How to Help My Fiancée Immigrate to the USA?
You’ve found the love of your life overseas, haven’t you? Congrats! This must have been a long journey, no matter how you managed to get close to the heart of your chosen woman – thanks to traveling or via an online dating site. Now let’s find out the best way to bring foreign wife to the US.
Now, this is the finish line – help your fiancée immigrate to your homeland the USA and finally get married. How to do that?
Well, there are different ways of helping your future wife get a permanent residence in America. So what to do to bring your foreign wife to the USA?
Way #1. Getting married in the US after petitioning for a fiancée visa
This option will be relevant only for couples where the lady is staying abroad and wants to get married in the US.
This kind of visa will allow your beloved woman enter the US for 90 days to say “I do” to you during the wedding ceremony. After the official confirmation of your marriage, your wife can apply for permanent residence and stay in the country, waiting for the results.
To make everything work, you will need to file a Form I-129F, Petition for Alien Fiancée, to the US Citizenship and Immigration Services. If everything’s fine, your spouse’s docs will be sent to National Visa Center and then to the US Embassy or consulate, and after all, she’ll be invited to the embassy for the actual fiancée visa.
Way #2. Getting married abroad
If you want it differently, you can marry your beloved lady overseas – for example, in her homeland.
If you do so, you can file a Form I-130, Petition for Alien Relative, for your new wife. This one you submit to the US Consulate. To get more information, you will need to research the website of this body in a particular country you are staying at.
Way #3. Getting married in the US when the fiancée is already there
In some cases, your fiancée may have already started living in the country due to another legal immigration status.
Thus, you can get married in the US and file the Immigration Petition for her. However, you should bear in mind that there might be new requirements to adjust her status to permanent residence in the US.
RELATED: 12 Tips to Survive Long Distance Relationships
What else do you need to know?
First and foremost, you need to check whether you and your beloved girl meet the requirements for a fiancée petition. So in this document, you need to demonstrate that:
- You’re a US citizen
- You and your future wife are going to marry within 90 after she enters the country
- Both of you are marrying each other freely
- You have known and met each other for at least 2 years before you filed the petition
Do I need an attorney to bring my foreign wife to the USA?
Yes, you definitely need an attorney. He will help you prepare the documents and properly execute this. Often this process takes a long amount of time and the need to do a lot of things, so you better entrust this to a professional to avoid mistakes. In addition, you will not be able to save time and money if you do it yourself. Find an attorney who specializes in emigration and visa for foreign brides so that it works as efficiently as possible. Such people know exactly all the difficult moments of this.
Cost to bring a foreign wife to the USA
K1 visa mail order bride costs $2,025. An estimated marriage-based visa costs $1,200. You also need to add the cost of attorney here. If you have a mate who is involved in this profession, you can save money and ask him for help. But in general, it will cost you several thousand dollars, taking into account also flights and other additional invoice fees.
Exclusions
Here are the main pieces of advice that would help you to start the entrance process. However, you should keep in mind that there are various life cases and they need special research. Do some more research, before you file any petitions, especially, if:
- your fiancée’s got a child
- she needs to work in the US while being on a fiancée visa
- she has a different foreign wife visa, and you want to get married in America
- two of you are engaged, but you haven’t decided to marry yet, etc.
