 but taxable income, that includes contractor work.
Non-taxable income that includes housing and other government benefits.
Income from investments, such as regular dividend payments.
Income from business or self employment (due to a nature of irregular income, it is recommended to have a good buffer on income requirement).
You can NOT specify any proceeds from illegal activities or sources.

You will need to provide a statement from bank for past year indicating the income. In addition, you will need a supporting documentation for each type of income.

Here are examples of what could be used as an asset:

Any asset that could be converted into cash within 12 months.
Home value (last appraised value of home minus sum of all loans secured by the home).
Your brokerage accounts, such as stocks, bonds and other securities.
Your retirement accounts such as IRA, 401k etc.
You can only specify net value of automobiles in your household excluding the first one.

For each asset you will be required to provide a proof of ownership and evidence of loans secured by the asset.

Joint (multiple) sponsors

In case a petitioner does not have enough financial resources to be eligible, they could list more sponsors on the form. In such scenario, either of the listed sponsor should qualify for the lawful presence and income requirements for each one's households - the incomes can NOT be pooled together for qualification. However, in case the petition is approved, all sponsors, including petitioner could help the beneficiary financially.

You also will have a chance to write a short description how you want to support the beneficiary once they are in the USA - you could use this to write a compelling reason in case you are very close to satisfying the requirements.

Joint sponsors are not required to attend an interview, in case it's scheduled, however the petitioner must specify and / or bring their supporting documentation (financial information).

Interview

Throughout due diligence process, an USCIS officer could invite you for an interview. It is not an often practice, but it could happen in complex cases. You might also need an appointment to provide your biometric data (fingerprints, photo, signature).

If you are recently an immigrant or nonimmmigrant resident, you will already have an A number and it's likely that you will skip the appointment and the interview. Make sure to specify it in the form.

Filing again

In some cases, due to errors in I-134 or an important update in information, as well as case being stuck in the queue, you will need to file I-134 again. Make sure to use new email address - if you don't have one but you use gmail, you could use prefixes like yourname+prefix@gmail.com

Make sure to correct information or review it with someone else. If you are sure that everything was correct the first time, consider contacting an expert

Acting in bad faith

Sponsors should not:

Lie on their application in order to increase chances of approval.
Use Uniting For Ukraine program for criminal purposes such as human trafficking or drug smuggling.
Use program to transport illegal goods through the border.

While it was determined that I-134 is not enforceable, acting in bad faith might have some serious repercussions in future, for both sponsor and a beneficiary.

If you are not sure whether your actions will be illegal or cause any issues, please contact a lawyer