HELP!...J1 - spouse - visa etc etc

L

lrd123

New Member
I am currently a UK citizen in the USA on a J1 visa - I have up to 17 months left on it. I do NOT have the two year residency ticked on my visa document.
I want to marry my American boyfriend in the foreseeable future and we either want to stay here or preferably go back to live in the UK as I own a property there which we would live in.
Is it easier to marry here or go back to the UK to marry?If we marry here can i work straight away and vice versa for him if we move to the UK?
Very confused with the best way to go about this - any help would be greatly appreciated!
 
Get married asap.... :)

If you want to stay in the US and get a Green Card, you should marry your boyfriend BEFORE your J1 runs out. The easiest would be to marry in the US and apply for adjustment of status (AOS) straight away. It is a very straight forward process, and depending on where you live, it shouldn't take much time. Here in California it's about 90 days from when you send in the application to the interview. If you apply for a work permit at the same time (no additional costs), you might even get it after 2 months.
We had several people in our lab doing this and it wasn't a problem at all.

The most important thing: make sure that all your DS-2019 have the 2-years home rule box checked ("not subject"). If you have a DS-2019 that doesn't have the box checked at all you will need the advisory opinion. This can happen when your DS2019 gets extended but you didn't leave the US. Usually the box get checked at the consulate when you apply for a visa, so if you did not leave the US, the box never gets checked. This happened to a friend and they requested the advisory opinion at the time of the GC interview so the whole process got delayed.

I am not quite sure about getting married in the UK and then coming back to the US. If you want to do that, make sure you have a valid J-1 visa in your passport. In the J-1 visa application you have to state if you have relatives in the US. If you got married in the UK and then need to apply for a new J1 visa to get back to the US and apply for AOS, they probably won't not give it to you. You would need a spouse visa and that takes a long time to get (months). Again, this can happen if your DS-2019 + visa ran out and you got a DS2019 extension and you need to apply for a new visa if you leave the US.

I don't know anything about marrying and living in the UK. It shouldn't be too difficult, but you need to find out if he can enter as a tourist and then marry you and apply for a work permit in the UK or if he should enter as your husband.
 
Thank you for your response.

After looking on several site etc. We have come to the conclusion that to marry here would be the best bet. So if i were to marry here i would need to apply to change my J1 visa status to married?and you say this could take up to 90 days??...in this time can i leave the country and go back home to England or not?
We are not looking to stay here in the US, we are looking to go over to England. Do you know how long it would take for him to get a spousal visa granted for the UK?Can he leave the country and come back to England with me whilst he awaits this visa or not?
THANKS FOR YOUR HELP X
 
Ruh said:
If you want to stay in the US and get a Green Card, you should marry your boyfriend BEFORE your J1 runs out. The easiest would be to marry in the US and apply for adjustment of status (AOS) straight away. It is a very straight forward process, and depending on where you live, it shouldn't take much time. Here in California it's about 90 days from when you send in the application to the interview. If you apply for a work permit at the same time (no additional costs), you might even get it after 2 months.
We had several people in our lab doing this and it wasn't a problem at all.

The most important thing: make sure that all your DS-2019 have the 2-years home rule box checked ("not subject"). If you have a DS-2019 that doesn't have the box checked at all you will need the advisory opinion. This can happen when your DS2019 gets extended but you didn't leave the US. Usually the box get checked at the consulate when you apply for a visa, so if you did not leave the US, the box never gets checked. This happened to a friend and they requested the advisory opinion at the time of the GC interview so the whole process got delayed.

I am not quite sure about getting married in the UK and then coming back to the US. If you want to do that, make sure you have a valid J-1 visa in your passport. In the J-1 visa application you have to state if you have relatives in the US. If you got married in the UK and then need to apply for a new J1 visa to get back to the US and apply for AOS, they probably won't not give it to you. You would need a spouse visa and that takes a long time to get (months). Again, this can happen if your DS-2019 + visa ran out and you got a DS2019 extension and you need to apply for a new visa if you leave the US.

I don't know anything about marrying and living in the UK. It shouldn't be too difficult, but you need to find out if he can enter as a tourist and then marry you and apply for a work permit in the UK or if he should enter as your husband.
Click to expand...

Hi there,
I have several question for you.after get married, how many times later can we get permision to stay US. I dont mean a GC. Just a temporary visa or a stamp on passport before get GC? and other thing is, I wanna marry with my gf 3 months ago before my visa expired.at this situation, when we send our paper to immigration office, can I still work untill my visa expired? thank u so much.
 
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