Visa, marriage, and green card issues

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wildfish99

New Member
My girlfriend is a Japanese Citizen. She is currently living with me and is working with a J1 intern visa.
Her visa is expiring next month and she wishes to go home for several months, since she hasn't seen her family in 2 years.

I'm planning on visiting her in two months or so to see her parents and travel.

My thoughts were to have her come back on a tourist visa and then maybe get married. We would then exchange the tourist visa to a green card application.

Now I have been reading that there is a whole 30-60-90 day issue. If she comes back with a round trip ticket and waits at least 60 days there is a low risk of problems.

Is there a problem with this plan? I could apply for a marriage visa/ fiance immediately, but i'm not sure how long that would take. Plus I haven't met her family (except for skype).

Another option is I could marry her in Japan, but I have been hearing that would be a new whole mess of problems.

Appreciate your guys thoughts
 
Returning as a tourist to get married would be inviting trouble. If she uses the visa waiver, that has its own set of extra restrictions and problems for people who use it to immigrate. And if she applies for a tourist visa, it will probably be rejected because she has a fiance living in the US (yes, the visa application asks about fiance/fiancee).

Assuming you are a US citizen, the fiancee visa (K1) would be very suitable for your situation. She would interview for it at a US consulate in Japan; the interview would occur about 3-6 months after you file the K1 application, which fits in well with her plan to spend some months in Japan after leaving the US.

Once the K1 visa is approved by the consulate, she'll have 6 months to use it to enter the US. After entering the US, she'll have 90 days to marry you and apply for the green card.

You can file the K1 application while she's still here in the US.
 
Does her J1 visa have the 2 year home country requirement? If yes, that needs to be dealt with before she can get a green card, either with a waiver or waiting out the 2 years in Japan.
 
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