Shall I file application right now or wait until I get citizenship?

A

applyarea

Registered Users (C)
Greetings,

I apologize if this question was asked before. I did some search but would like to listen from folks with similar experience.

Some backgrounds:
1.) I am Green Card holder and going to be eligible for applying citizenship in 7 month.
2.) The wife is holding F-1 visa now.
3.) We’ve been married for 3 years.

The questions:
Shall I file Green Card application based on marriage right now or wait until I get citizenship?
Approximately how long the process will take for both ways?

Thanks a lot!
 
wait I'd say. It won't make much of a difference in time, but it will cause less confusion without having to upgrade your petition.
 
Hey
I am also in the same boat as you are. I recently applied for my citizenship and my wife is on H1B.
I am waiting for my citizenship to go through before applying for my wife's GC.
I have read in some forums that you can apply for I-130 for your wife, I mean start the process of sponsoring GC to wife as a GC holder.
Once you get your citizenship then file the 485 and send in the approval for I-130 which is processed fairly quickly.
I do not see any advantage in doing so except breaking the process into two steps. I don't think you get her an EAD(please double check this) quickly when you are on GC.
Good luck
 
wife on F1 , now i am a citizen

wife came to US as a F1 student 4 years ago

We were already married outside US
I mentioned in N400 aplication that i am married for 4 years and wife is here

Application was approved and now I am a citizen

Would it be a problem that my wife didnt mention me in her f1 application 4 years ago when she applied to come here?

Marriage was in church only so it was never legal.. Do I need to marry her in court legally? My citzen certficate has my name as married.


Thanks and I appreciate all your feedbacks
 
You are either married or you are not. She cannot be your wife and qualify for those benefits without acknowleding the same. If you have claimed benefits for her based on marriage that you are now claiming is not legal, you have a lot of issues. A marriage of 4 years means that should not receive a conditional GC - but she lied on her F1 application by stating she was not married.

Get a lawyer to help you get out of this mess you created for yourselves.
 
moon138 said:
Marriage was in church only so it was never legal.. Do I need to marry her in court legally?
Click to expand...

A church marriage does not have any legal basis. If you do not have a legal document proving your marriage (such as a marriage certificate) it would not be considered as legal. I don't know the legal ramifications of declaring to be married without a legal marriage, but for her to claim benefits of being married to a US citizen, you would need a legal marriage document.

My wife and I got married in a church (outside the US) but we had a civil ceremony (in a court) a couple of months later. You should talk to a lawyer regarding the legal considerations about your declarations of marriage in official documents.

Technically, in the eyes of the law your church marriage is not recognized. So she didn't really "lie" about that in her application. But, the N-400 application maybe an issue.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
what country were you from? coz on some country if you get married in church they will submit the union to the registrar of the city you got married
 
If you were not married in the eyes of the law, she is fine. Otherwise she is in a spot of bother.

moon138 said:
Would it be a problem that my wife didnt mention me in her f1 application 4 years ago when she applied to come here?

Marriage was in church only so it was never legal
Click to expand...
 
We do have church certficate from my country certified from minstry of foriegn affairs

She did not claim any right yet. That is why I was asking.

I wrote that I was married because I am and N400 application mentions that any kind of marrigae should be written ( they did not say only legal marriage in court should be mentioned)

I can do a civil marriage here. Is that the best thing to do? or can she use our church certificate to declare the benfits of marrying a US citizen

Thanks
 
moon138 said:
We do have church certficate from my country certified from minstry of foriegn affairs
Click to expand...
That may mean the marriage is legally recognized. Which if true, it would mean your wife's green card will be denied for lying on her F1 visa application.
 
moon138 said:
can she use our church certificate to declare the benfits of marrying a US citizen
Click to expand...
That assumes that she lied on her F1 application (of being not married). Was her F1 application/visa after your church marriage? I think the best way is to consult an immigration lawyer before sending in your AOS
 
Actually, just confirmed that even though certified for outside (foreign affairs), it is still not civil marriage . It just means thst marriage occured in fact in a known church in that city, country...etc but country itself does not consider it as civil.
 
So you will have to get legally married in a civil ceremony. The downside of that is that she will get only a conditional GC (for less than 2 years of marriage). Check the N-400 declaration of marriage with a lawyer or maybe someone here can throw more light on that.
 
Thanks for all your answers

Is it a problem then that I declared I am married in N400 application based on my church certificate ? I really asked and what I understood was that any marriage provided by any authority should be put in the application (hope that was infact true)

so now if we marry civil and send her papers in along with my naturalization certificate, would I have to explain and send both certificates (civil one and the church ones?)

Thanks again
 
moon138 said:
so now if we marry civil and send her papers in along with my naturalization certificate, would I have to explain and send both certificates (civil one and the church ones?)
Click to expand...

I dont have a yes/no answer for that one. Since it has been 4 years since your religious wedding, the question arises as to why you waited so long for a legal marriage. It might be prudent to talk to an attorney about this. Same goes for the N-400 application. But again, the bottom line is you need a legal marriage for your spouse's GC processing.

I did not have any official documentation (besides a church record). This was 7 years ago and we had a civil ceremony here a few months after coming back. When I filed for I-130, I (well, my sponsor is my wife, so technically she did) did write a letter talking about the religious church ceremony (included photos) and then said we legally registered our marriage here. Not sure what are the implications since our process is still underway.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Is your church ceremony recognised as a legal union where it took place?

moon138 said:
so now if we marry civil and send her papers in along with my naturalization certificate, would I have to explain and send both certificates (civil one and the church ones?)
Click to expand...
 
moon138 said:
Actually, just confirmed that even though certified for outside (foreign affairs), it is still not civil marriage . It just means thst marriage occured in fact in a known church in that city, country...etc but country itself does not consider it as civil.
Click to expand...
The point is not whether they consider it to be "civil" ... it is whether the government of the country where it took place treats it as a marriage with all the rights and responsibilities of marriage, including whether you would need a formal divorce before you marry somebody else.

In some countries, the government recognizes a church marriage as a legal marriage as long as a church official files certain paperwork. It seems like that is what happened in your case, given that the ministry of foreign affairs certified it.
 
More details:
I've been in US for the last 10 years, and went to my country to get marry but my wife is from another country. In my country people get married in church and church sends documents to civil court and they have religious and civil documents, but in her country it's illegal to a priest to perform a religious wedding without the civil marriage first, so people get married in court 2 days before religious ceremony (right now in her country she is definitely single, but people who live together for 3 years have the same legal rights as married people in case of a "divorce").
What happend in my country is that church sent our marriage information to court and they refused it because in this case we had to go there in person to sign the papers, and they asked for a document that I didn't have. I came back to US and she went to her country and applied for F1, not only didn't mention marriage, but said didn't know anybody living in US at all, since I had GC and she wouldn't be able to enter the country as my spouse anyway, but she really went to school all this time.
We waited so long to do the civil because we didn't know about the "conditional" green card, we thought there was no difference about the date, we will do the civil marriage, but now we don't want to lose all this time (we also have a 17-month-old baby), now we want to put in her application that we got married in 2005. Is this possible? Then we show both certificates, church and court?
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top