How to fill out U4U paperwork
In this section, you will find question-by-question advice on filling out Form I-134A
Documents You Need to Have on Hand
If you are a US citizen, you will need your valid US passport, your Certificate of Naturalization, or your US birth certificate. You will need only one of these documents;
If you are not a US citizen, you will need your valid passport and some proof of your legal status in the US;
Letter from employer (should include: date and nature of employment; salary paid; and whether the position is temporary or permanent). Skip this item if self-employed;
Letter from your bank (should include: the date the account opened, the total amount deposited for the past year; and the present balance) OR the last 12 of your monthly statements. You can download these files directly from your bank’s website;
Your last filed Tax return. Only the first two pages of the 1040 form are enough, you don’t need to submit all the attachments;
Last month’s statement from a bank/brokerage/mutual fund where you keep your savings (not a must-have);
Copy of the first page of the beneficiary’s passport;
Beneficiary’s email (make sure it is valid! It is a good idea to send a test message to that address);
Beneficiary’s place of birth (you will need city, region, and country, the passport has only city and country);
Beneficiary’s previous names (maiden name or any other names used before).
Getting Started
Name of the Individual Agreeing to Financially Support the Beneficiary
On whose behalf are you filing this form?
This form can be filed ONLY on behalf of another individual, so choose "Another individual who is the beneficiary."
I am filing this form under one of the following:
Select “Ukraine”
Is someone assisting you with completing this declaration?
If somebody is helping you, but he/she is not a lawyer or a paralegal, choose "no.” If he/she is a lawyer or a paralegal, choose "yes," and note that your lawyer should be able to answer all the questions covered in this article.
About the Individual Agreeing to Financially Support the Beneficiary
What is your current legal name?
You, the sponsor, should write your name the same way it is written on your current government-issued ID.
Have you used other names since birth?
Provide your maiden name or other names you might have used before.
Provide the name of the organization, group, or entity that is providing support to the beneficiary with you (if any).
If you are sponsoring the beneficiary along with a group or association, give the name.
Contact Information for the Individual Agreeing to Financially Support the Beneficiary
How may we contact you?
You must provide a phone number, otherwise, the form will return an error. The email address will be prefilled — this is the email you used to create your USCIS account.
What is your current mailing address?
The country has to be the USA. The rest is your regular home address.
Is your mailing address the same as the physical address?
If you use a P.O. Box to receive mail, your real home address goes here.
When and Where the Individual Agreeing to Financially Support the Beneficiary Was Born?
What is your date of birth?
ATTENTION: you have to write it in the correct order: mm/dd/yyyy
What is your city or town of birth?
Write it the same as it is written on your Birth Certificate (if you were born in the US), or in your current passport.
What is your state or province of birth?
See above.
What is your country of birth?
See above.
What is your sex?
Write your sex as it appears in your passport or other government-issued ID. If you do not identify as male or female on this document, select “X.”
Immigration Information for the Individual Agreeing to Financially Support the Beneficiary
What is your current immigration status?
Choose the status that applies to you:
• US Citizen
• US National
• Lawful Permanent Resident
• Nonimmigrant*
• Other
*Nonimmigrant status includes everything that has an expiration date: TPS, work visa, humanitarian parole, etc.
What is your A-Number?
An A-number (or A#) is the "Alien Number" given to every foreign national that enters the US for more than travel.
• If you were born in the USA, check “I do not have or know my A-Number” and move on.
• If you are a Naturalized US citizen, then your A-Number is on the certificate of naturalization.
• If you are a Permanent Resident, then it is on your residence card.
• If you are a non-immigrant, it should be on any letter you ever received from USCIS.
• If you know that you should have it, but have no idea where to find it, that's ok: mark that you don't know it, and move on.
If you mark your status as non-immigrant, then a new question will pop up: "What is your Form I-94 Arrival-Departure Record Number?" I-94 is a white card that was given to you at the border. Sometimes it is stapled to the passport, sometimes not. If you still have it, copy its number in this section. If you have no idea where it might be, you can look it up on the DHS website: I94 - Official Website.
What is your Social Security Number?
Enter your nine-digit SSN.
If you don’t have one, check “I do not have a U.S. Social Security Number.”
What is your USCIS Online Account Number?
If this is the first time you are dealing with USCIS online, then you don't have this number.
If you have filled out an I-134 in the past or submitted a different kind of online document, then this number will be prefilled.
If you know that you should have this number, but don't have access to your old account, that's ok: mark it as "I don't know it" and move on.
What is your relationship with the beneficiary?
If you are related, choose one of the options from the list.
If you are NOT related, choose "Not Specified.”
Employment Information about the Individual Agreeing to Financially Support the Beneficiary
What is your employment status?
• Employed (includes full-time, part-time, and self-employed).
• Unemployed
• Retired
• Other
What is your type of employment?
Are you working for somebody, or self-employed?
Employed as/ Self-Employed as
What is your occupation/position?
Name of employer
If you checked the self-employed option, this question will not be asked.
What is your current employer's address?
If you are self-employed, you can enter either your home address or the address you are doing business from.
Financial Information About the Individual Agreeing to Financially Support the Beneficiary
The following questions will ask you about your financial situation. You will also be asked about your dependents — note that this DOES NOT include people you are sponsoring. If there is a co-sponsor or co-sponsors in addition to you — i.e., other people who will be supporting the beneficiary — you will be asked about their financial situation as well.
For each co-sponsor, and you want to include their income in the I-134A, press "+ Add entry" and fill in the questions that appear.. If you have several co-sponsors, add each of them separately. All of them will be summed up, and their contribution will be added to your income.
Income Information for the Individual Agreeing to Financially Support the Beneficiary
What is the total number of dependents?
Use the same number you use for tax purposes. If you have not filed US tax forms yet, put the number of children that live with you. (You can look up the exact definition of “dependents” on the IRS website)
What is the total income?
This is all the income that you show on the tax form. Or more, if you had a raise this year or started a new job.
Additional income information for the individual agreeing to financially support the beneficiary
Does any of the income listed come from illegal activity or source (such as proceeds from illegal gambling or illegal drug sales)?
Hopefully, the answer is no.
Does any of the income listed above come from means-tested public benefits as defined in 8 CFR 213a.1?
Do you receive Supplemental Security Income? Is any other money paid to you by the US government exclusively because of your low income? If so, answer "yes" and provide details.
Specific Contributions to the Beneficiary
You are responsible for receiving, maintaining, and supporting the beneficiary for the duration of their temporary stay in the United States. Describe the resources you plan to use or provide to ensure the beneficiary has adequate financial support to cover their basic living needs.
Provide a short description of what you plan to provide. You might be providing food. Airfare. Or a specific monetary amount, in which case, please specify if this is a weekly, monthly, or annual amount.
You are responsible for ensuring the beneficiary has safe and appropriate housing for the duration of their parole in the United States. Describe how you will ensure that the beneficiary's housing needs are met, including where the beneficiary will reside during their temporary stay in the United States if known.
Provide a short description of what you plan to provide.
IMPORTANT: If you know that your beneficiary is going to live somewhere else, you can say that you "will provide assistance in securing housing and help the beneficiary with the initial paperwork." If you know exactly where they will be staying, you can write it right here. E.g., "The beneficiary will be staying with her son, [ son's name], at [son's address]. With any questions please contact him at [son's phone number]."
You are responsible for assisting the beneficiary's access to available services and benefits such as learning English, securing employment opportunities once authorized to work, enrolling children in school, and helping to enroll for benefits for which they are eligible. Describe what steps you plan to take as part of these responsibilities.
As a possible answer, you can say: "Will put the beneficiary in contact with the local Office of Refugee Resettlement and assist with paperwork applying for Medicaid, SNAP, and filling out i765."
Assets of the Individual Agreeing to Financially Support the Beneficiary
What is the total amount (U.S. dollars)
These are resources that you can use to support the beneficiary. Can use, does not mean that you have to use them! Do NOT include your house value here.
Have you previously submitted Form I-134 or Form I-134A on behalf of a person other than the beneficiary listed on this Form I-134A?
If you are applying for a family, include here only the people that were already approved.
About the Beneficiary
ATTENTION: All information should be written EXACTLY as it appears in the beneficiary's passport.
Note on DATES: Ukrainian passports list dates as day/month/year, but the I-134A requires the month/day/year format. The month is also written in letters, so the correct way to write the date in the example below would be 09/20/1958.
Beneficiary Name
What is the beneficiary's current legal name?
Ukrainians don't have middle names and patronymic names are not listed in the passports, so leave the middle name field empty. When you do, the program will put "NMN" on all the papers in place of the middle name, which just means No Middle Name. Don't panic when you see it on the letters coming from USCIS - this is exactly how it should be.
Has the beneficiary used any other names since birth?
If your beneficiary used different names before, list them here. For example, a woman's maiden name will go in this section. Please, fill in ALL the fields, not only the ones that have had changes.
Beneficiary Contact Information
How may we contact the beneficiary?
Do NOT include the beneficiary's phone number here, list only the email. The reason is that as the beneficiary moves from place to place, from country to country, the phone number will change, and you do not want USCIS sending anything to a number that nobody has access to.
ATTENTION: Beneficiary's email. Be 150% sure that it is a working email that the beneficiary has access to! It is strongly recommended that the sponsor creates a separate Gmail account just for this purpose and gives the beneficiary access to it. This way both the sponsor and the beneficiary will be able to check it. Since it's a brand new account, USCIS letters are not going to be missed, accidentally deleted, or lost in spam.
What is the beneficiary's current mailing address?
In cases where the mailing address is different from the physical address, provide the physical address. Nothing will be mailed there, and all communication will be through e-mail and the documents folder of the account.
In terms of the actual address, if the beneficiary still lives at home, you can include their full home address here. If they are in a refugee camp or in any other temporary housing, listing only the town and country is enough too.
Is the beneficiary's mailing address the same as the physical address?
Say “no” as per the discussion above.
When and Where the Beneficiary Was Born?
What is the beneficiary's date of birth?
ATTENTION: you have to write it in the correct order: mm/dd/yyyy
What is the beneficiary's city or town of birth?
What is the beneficiary's state or province of birth?
What is the beneficiary's country of birth?
The form asks for three fields to be filled: town/region/country and all three need to be filled, otherwise, the program will return an error. The Ukrainian passports list only two; either town or region and the country. The country is listed in English; the first part — the town or the region in Ukrainian. Ask your beneficiary to provide you with their full place of birth, i.e. the one that will include all three parts. If they have any papers that have English spelling of these places, they should copy them from there. If all they have is a birth certificate in Ukrainian, they can spell it any way they want, but they will need to remember the spelling they used for any future immigration paperwork.
Other Information about the Beneficiary
A grant of parole is a discretionary determination granted on a case-by-case basis for urgent humanitarian reasons or significant public benefit. Please explain why a favorable exercise of discretion is merited for this individual.
This question was added in July 2023. We spoke to USCIS about it and they told us that the answer to the question helps USCIS provide a more compelling case to CBP as to why the named beneficiary should be granted humanitarian parole.
IMPORTANT:
Do NOT copy-paste answers from your friends or from social media. Make sure to come up with your own answers. USCIS told us that multiple responses submitted with the same language could flag those applications as potentially fraudulent in the USCIS system.
Do NOT lie. Keep it generic if details are not available. You can talk about how your beneficiary wants to keep their family safe, and they are ready to come, work, and contribute to the US society.
Everyone’s situation is unique and you should highlight compelling facts about your beneficiary's unique circumstances that convey your beneficiary's urgency to travel to the United States. This could include such factors as reuniting with family/close friends following traumatic events, losing one's home or access to shelter/necessities in Ukraine, risk of physical harm by remaining in Ukraine, needing to find safety for their children, and experiencing serious health issues that could be treated in the U.S. There could be other good justifications that apply to certain beneficiaries based on their individual circumstances.
There is a minimum requirement of 700 characters which is about 7 average sentences.
What is the beneficiary's sex?
List the gender the same way it is listed in the passport.
What is the beneficiary's marital status?
What is the beneficiary's country of citizenship or nationality?
Citizenship = the country that issued the passport.
What country issues the beneficiary's most recent passport?
Name the country that issued the passport.
What is the number of the beneficiary's most recently issued passport?
Be VERY CAREFUL when copying the passport number. Check and recheck it.
For children that do not have their own passport but are added to the passport of their parents — use the parents’ number and expiration date.
What is the expiration date of the beneficiary's most recently issued passport?
ATTENTION: you have to write it in the correct order: mm/dd/yyyy
What is the beneficiary's A-Number?
If your beneficiary has an A# and knows it, then list it, otherwise mark that you don't know it, and move on. They might have it if they worked or studied in the US before, but if they don't know it, it is not a problem.
What is the beneficiary's anticipated period of stay in the United States?
"Uniting for Ukraine" is a two-year program, and this period starts at the time the beneficiary crosses the border. So it doesn't really matter what date you put here. One month after the day that you are filling for is as good as any for the arrival day, and two years after that is the date for the departure.
Beneficiary's Financial Information
Beneficiary income information
Provide information about the income of the beneficiary, all of the beneficiary's dependents, and any other individuals the beneficiary financially supports. Do not include any individuals named in the "Financial Information About the Individual Agreeing to Financially Support the Beneficiary" section.
If the beneficiary has a remote job and plans to continue it in the US, you can list it here. Same in case they already secured their employment. Otherwise, you can put a zero income.
What is the beneficiary's total number of dependents?
These would be children under the age of 21 and elderly parents (over 65) traveling with the beneficiary. You need to list them only once, by placing either all dependents on the head of family application, or by splitting the children between the parents.
How much income will the beneficiary's dependents contribute to the beneficiary annually?
Zero, none.
Beneficiary Additional Income Information
Does any of the beneficiary's total income come from an illegal activity or source?
No.
Does any of the beneficiary's total income come from means-tested public benefits as defined in 8 CFR 213a.1?
They are asking only about the US benefits, so the answer is “no” even if this is an elderly person with a Ukrainian pension.
Beneficiary Assets
Provide the current cash value of any assets available to the beneficiary for the expected period of his or her stay.
If the value of the beneficiary's assets is close to the price of the tickets, you can put zero here as this money will be gone by the time they get to the country. If the beneficiary has much more, click "+ Add Entry" and enter information about these accounts. You will also need to submit account statements for the accounts you list here. These need to be translated into English and amounts need to be converted to the US Dollars
What is the total amount (U.S. dollars)?
This is the sum of all accounts listed above. If there were none, then the total value is still zero.
Evidence
This is where you submit all the documents that will support everything you wrote before.
At the very beginning of the form, even before you got to fill in the first field, there was a list of documents that CAN be submitted as evidence of your financial situation. Nowhere was it mentioned that all of them HAVE to be submitted. If you don't have some of the items, or if it is too difficult to obtain them, don't worry about it — you can either substitute this item with something else or just skip it altogether. Here is the full list (submit in duplicate evidence of income and resources, as appropriate):
Statement from an officer of the bank or other financial institution with deposits, identifying the following details regarding the account:
Date account opened
Total amount deposited for the past year; and
Present balance.
Statement(s) from your employer on business stationery showing:
Date and nature of employment
Salary paid
Whether the position is temporary or permanent
Copy of last U.S. federal income tax return filed (tax transcript) OR
A list containing serial numbers and denominations of bonds and the name of record owner(s).
Bank Officer Statement
If you can easily obtain this statement from your bank — great! If you can't, the last 12 bank statements will do just fine, you can find these on your bank's website. Also include the oldest statement that you can find - this will serve as evidence that the account is not a new one.
NOTE: You can upload only 5 files at a time, so you will have to split your 13 files into three groups.
Employer Statement
Again, if you have a statement from your employer with all the required information — great! If you don't, you can submit a few of your most recent pay stubs. If you have them for the last 12 months — perfect. If you have only a few here and there, it will work too.
If you are self-employed, you can skip this section.
When you skip a section, for example, the employment letter, and don't enter anything there, you will receive a warning notice with a yellow exclamation sign. Don't panic! It's ok, you will continue just fine with a couple of these — they don't affect the result at all.
Income Tax Return
Here you need to upload the first two pages of your 1040.
That is if you filed one for the last year, if you didn't, then skip this section.
Bonds
If you entered the bond information in the section about the Sponsor's Financial Information, then this is the place to upload the evidence that you own those bonds. If you said that you don't have any bonds, then skip this section.
Proof of Immigration Status
If you are a US citizen, submit one of the following:
• your US birth certificate
• certificate of naturalization
• the first page of your unexpired US passport.
If you are a permanent resident, submit both sides of your Permanent Resident Card.
If you have a nonimmigrant status, submit a copy of your unexpired visa from your passport.
If you are in the country on a TPS or UHP, submit the first page of your passport and a copy of the page with the TPS/UHP stamp.
Proof of assets of the individual agreeing to financially support the beneficiary
Bank statements about your savings accounts and mutual funds go here. You may include the net value of your home as an asset, but to do that you will need to provide a recent appraisal and either a deed or a mortgage statement showing how much of the appraised value belongs to the bank.
Proof of Beneficiary's Assets
If in the prior sections, you stated that the beneficiary has some funds, then this is the place to submit evidence of those funds. All bank statements need to be translated and amounts converted to US dollars.
Additional Information
If you want to submit something that did not fit any category before, you can do it here. If you don't have anything to add, leave it blank. If you need to submit some additional information, but it does not fit any of the sections, you can do it later in the “Unsolicited Evidence” section that you will have access to AFTER submitting the form.
Review and Submit
Check your Declaration before you Submit
When you get to this point the program will run an automatic check of all the fields.
If it returns any errors, click the "Edit my responses" button and it will take you to the error page.
Fix the error, select in the menu on the left "Review and Submit", and the program will run a new check.
Hurrah! The automatic checks are passed, now it's time for the manual one.
Review the I-134A Form Information
This screen shows EVERYTHING that you typed in. Very carefully read through the whole page, paying special attention to the names, dates (FORMATS!!!), and passport numbers.
At the top of the page, right above the table with all the filled info, there is a link to "View draft snapshot". If you click it, the program will allow you to download everything as a pdf file. This pdf file is actually a paper version of I-134 filled in with all your answers. Many fields will be left empty - don't worry about it, the program adjusted questions based on your prior answers, so many parts of the forms were skipped if they do not apply to your situation. Save this pdf. If you want, you can email it to your beneficiary so that they as well can check that everything is filled in correctly.
The next couple of screens are just your signatures swearing that you know what you are doing, that you understand English, etc.
On the last screen you will be asked to sign the form — print your full name and you are DONE.
Video Instructions
English USCIS Instructions
Ukrainian USCIS Instructions
English LINU Instructions
Ukrainian LINU Instructions
