Hi all,
long story short, my fiance (us citizen) and i (non-us) live and work in london, uk. We want to apply for a green card for me at the us embassy in london and hopefully move to the states together in 2011. We are getting married next month.

Now, here is our dilemma: his uk permit expires in early 2011 (january) and we were thinking of applying for my green card soon after our wedding, so that we allow ourselves enough time to get the green card before his current uk visa expires, so that we can move to the states together. Note that he is not allowed to file on my behalf in the uk if he doesn't have a valid uk permit.
For those who don't know, green cards in the us embassy in london take about 4-5 months or so to be processed (much quicker than in the states, which is also why we want to apply in london). Let me also say that, if he has to, he can extend his uk permit, but this can be a very lenghty process (6 months or more) and a waste of time since the uk permit will essentially be useless if we are going to move to the states. So mainly just a delay in our plans.

But, if we file for my green card this summer, as we are thinking, we run into another potential problem: a crappy affidavit of financial support, although we are going to have his mom as my joint sponsor, who earns way more than the poverty line. However, to establish usa domicile (since he's been in the uk for the past few years) i think my fiance has to present 3 years of irs tax returns. He only has one for 2009, which also looks very poor, as he only started working full time in august '09. In 2008 he was a student in the uk with 0 income (so didn't file) and in 2007, back in the states, he worked for his dad after graduation for part of the year before he moved to the uk to study, but sadly it was under the table, so no tax return there. On the contrary, if we were able to present our 2010 tax return in the affidavit, we would be able to show a very decent, full-time salary for at least the latest tax year, and then show the 2009 one (meagre but still...) and just provide proof that he was a student in 2008 and made no money. So two tax returns instead of just one.
Now, i know that all this is uk income and that his us income would still be 0, which is why we'd use his mom as a joint sponsor anyway. But i'm afraid that presenting just one (and poor) tax return, even with a strong joint sponsor, may reduce our credibility and may weaken our application, whereas presenting a strong tax return+a previous one (even though not as good) + a joint sponsor will help our case more.
Or am i wrong and as long as we have a good joint sponsor, they are not going to care about our own affidavit??

Apologies for the long message. In a nutshell our dilemma is: do we file this summer and risk our application being weaker with a crappy affidavit of support (but with a joint sponsor anyway) since we won't have filed for 2010 yet? Or do we go through the long and unecessary process of renewing my husband to be's uk visa, have our moving plans delayed by at least half a year, but present a much stronger case? What are people's opinions on this? What would you do in our place?

Finally, would it help if he brought along his paychecks to the interview to show that he currently has a good full-time salary, even though it's not us income? (at least it would show good work prospects). That's if he doesn't have a 2010 tax return to show.