I am a US citizen wanting to marry UK citizen

[Xspike_spiegelC]

This may sound pretty straightforward, but being kind of new to immigration laws and such, everything seems very complicated.

I am a US born citizen, and my fiance is UK born. We met in mexico while both on holiday, and now want to be married. She has visited me twice, and I plan on visiting her in April. Our current plans are for her to move over to the US in June, and be married sometime in October/November time. Then move back to the UK the next summer. Some of our options/scenarios that we have found are:

1.Applying for the fiance visa (which through some research have found it can take anywhere up to a year or over).
2.Getting married in the UK in April and applying for the I-130, I-485 and status adjustment package. Which we have found to be quite expensive.
3.She has been wanting to extend her education and get a masters, so we thought she could come over on a student visa, we get married, she complete her education, then we move back to the UK.

These seem to be our only options, I would very much appreciate your feedback on which would be the easiest, most efficient, and least expensive, but more so the quickest. We do have some financial resources, but cannot afford much.

 

[staticfade56]

Hi Xspike_spiegelC

I was in a bit of a similar situation and I'm pretty new to this too. I was working and living in Brussels and started dating someone. I eventually moved back to the US (I am a USC) and some months later we got engaged. We ended up getting married with him outside of the US. He is still living in Brussels and I just filed the I-130 Petition for Alien Relative. Now we have to wait for that to process. Eventually at the end of the whole process (I-130 and I think the visa portion..) he will be able to come here to work and live here as a resident.

I found a really good post yesterday (from someone else in this forum but I forget where I found it) and on that website it gives you your choices for applying for fiancee...husband/wife inside US...husband/wife outside US...etc including pros and cons for each scenario. I'm not sure when it was last updated so the fees may be a little off, but in general the process is there.

check out visajourney website (maybe just google it and look around). It won't let me post the link in there because I don't have enough posts made already.

To be very honest, any of these choices (fiancee, spouse in US, outside US, etc) are pretty lengthy. If you are planning to end up being in the UK, you might want to look at their process for a US citizen to go there. Then you can really see all of your choices, which one is the fastest and works the best in your situation. The amount of time you will spend applying for your wife to come here just to turn around and go back to the UK might overlap..but that is just my thought.

Another note, it does take a while to gather all of your documentation so while you are deciding which route you want to take you can start to gather your US birth certificate (for proof of your citizenship), photos for proof of your relationship, etc.

Good luck to you!