1- I have a Canadian citizen friend who arrived in the US on December 18. She says that the days she spent here in December do not count towards the six months period of the new year, meaning she could stay until June 30 because the six months period out of a year was reset on January 1st. Is she right?
2- If she were to leave in April and return home for about a week and then come back, would it renew her 6 months period or would it simply mean she would have 3 more months?
3- I know she is in the process of a divorce and is awaiting the final judgement to be made on her case. She and her boyfriend are 'engaged' and plan on marrying after that is done. She has read somewhere about fiancee's visa and whether or not it would be better for her to get married in the US and then file everything from here. Anybody have information on that too?
This question tends to get asked a lot so I'll answer it even though it has been a few months.
Each VISIT is limited to six months. In addition, many CBP officers will ALSO use a rough rule of thumb of six months per calendar year but that doesn't change the fact that there is a limit of six months per VISIT. So she needed to leave by six months after Dec 18. Since we are now a few days beyond the six month limit, if she is still here, she would need to leave ASAP.
The basic issue here is that she needs to be LIVING in Canada. Someone living in Canada has things in Canada they need to go back to: a job, school, family responsibilities, a house they need to maintain, friends. The actual number of days is less important than that she present a clear picture of living in Canada. Unfortunately someone trying to squeeze out every last day in the USA with their boyfriend isn't living in Canada. They're living in the USA with their boyfriend.
If she went back in April (or now) for a week, it would have been a crapshoot. She could be fortunate and simply get admitted in the usual way in which case she'd have a new 6 months. Or she might be less fortunate and have the CBP officer notice the amount of time she is spending in the USA in which case she might face some combination of very harsh and humiliating questioning, a limit (much less than 6 months) on how long she can spend here, or outright denial.
She can do either a fiancee visa--which takes awhile to process and must be done from Canada--or adjust status within the USA. The problem with the latter route is that if they suspect that she intended to get married as of the last time she entered the USA, this could be considered immigration fraud and result in severe consequences. But it is OK if she enters intending only to visit and later has a bona fide change of mind and decides to stay and get married. For this reason, it is better--if she chooses to get married in the USA and do everything from within the USA--if she gets married towards the end of the six month period (assuming she gets a full six months).
Also if the divorce doesn't become final until after she entered the USA (I don't know if she needs to be physically present in Canada for this?) she could point to this as a reason why her plans changed: after all, she wasn't thinking of remarrying when she entered the USA because her divorce wasn't final yet.
