Prepare each child’s birth and civil records, marital status and relevant immigration history, along with petition notices and the intended consular or adjustment route. Accurate dates are essential for any CSPA analysis.
Maintain a dated family file
Preserve filing and approval notices as they arrive, record government correspondence and promptly disclose changes. Resolve differences in names or dates across passports and certificates before application preparation. Ask counsel which visa-availability information and actions must be tracked.
A spreadsheet can organize the facts, but it should not substitute for the legal analysis of age protection and derivative eligibility. Verify the civil documents against each other before they are needed, since discrepancies in names and dates across passports and certificates are common and slow to fix. Prepare each child birth and civil records, marital status and relevant immigration history, together with the petition notices and the intended consular or adjustment route, and resolve any difference before preparation begins.
Preserve filing and approval notices as they arrive and record government correspondence, disclosing changes promptly rather than at the next scheduled meeting. Ask counsel which visa-availability information and actions must be tracked, and by whom. A spreadsheet organises the facts and does not perform the analysis.
Agree who in the family is responsible for keeping the record current.