I-864: Irrelevant fields & Insufficient space for China phone no.

[unmepbmn]

Hi,

 

I'm filling out the I-864 Affidavit of Support form (dated 07/02/2015) and ran into some confusion. I would appreciate any help or input.

 

1. Should I leave the fields that are irrelevant to me blank or should I type 'N/A' for these?
   
   The I-864 Instructions says "If a question does not apply to you, type or print “N/A,”unless otherwise directed". I have also read elsewhere online from people who said they had received a checklist for leaving items on the I-864 blank and advised to enter "N/A".
   
   However, on the new I-864 form, there are many fields which DO NOT allow me to type "N/A" (specifically, it doesn't allow the slash "/") such as Accompanying Family Members in Part 3, Interpretator information in Part 9 and Preparor information in Part 10.
   
   
2. On Part 2, Item 7, which is for the telephone number of the principal immigrant, the form allows entering only 10 digits but the mobile phone numbers in China are 11 digits! So the form does not allow me to enter the last digit of the Chinese mobile number.
   
   I have thought about printing the completed form to another PDF and then use the Typerwriter function in Acrobat Pro, to manually type in the 11 digit phone number in that space. However dong so will not update the 2D barcode at the bottom of the page which USCIS (and probably NVC) seems to use to capture the data from the form.

 

I'm curious to know how others have done or would do for these issues. Thank you.

Edited January 20, 2016 by unmepbmn (see edit history)

[dnoblett]

1. Leave blank

 

• N/A means not applicable, for example a natural born US Citizen does not have an A# so answer N/A however where it asks for family members like children, in the case where there could be children however there are none, the appropriate answer is none.
• If the form does not allow for s certain type of data to be entered, then leave blank.

 

2. Page 11 #3 is for anything that does not fit.

[Greg.D.]

Shouldn't she have a US phone number at this point?

 

Using typewriter over a blank will not help: these acrobat forms (and they really are acrobat, rather than pdf) include a macro that converts input into barcode at the bottom. (be sure to do this on a Win computer with Acrobat). So, it would ignore your text.

 

I have to say I did some N/As but also left a lot of things blank. I may have screwed up, I'll know soon.

[newacct]

I've noticed that you can enter disallowed characters with only a warning (but it will let you do it) if you disable JavaScript in Acrobat Reader's preferences (make sure to turn it back on afterwards). Not sure how this affects the barcode.

[unmepbmn]

1. Leave blank

 

• N/A means not applicable, for example a natural born US Citizen does not have an A# so answer N/A however where it asks for family members like children, in the case where there could be children however there are none, the appropriate answer is none.
• If the form does not allow for s certain type of data to be entered, then leave blank.

 

2. Page 11 #3 is for anything that does not fit.

1. I want to leave them blank too but reading what some others had posted regarding getting a checklist for leaving this blank had me second guessing myself. And it didn't help that the restrictions on the form fields contradict the form instructions itself.

 

2. I will definitely use Part 11 for the too long to fit phone number.Thanks dnoblett!

 

 

Shouldn't she have a US phone number at this point?

 

Using typewriter over a blank will not help: these acrobat forms (and they really are acrobat, rather than pdf) include a macro that converts input into barcode at the bottom. (be sure to do this on a Win computer with Acrobat). So, it would ignore your text.

 

I have to say I did some N/As but also left a lot of things blank. I may have screwed up, I'll know soon.

She doesn't have a US number, she is still in China.

 

I realized that the barcode at the bottom would not be updated to reflect the text I input with the typewriter function in Acrobat Pro. If an actual human reads the form, then this manual "typewriting" would work. It won't work if they only scan the 2D barcode at the bottom of the page, but if this were so I wonder what happens to people who manually handwrite the forms.

 

Hope you post back about if or not you ran into any problems with the N/As and the blanks. Thanks Greg D.

 

 

I've noticed that you can enter disallowed characters with only a warning (but it will let you do it) if you disable JavaScript in Acrobat Reader's preferences (make sure to turn it back on afterwards). Not sure how this affects the barcode.

Thanks newacct. Disabling the Acrobat JavaScript stops the 2D barcode from being updated with the changes made to any field at all.

[wawster]

My I-864 was filled in by RapidVisa, by information I gave them, so I didn't have to think about whether to put in N/A's or not. but in looking at it, ...

 

Part 2 - #6 was N/A. The daytime telephone number had 16 digits (01186158*********)

Part 3 - all of #3-27 had an N/A in each space.

 

Part 4 - #2C, G and H were N/A. 4f and g were N/A. 12 was None, and 13 was N/A

Part 6 - #3-14 were N/A. but 1b-1d were left blank. 17 was N/A.

Part 7 - #1-4 were left blank, but 5a and b were N/A.. 7,8 and 9 were N/A.

Part 8 - #1b was N/A as was 2.

All of part 9 was N/A

all of part 10 was left blank

 

So it looks like N/A's are used a lot, None is used sometimes, and blanks are left sometimes. I'm not sure of the reasons why, but my 864 was accepted with no issues. I know that the I-864 is a sticking point that a lot of people have trouble with. I hope that this helps a little, and isn't too confusing!

[unmepbmn]

Thanks wawster for your detailed reply.

[pandacatfish]

My wife just successfully passed the interview in Guangzhou and we used almost exactly wawster's N/A and blanks (Thanks wawster!).

 

However, please note that wawster had someone else fill out the i-864. If you are doing it yourself, your i-864 will be a little different and page 10 should be all N/A.

 

Thanks again wawster!

[dnoblett]

Just be aware N/A means not applicable. Should not be on lines where the question is applicable however there in none.

 

Whereas NONE means question applies however there is none. Example no middle name or no income (0), the questions is applicable however there is none.

[wawster]

Pandacatfish,

 

Glad it helped a little, and congratulations to you and your sweetie!!

And thanks Dan, for making sense out of the N/A's versus blanks or "None"s. I was curious as to why one was one way, and others went another way.

Had me kinda hornswoggled....