|
If you are an American citizen and have found the love of your life in another country, there is a way to bring your fiancée to the US to marry and live. This process is known as the Fiancé(e) K-1 visa. Follow these tips to understand and get started on the fiancee visa process so that you and your sweetheart can be together as soon as possible. 
You as a couple must meet the fiancée requirements.
This generally means that you must have met face to face within the last 2 years. There are only a few exceptions to this requirement such as if it is against your religion or tradition to meet in person before you marry.
How long will it take?
The fiancée visa process time varies between case and consulate or embassy you are applying through. You can look up specific visa waiting times on the consulate or embassy website that the international fiancée would be getting their visa issued from.
The American citizen files a Petition for Alien Fiancé(e).
You must file this petition within US borders. Send a completed Form I-129F to your local US Citizenship and Immigration Services office along with a filing fee. Sending the petition to an embassy or consulate is not tolerable, it must be to the Immigration Services office.
The office will either approve or dismiss your petition. If it is approved your petition will be sent to be processed at the National Visa Center. Once processed and approved there, your petition will be send to the US embassy or consulate in the country of your fiancée.
Note that the petition is valid for only 4 months from the day it is approved by the US Citizenship and Immigration Services office. If the fiancée visa has not been granted after 4 months you must request that a consular office revalidate the petition so that it does not expire.
The foreign fiancée then goes through the process of applying for a visa through their local US embassy or consulate.
The international significant other will be treated as both a nonimmigrant and immigrant through the fiancee visa process. The fiancée schedules an interview with the US consulate or embassy in her home country. At this interview she must turn in a K-1 fiancée visa application package. This packaged includes:
- 2 nonimmigrant visa applications (Form DS-156).
- 1 nonimmigrant fiancé(e) visa application (Form DS-156K).
- Provide evidence of financial support (Form I-134).
- A medical examination form from an approved doctor or clinic.
- A valid passport.
- A birth certificate.
- Police certificates from every placed lived stating she has no criminal record.
- 2 nonimmigrant passport size visa photos.
- You must pay the appropriate fees.
- Evidence of a fiancé relationship. This could be phone records, plane ticket stubs from visiting one anther and photos. You will both be asked questions about the other person to prove that you know one anther and are not fabricating a relationship and committing fraud.
- At the time of interview the international K-1 application is required to give her fingerprints electronically. This sometimes involves a fee. Call the specific embassy or consulate will be going to for the interview ahead of time to find out.
Once in the US…
Once the international fiancée arrives in the United States on her temporary nonimmigrant fiancé visa, she has 90 days to get married to the American citizen that petitioned for the visa. If she does not marry within that time the fiancée will be deported back to her home country.
|
