K3 Visa Questions

J

Jdepaolis

New Member
Greetings

I am a US citizen currently resident in Croatia. I am married to a Croatian spouse and the marriage occurred in Croatia. My impression is that in order to open an application for a K3 visa for my spouse it would be necessary for me to be resident in the US at the time of the application.

My questions are:
1: is the above impression correct without exception or is it possible to open an application while not resident in the US?
2: are there any means within the K3 classification or otherwise of expediting US residency for my spouse which may not be obvious to someone with a very superficial understanding of the relevant immigration law?

Thank you for your time.

Best,
J.Depaolis
 
K3 is obsolete. You would file an I-130 petition and your spouse would get an immigrant visa directly, instead of K3. Your residence at the time of I-130 filing is not important, but during the process to get an immigrant visa, you need to file an I-864 Affidavit of Support, and for that you need to be "domiciled" in the US or plan to re-establish domicile no later than when she immigrates.
 
Thanks for the clarification regarding K3! When did this change occur and are you aware of the average total processing time between the initial filing and the point at which it becomes possible for the non citizen spouse to have legal residency in the US?
 
Jdepaolis said:
are you aware of the average total processing time between the initial filing and the point at which it becomes possible for the non citizen spouse to have legal residency in the US?
Click to expand...

Processing takes 3 main steps:
1. Uscis processing time - a spouse visa is immediate relative, average has been around 10 months recently https://egov.uscis.gov/processing-times/historic-pt
2. NVC processing time - total time for both case creation and documents processing is around 3 months, assuming that you send in all documents/pay fees as soon as they ask https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/us-visas/immigrate/nvc-timeframes.html
3. Wait for visa interview - this is entirely dependent on the embassy she will be interviewing at, anywhere from some weeks to a number of months. Once spouse has an immigrant visa, they will gain legal residence as soon as they use it to enter the US.
 
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