AOS: NO personal checks accepted in NYC

[manhattanmoon]

Dear all, I just noticed from the I-485 packet received from the mail " Effective March 1, 1999, the New York District Office will NO longer accept personal checks for INS applications. Payment must be made by postal or bank money order, or certified bank check. Do not mail cash." I sent in the complete application yesterday with two personal checks and am afraid if what they says is current they would return the whole packet. It seems that's what happened to Dave on the other thread "checks need to be printed". What shall I do now? Thanks for suggestions.

[wisetiger]

The only thing you can do now is wait and see. If they reject your application they'll send the whole package back to you with a note explaining why. In our case that took two weeks. Frustrating but not the end of the world.

 

I still haven't figured out what "checks need to be printed" meant. We know that the SF office accepts personal checks because others have reported they've recently had their AOS application approved with personal checks. We resubmitted our application on Monday with the checks made out to "Bureau of Citizenship and Immigration Services" instead of "BCIS". I also included a friendly note explaining that I was confused by their message and that I hoped the new checks would be satisfactory. We'll see.

-Dave

[manhattanmoon]

Thanks Dave. I called the national customer service center both the recording and the live person said "Personal check are acceptable, but no second party checks accepted". Since my wife is the primary applicant for I-485 and I am the one who wrote out the checks, does that mean I am the "second party"? Could someone elaborate on this one? Many thanks.

[AZwolfman]

. . ."Personal check are acceptable, but no second party checks accepted". Since my wife is the primary applicant for I-485 and I am the one who wrote out the checks, does that mean I am the "second party"?

A "Second party check" is a check made out to you, which you in turn sign for payment to someone else. If the payee on the front of the check is the same as the person or company that is receiving payment, then it is a first party check. In other words, if the name in the "pay to order of" is the person or company (BCIS) to whom you are sending payment, then it is a first party check. If you wrote out a check from your checkbook, payable to BCIS, then it is a first party check to BCIS. If the BICS subsequently signed the check and gave it to me as payment for updating their systems, it would then become a 2nd party check to me.

 

In other words, if you wrote out a check to BCIS, it is a first party check and you should be fine. B)

 

How's that for elaboration?

[manhattanmoon]

Thanks AZ!

Found this site for AOS experiences if anyone's interested: www.Kamya.com/aos/

one guy from NY had his I-485 returned 2 months after filing because of "endorsed checks are not accepted".....

[Mick]

We played it safe and sent money orders. No problem. They accepted them just fine.