Citizenship w/ children question

[FLRussianHubby]

What is the name of your state (only U.S. law)? FL

Hello. My wife gained her green card due to our marriage. Now, she has decided to apply for citizenship.

We, like many others, had some marital problems and she wound up having a baby with another man. Since then, we reconciled and now raise the baby as our own even though I am not the biological father.

When speaking to our immigration lawyer, he advised us to not list our daughter on the citizenship application and also not to list her as a dependent on our 1040 tax returns. The concern is that my name is not on the birth certificate even though she was born during our marriage. Our daughter was born here and is an American citizen.

My question is: should we follow the lawyer's advice or should we list our daughter on the application and just tell the truth if questioned? Also, what are the chances that they will even be concerned about our daughter, being she is already a citizen?

Thanks in advance.What is the name of your state (only U.S. law)?

 

[candg918]

You need the assistance of a family law attorney to get this mess straightened out especially if the biological father has been recognized as your daughter's legal father.

 

[FLRussianHubby]

A couple of things:

1) While my name is not on the birth certificate, neither is the name of the biological father. Only my wife is listed.

2) When we originally applied for the green card, we did not include our daughter on the forms, as we were advised by several sources (including posts here) that including her when she was already a citizen could cause severe problems. One poster who was even in the same situation had to get a Congressman to help fix the damage it did to their child's status as a result of putting their citizen child's name on that form.

Now, one lawyer even advised us that we are in a catch-22: If we list our daughter now but didn't before, they could say we were lying previously and deport my wife. But, if we don't list her now even though she was on our tax return, we risk them claiming that we are lying now.....

We even spoke to a lawyer who refused to offer us information simply because he felt that his answers could get HIM in trouble!