K-1 Fiancée Visa

The K-1 visa is a non-immigrant visa which enables foreign nationals to come to the United States to marry an American citizen and then to change their status and remain. One of the nice advantages of the K-1 visa is that it allows the fiancé(e) to begin to work immediately upon entry to the United States.

Requirements
In order to obtain a K-1 visa, you, as a U.S. citizen must file a request (called an I-129K petition) with the U.S. immigration and Naturalization Service asking that your fiancé(e) be approved to come to the United States to get married and live here. After the petition is approved, a notice of that approval will automatically be sent to the U.S. embassy or consulate, which you have indicated on the petition, is where your fiancée plans to pick up his or her visa.

There are some strict requirements associated with this visa that make it difficult to plan for a wedding. One of these is that the marriage between the U.S. citizen petitioner (you) and your fiancé(e) must take place within 90 days of his or her arrival to remain in status. Until the marriage takes place, your fiancé(e) is considered a nonimmigrant and his or her stay in the U.S. is only temporary. A fiancé(e) may not obtain an extension of the 90-day original nonimmigrant admission.

The After the marriage takes place, the American citizen relative must file an immigrant visa petition asking that the foreign spouse be granted permanent residency status. This must be filed simultaneously with a number of other forms including a request from the non-American spouse that his or her status be adjusted or changed from that of a fiancé(e) to that of a U.S. permanent resident.

If approved, your then spouse will initially receive conditional permanent residence status for two years. Conditional permanent residency is granted when the marriage is less than two years old at the time of adjustment to permanent residence status

Until the INS adjusts your new spouse's visa status to that of a permanent resident, however, s/he may not be able to reenter the United States following a trip abroad without first getting special permission (called an advance parole). Generally an advanced parole must be granted prior the departure from the United States.

This means that if you plan to ask the INS to adjust your spouse's visa to that of a permanent resident while s/he is in the United States, it maybe nearly impossible to plan a honeymoon to visit his relatives abroad immediately following the wedding.

There is a way to do this, however, it would mean that you would have to file an immigrant visa petition here, then your spouse would have to wait outside the United States in his or her home country for the petition to be approved, and then obtain an immigrant visa at the U.S. embassy or consulate in his or her home country: a process which can take between 3 to 9 months.

It is important to understand that if the marriage does not take place within 90 days or your fiancé(e) marries someone other than you (the U.S.) your fiancé(e) will be required to leave the United States. Furthermore, s/he may also find it difficult to get another kind of non-immigrant visa at a future date because the American government may not believe that he will return to his or her home country. This is because the INS may consider that s/he has already expressed an intent to immigrate to the United States when applying for the K-1 visa. If you are not sure that you want to marry, then perhaps other options would be better. You can discuss these possible options with Thomas Bassett and Associates in a consultation.

In order to apply for K-1 status:

• One of the parties to the marriage must be a United States citizen (permanent residents may not petition for their fiancé(e)s.
• Both parties must be free to marry. This means that both of you are unmarried, or that any previous marriages have ended through divorce, annulment or death.
• You must have met with your fiancé(e) in person within the last two years before filing for the fiancé(e) visa. This requirement can be waived only if meeting your fiancé(e) in person would violate long-established customs, or if meeting your fiancé(e) would create extreme hardship for you.
• You and your fiancé(e) must intend and agree to marry within 90 days of your fiancé(e) entering the United States.

Although the K-1 visa is classified as a non-immigrant visa, foreign applicants are actually pre-processed as intending immigrants. As a result, they are asked to provide more documents than required for most other non-immigrant visa applications. For example, fiancé(e) abroad will be asked to submit:

Valid (unexpired) passport;
Birth certificate;
Annulment, Divorce or death certificate of any previous spouse;
Police certificate from all places lived since age 16;
Medical examination at a physician approved for this purpose by the consulate;
Evidence of financial support;
Evidence of valid relationship with the petitioner; and
Photographs as required by the consulate.

You may also apply to bring your fiancé(e)'s unmarried children, who are under age 21, to the United States.

In this section see also:

Visiting America
Working in the USA
Visiting America
Studying in the USA
Educational and Cultural Exchanges
Reentry into the USA by Non-immigrant Aliens Holding Expired Visas
Passport Validity