# What immigration lawyers collect from clients and sponsors

Source: https://dokutrak.com/requests/immigration-lawyers
Author: Arthur Teboul, DokuTrak
Published: 2026-11-11
Language: en-US

> Immigration attorneys collect passports, birth and marriage certificates, tax returns, W-2s, pay stubs and bank statements from clients and sponsors for family-based and employment petitions. Requests go out at intake and again when USCIS issues a request for evidence. The friction: foreign-language documents without a translation, expired passports, and sponsors who send last year’s tax return or only its first page.

A petition rests on its evidence, and most of that evidence sits with the client, a spouse or a sponsor, sometimes in another country. Civil documents like birth and marriage certificates can take weeks to order, so they go on the first request, while income documents for the affidavit of support follow.

Cases stall when a certificate arrives as a faded copy, when a translation is missing, or when the sponsor’s income documents cover the wrong year. Clients abroad may struggle to scan, so asking early for clear, complete pages saves a round trip later.

## Request guides

- [US passport](https://dokutrak.com/requests/immigration-lawyers/passport)
- [Marriage certificate](https://dokutrak.com/requests/immigration-lawyers/marriage-certificate)
- [Prior-year tax return](https://dokutrak.com/requests/immigration-lawyers/prior-year-tax-return)
- [Pay stub](https://dokutrak.com/requests/immigration-lawyers/pay-stub)
- [Bank statement](https://dokutrak.com/requests/immigration-lawyers/bank-statement)

## Ask once. DokuTrak does the chasing.

- Your client uploads from one link, with no account and no password.
- Reminders go out on a schedule, by default 2, 5, 10 and 14 days after the request, until the file arrives.
- You accept every file or mark it for re-upload, and your client gets the note by email. The AI never accepts a file.

14-day free trial, no card. Add one only to keep going.