For those seeking to bring a fiancé or fiancée to the United States, a K-1 visa application will allow the fiancé (e) to enter the United States. Both parties must be unmarried, legally divorced or annulled, or widowed when they file the application. The marriage must take place within 90 days of entry into the United States. The foreign-citizen will then apply for adjustment of status to that of a permanent resident (LPR) with the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS). You may also apply (on the same petition) to bring your fiancé’s unmarried children, who are under age 21, to the United States. The length of time it takes us to obtain a marriage or fiancée visa depends on the state in which you reside and the country in which your fiancée resides.

Under U.S. immigration law, a foreign-citizen fiancé (e) of a U.S. citizen is the beneficiary of an approved Petition for Alien Fiancé (e), Form I-129F, who has been issued a nonimmigrant K-1 visa for travel to the United States in order to marry his or her U.S. citizen fiancé (e). Both the U.S. citizen and the K-1 visa applicant must have been legally open to marry at the time the petition was filed and must have remained so thereafter. The marriage must be legally possible according to laws of the U.S. state in which the marriage will take place.

If your wife or husband is already in the United States and entered on a fiancée visa, your new wife or husband may adjust to permanent resident status (note that the fiancée visa is a nonimmigrant visa valid only for 90 days from when you enter the U.S.).

One of the requirements for approving the K-1 application is that the foreign-citizen fiancé (e) and U.S. citizen sponsor must have met in person within the past two years prior to the filing of the application. USCIS may grant an exception to this requirement, based on extreme hardship for the U.S. citizen sponsor or based on culture which prohibits a man and woman to meet before marriage.

If you are facing that kind of issue and you are concerned about your fiancée, contact an experienced attorney, Timothy Gambacorta, to give you more details about the steps of the process and assist you to get what you are entitled to.