Spouse of US Citizen

BigData

BigData

New Member
Hi,

I tried on various forums but could not find matching case, thus asking. Pls help.

I am a US Citizen living in India for last 8 years.
Question is how to take my wife (of 15 yrs marriage) back to US?

- My wife got her green card in 2001.
- We moved out of USA to India in 2006.
- She surrendered the GC at US Consulate in 2012 as she had not filed for renew petition. She got a 10 Year B1 Visa.

Now we want to immigrate to US.

Question -
1. Is it possible for her to return to US using B1 and apply for Family based GC while in US? or
We need to start the application from India?
2. If we have to start application from India, does she have to wait until I-130 is approved before traveling to US?

thanks much
 
BigData said:
1. Is it possible for her to return to US using B1 and apply for Family based GC while in US?
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She cannot enter with a B visa with the preconceived intent to immigrate while there.

BigData said:
or
We need to start the application from India?
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yes

BigData said:
2. If we have to start application from India, does she have to wait until I-130 is approved before traveling to US?
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Not only that. She has to wait until I-130 is approved, and then go through consular processing at the U.S. consulate in India, and at the end of that she gets the immigrant visa which she will travel to the U.S. with. The whole process may take around a year.
 
Thanks a lot newacct. That is long time, is there any other way to bring her to US before all this completes?
K-3 or so?
 
Hi Big Data

I am in the same position as you , well not exactly - Basically planning to visit India and hopefully get married there and bring my spouse here for the first time. I just visited immigration lawyer. Lawyer gave me an indication that I-130 is the first step, then either wait for consular interview or do K3 (or even K1 in my case in case not married yet in India).
Lawyer said eventually in the end all the methods take more or less the same time. Anways I am meeting another lawyer next week for multiple opinion (this lwayer was hard to even talk to, I had to beg to provide answers.)

Lets keep touch here to track our cases/progress (and I will also try PM you) .

Edit: Not sure where to PM a member from here.

Thanks
 
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stinger said:
Hi Big Data

I am in the same position as you , well not exactly - Basically planning to visit India and hopefully get married there and bring my spouse here for the first time. I just visited immigration lawyer. Lawyer gave me an indication that I-130 is the first step, then either wait for consular interview or do K3 (or even K1 in my case in case not married yet in India).
Lawyer said eventually in the end all the methods take more or less the same time. Anways I am meeting another lawyer next week for multiple opinion (this lwayer was hard to even talk to, I had to beg to provide answers.)

Lets keep touch here to track our cases/progress (and I will also try PM you) .

Edit: Not sure where to PM a member from here.

Thanks
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A somewhat similar situation with me.. I'm a US Citizen who just got married in India. Before travelling for my wedding, I had browsed thru some USCIS info blurbs about the K-3 visa. I was intrigued by the hope that once married, I could petition my wife and she'd join me this spring\summer on a fiance visa and then file her AOS. But reality threw a couple of curves.

I met a few lawyers after I returned to the US following my wedding. All basically advised in favor of Consular Interview.. based on processing times, and advised against K3 visa. Technically, I still have the K3 option. I feel I could probably do the whole thing myself (perhaps naively), but decided to use the services of a lawyer at my wife's suggestion. Long story short, I'm getting stuff ready to file I-130. Once we file, we hope to see a decision in about 5 months, going by Vermont SC processing times. And an additional 1-2 months at the NVC, followed by about 3 months at the US consulate, provided we have paperwork mostly in order.

We're looking at an immigrant visa sometime this fall. As newacct mentioned above, it could be a year.. though the optimist in me says 8-10 months if I have all my ducks in a row and don't get bogged down by RFEs. I'll try to update once the process gets underway.

1AurCitizen
 
1AurCitizen

Yes, consular process is less headache and problem less.
Yes it takes 8-10 months acc, to both lawyers I talked. But I mentally gave an year for this process to complete.
Yes lawayers' are not that much useful in this straight forward case. Out of curiosity I asked both lawyers hpw much it would cost for them to help. They said threw random numbers like 500$ and 1000$ !.


Anyways lets keep posted here with case updates here.
 
Just an update.. filed I130 petition for my wife this month.
Our Priority date (not that it matters for IR1\CR1) is January 20, 2015. Case assigned to Vermont Service Center. Let the process begin!

Other I130 Spouse petitioners on this forum are encouraged to post to help glean a general track of the progression timeline.
 
Hey guys - I'm completely new to this and trying to navigate the terminology and get some advice. I noticed you all had an India connection... Not sure if the country of residence of your fiance/spouse matters in terms of difficulty to get immigration in order? My fiance is Swedish; our plan was for me to immigrate to Sweden and get my MBA but the application process is averaging 18 months due to a refugee bog-down. So now we're looking into him coming here so he can pursue his education and we can settle here. At least, for now. But wait times look desperate to get a spouse into the states as well??? We were planning on having our wedding in Sweden but I'm not allowed to step foot in that country until next year once our application has been approved. So now he'll have to come here if we want to get married. Am I even allowed to do that? Have a fiance come on a visitor visa and get married? Then what? I keep seeing all these letters and numbers... k visas, I-130... I just have no idea where to start. Would it be easier if he came here on a student visa and we convert his status upon arrival? Can we have a fiance visa and a student visa in process at the same time?
 
Mjennin2 said:
Hey guys - I'm completely new to this and trying to navigate the terminology and get some advice. I noticed you all had an India connection... Not sure if the country of residence of your fiance/spouse matters in terms of difficulty to get immigration in order? My fiance is Swedish; our plan was for me to immigrate to Sweden and get my MBA but the application process is averaging 18 months due to a refugee bog-down. So now we're looking into him coming here so he can pursue his education and we can settle here. At least, for now. But wait times look desperate to get a spouse into the states as well??? We were planning on having our wedding in Sweden but I'm not allowed to step foot in that country until next year once our application has been approved. So now he'll have to come here if we want to get married. Am I even allowed to do that? Have a fiance come on a visitor visa and get married? Then what? I keep seeing all these letters and numbers... k visas, I-130... I just have no idea where to start. Would it be easier if he came here on a student visa and we convert his status upon arrival? Can we have a fiance visa and a student visa in process at the same time?
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If he wants to come to the U.S. to marry and stay, he basically can only come on a fiance visa (K-1). In order to use tourist visas and student visas, etc., he must not intend to immigrate while here. If he intends to just marry and leave without staying, then he can come on a tourist visa.
 
newacct said:
If he wants to come to the U.S. to marry and stay, he basically can only come on a fiance visa (K-1). In order to use tourist visas and student visas, etc., he must not intend to immigrate while here. If he intends to just marry and leave without staying, then he can come on a tourist visa.
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Thank you NewAcct! So, two questions (if you have a spare moment and mind humoring me?) -- 1) Do we have any idea of how long it takes to obtain a k-1, and is he allowed to work here on it? Or a good, straight forward website that spells it out? And 2) I read elsewhere about the other option you mention - getting married, him leaving and then us going through the spousal visa process. But what is the wait time for that? And is he allowed to visit me here while we're waiting for paperwork to go through?

Gainful employment and the hassles of moving aside, I'm just trying to figure out the most logical, least messy, path of least resistance method of going about this whole process.

A million thank yous to you. I know I could just Google it but the internets are an information overload disaster... chatting with an actual informed human is a lot less aggravating. I appreciate any humoring you could offer me :) Good karma to you!
 
Mjennin2 said:
Thank you NewAcct! So, two questions (if you have a spare moment and mind humoring me?) -- 1) Do we have any idea of how long it takes to obtain a k-1, and is he allowed to work here on it? Or a good, straight forward website that spells it out?
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I am not sure how long it takes to get a K-1. I think it's around 6 months.

As for working, so how it works is he enters on a K-1, you guys get married, and then (once you get all the documents) file for Adjustment of Status (I-485). Together with filing for Adjustment of Status, he can also file I-765 for an EAD for free. The EAD will take about 2.5 months to get. When he gets the EAD or green card, he can work. So plan for him being able to work about 3 months after filing for AOS, which you can only do after marriage.

Mjennin2 said:
And 2) I read elsewhere about the other option you mention - getting married, him leaving and then us going through the spousal visa process. But what is the wait time for that? And is he allowed to visit me here while we're waiting for paperwork to go through?
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I think the whole process takes around a year. He could try to visit, but they might not let him in.
 
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