Hello all,

I am currently in H1B Visa, i have been on it for little more than 1 year. I am here in USA. Just few days a go I got married to a girl who is in USA and is currently in Optional Practical Training or OPT ie, F1 visa. Now that we are married do I and her as well need inform the USCIS of our change in marital status, or is not necessary to do so. Please advice

How can it be not necessary Kritrimpraani !!!! If you do not file for change of status, your wife would be out of status. You need to be smart and alert to avoid these situations.
You need to file I-539 -Application To Extend/Change Nonimmigrant Status for your wife. Go to USCIS.gov and download the form with instructions. The fee is $200.00. You have to mail it to the Vermont center I believe.

If you need more help, you can always count on me.

Hello eikenella,

thanx for your prompt reply and your input. one question though, As u said that if dont file Extend/Change Nonimmigrant Status for my wife that she would be out of status, however she already has her own F1 status that is good up untill october of 2007. The idea here is not to have her in H4 as her employer will file her H1B this April. So with this in hand do u still think i should file Extend/Change Nonimmigrant status for my wife? Is Extend/Change Nonimmigrant staus means H4.......Would really appreciate your input. Thanx in advance.

I meant to say that she will be out of status after the OPT expires. You did not mention about her H-1B before so I didn't know the facts very well. I didn't know that she was employed too. Yes, I-539 changes her status to H-4.
You guys are lucky that her OPT expires in October, that's when the H-1B visa starts. So you could wait until the end of September to see if the H-1B visa from HER employer gets approved or not. If it does not get approved, then you can file I-539 to change her status to H-4. But for right now, she is already in good shape. If she is employed tell her that she does not need to pay Social and Medicaid tax under OPT. You just have to pay federal and/or state tax.

Thanks a lot eikenella, for the input and thanks for the suggestion about filing the tax. While on it allow me to share this little thing with you.

Most of the employers dont want to take off the Medicare and SSN tax from some selected employees only as they really dont know much about it.It was the same for me for in my OPT days. While filing my taxes I tried to get this SSN and Medicare tax back, the IRS kept on asking for different documents like employer verifications and so on. Even after complying with all the IRS demands, I never got my money back. I think the best bet under these circumstances is not to claim this tax with IRS rather have these taxes not taken out from the pay check -honestly been there faced that!! But of course many payroll accountant are not aware of this fact - and hence ask the employee to claim it from the IRS, so its kind of catch 22 situation. Well to anybody looking forward to claim their SSN and Medicare taxes I would suggest them to really talk about this with their payroll accountants have them not take it out of the pay check in the first place.

Anyways thanks alot for all your input and your suggestion. It was really great to hear from you. bye for now.