Keep enrollment dates and conditions separate from government notices and the child’s actual identity and relationship records. Provide material requested through the applicable process.
Do not replace civil evidence with enrollment information
A school file may help household planning without proving every immigration fact. Preserve the real birth, relationship and application information rather than relying on a school’s classification of the child as a dependent. Keep two files with two different purposes and resist the urge to merge them for convenience.
The immigration file holds civil records — birth and relationship evidence, identity documents, and anything issued through the applicable process — and it is the only one that answers immigration questions. The school file holds the offer, the conditions, the fee schedule and the correspondence, and it answers questions about a place in a classroom. The failure worth avoiding is a household that produces an enrollment letter when asked for proof of a relationship, on the reasoning that the school lists the child as a dependent.
A school’s classification reflects its own admissions and billing rules and establishes nothing about the relationship or the child’s eligibility. Where a document genuinely belongs in both, keep the original in the immigration file and a copy in the other. Record on each file which party issued the document and when, because the first question asked about an unfamiliar record is usually who produced it rather than what it says.