Income is very subjective, meaning that the decision comes down to the discretion of the officer reviewing your case. We've seen numerous cases where the USCIS officer didn't even accept the assets being included, or if they didn't accept them, or they didn't believe that they were adequate.
Keep in mind when you're using assets, you need to first prove ownership. And that's usually by providing things like the deed of your property, the mortgage statement on your house, or anything showing that you physically own the property.
And then, secondly, you have to show the value of that and it needs to be appraised by a third party, somebody who is actually in the business of appraising assets. And then the third and last thing is it needs to be able to be liquidated, sold, converted to cash. So they look at those three things, and a lot of times people will provide the title to their car, well you cannot use your primary vehicle as an asset. It has to be a second or third vehicle.
Vehicles are not really a good example of an asset, because it's very rare that the officer even accepts that as an asset because income is very subjective and they don't always accept assets. If you do use assets, it's best to have cash, stocks, etc., and it's best if the cash and stocks are in the United States.
Sometimes foreign assets cannot be taken by the U.S. government or liquidated and therefore will not be allowed as assets. The government is using the assets as collateral against any welfare received by the alien(s) you are sponsoring, and therefore they need to be assets which can be physically seized without red tape.
Sustainable income is income that is over the required amount for that three year period of time. You don't want to have earned $50,000 one year, zero the next year and then $60,000 the next. It needs to be consistant and sustainable, otherwise expect to receive a request for evidence.
