My sister recently had her Nikkah done in Pakistan and was wondering if she can apply for Fiance visa for her husband? She has talked to both a desi and non-desi lawyer about it and the desi lawyer told her to not apply for Fiance visa saying that the US INS is very strict about Pakistani applicants and if they find out that they are married, the application will be rejected. On the other hand, the non-desi lawyer said it’s okay to apply for Fiance visa since it’s only a “paper” marriage right now and won’t be a problem. (She is a US citizen by the way).
Does anyone have any personal experience about this? Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated!
Well the Fiancee is the K1 visa and the marriage is the K3 visa.
I got married in India and brought my wife over on the K3 visa.
BCIS has different standards for each country. For european countries, it is easy to get a K1 or K3 visa.
But for asian countries, BCIS knows that it is very rare for fiance's to live togther before marriage and thus all K1's will be treated with suspicion.
K3 is just as fast as the K1. But because there is so much fraud based marriages, much sure you have all the required documentation before you apply, because you rejection for Additional Information required will set you back 3-4 months.
If you have all the documentation, then the k3 process takes usually about 6-9 months.
Also, I initially used a lawyer but fired the desi idiot because I found her incomptent.
I did the whole process myself.
I applied in 2004. The process is still the same. And right now is in the final stages (k3 is a long process).
You apply for 1-130 and I-129f (k3) together. The two diifferent process run together. Usually the I-129F, gets processed first, you can decide to go this way.
If the 1-130 gets processed first you can go this way, or you can wait for this.
The difference is that with the i-130, you get a permanent greencard.
With the k3, you get a temp visa to come to the usa. Then, you have to apply for the AOS (adjustment of status I-485) & I-751(employment authorization).
The I-751 takes a few months and I-485 takes about 6 months. When you do the AOS interview, you get a Greencard. If you were married less than 2 years, you get temporary green card (valid 2 years). If you get the temp greencard, you must do the I-751 to after 2 years to do the Temp to Permanent greencard.
I am currently doing this last phase of I-751 to convert the temp greencard to permanent greencard. Another thing is that 3 years after you do AOS, you can apply for US citizenship.
I sent the paperwork in Dec 2003, but since it was december, the govt offices are dead slow. I got a Notice action date of Jan 20, 2004.
My case was worked on in April 2004, but one of forms was not notarized to their satisfaction, so I had to wait for a month while I got the forms notarized from India again. I then mailed them to USCIS again in May 2004. The k3 was approved in July 2004 and k3 visa was sent to the US embassy in India in Aug 2004.
(at the same I got a notice that my i-130 was about to approved but I decided to cancel the I-130 and go thru the K3 process since the visa was at the embassy already).
In Aug 2004, I went to India and forced the embassy to process the visa in one day and hand it to my wife the same day of the interview. (usually they they take about one month to do the paperwork). So my wife had the k3 visa by mid aug 2004 and was in USA by Sep 2004.
The process would have taken 2 months less if I did not get rejection for the notarization. Also, I was able to aggressive at the us embassy in India and get them to do the whole thing much faster. This worked because most of the staff in the US embassy are local indians are able to be indimidated. For example, at the interview they wanted to interview my wife alone and I said NO. They wanted to mail the visa but I forced the staff to hand the visa over. Stuff like that.
This contains the timelines for about 500+ people who have done the k1/k3 visa. This will give the approx times for the process. http://k1k3.com/list.php
