How to Get a Marriage Based Green Card for the USA
Many of you who follow me or Matt on social media noticed that last year we moved to the US. But, what many of you don’t know is that I’m actually not American. I’ve lived in the US before, but always on a student visa, so I’ve never had a green card before. Now I do, since a lot of you have questions about the whole process I decided to write this post, share our story and give our advice.
How to Get a Marriage-Based Green Card for the USA
* Our Story & Advice *
Most people who never had to deal with any international relationships have no idea that moving to a country of your spouse (regardless of the country) isn’t easy. It’s hard and it will cost you a lot of nerves and money. Plus, don’t think that once you get your green card that’s the end of your troubles…
USCIS (U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services) will deny a marriage-based green card case if it does not receive sufficient evidence of a bona fide marriage and/or if it determines that the marriage is a sham. Plus your application will be denied if your spouse doesn’t make enough money.
Getting married to a person from another country won’t grant your citizenship, passport, and even residence permit automatically. In the US you might even get prosecuted for fraud if you marry your loved one without doing a proper research.
What to do if you want to get married and/or move abroad to the US to live with your American partner?
If you don’t believe in marriage, but dating someone from a foreign country and especially the US, you most likely have to change your mind. The US doesn’t have a rule like the Netherlands, Australia and the UK where you can register as a domestic partnership to ‘import’ your partner. Getting an employment-based visa was never easy, but with current administration limiting the number of visas available each year even more, it’s even harder. You need to be legally married.
Myths About Applying for a Green Card based on Marriage
Myth 1: Your racial background might slow down the process.
All applications are processed at the same time, regardless of your nationality or the color of your skin. The only thing that can slow your application down is a presence of a criminal record, insufficient earnings of your American partner, or lack of some other documents. They process the application based on the date of submission.
Myth 2: There are yearly limits on all immigrant visas.
There are visa quotas (number of visas that can be issued to citizens of any country in a fiscal year) and since the current administration even less of them are available each year, but it only matters in case of employment-based preference visas. Family-based immigrant visas are excluded from this rule and are unlimited.
Different Ways of Applying for a Green Card: Pros & Cons
There are different ways of getting your green card, depending on your situation. Each has many cons (trust me, there is no ideal way of doing it) and requires a lot of research. Regardless of the option you choose, your American partner needs to make enough money to support you, or you’ll have to find someone to co-sign your sponsorship (read more about it further down).
Option 1) Fiancee visa (K1).
If you live abroad and your partner lives in the US, the traditional option is to apply for a fiancee visa. It’s basically a visa that allows you to come to the US and marry him/her within 90 days, then adjust your status and apply for a green card.
What are the cons?
After collecting necessary documents (read further down for documents) and submitting the application, the minimum wait time is about 9 months. Sometimes it takes more than 12 months to receive this visa and during this time you can’t travel to the US to visit your partner almost at all (there are exceptions to this rule if you already hold a valid visa, but it’s only for very short periods of time). Yes, it sucks.
Also, you need to readjust your status once you get married, which means that this visa gives you nothing more than a valid entry to the US to marry. It’s only the best option if you don’t hold a valid visa for the US and never visited.
While you can plan a nice proper wedding in the US, be careful, since no one can really tell you when your documents will be processed and once you receive your visa you’ll only have a 3-month window to marry. I know a person who counted 9 months to their wedding but received an interview date back in their home country a day later so had to hold a mock wedding in the US with the family and return to their country a day later. Then, a week later, come back to the US to get married in a courthouse. It might be slightly costly if you get unlucky.
Option 2) Spousal visa (IR1)
A spousal visa is for those who are already married to a US citizen and want to immigrate to the US, or when both spouses lived abroad before deciding to move to the US.
What are the cons?
The first con for many people is actually getting married abroad. So it was in my case. While getting married in the US is easy; you just apply for a marriage license with your ID and then book an appointment, some countries require more things.
For instance, in case of Poland (the country of my original citizenship), they required Matt to submit a petition to the Supreme Court to remove the condition of signing the statement that he’s not been married before, since the US doesn’t follow the same rule. I was told we would have to wait about 6 months, if not longer, to receive this document allowing us to get married. We really couldn’t get married in any other country immediately since most require a residency of at least one spouse.
After collecting necessary documents (read further down for documents) and submitting the application, the minimum wait time is about 12-15 months. I heard that some cases took 18 months, and again – you can’t travel to the US while you wait unless you apply for a special non-immigrant spousal visa K3 that would allow you to wait in the US.
Option 3) Adjusting your status in the US
The last method is a preferred method by every immigration lawyer since it’s the easiest and fastest. Everyone I consulted recommended it, and this is what we ended up doing. I entered the US as a tourist to visit Matt, waited the minimum 60 days to remove the condition of not entering the US just to marry, then applied for the adjustment of status.
Important: If you marry someone right after you enter the US your application to adjust status will be denied and you might be fined. This option only works if you have a proof of legal entry into the US, so if you enter illegally your application will be denied (proof of legal entry is different than overstaying your visa).
Pros:
You don’t have to submit a bunch of documents that you have to submit for Fiancee and Spousal visas, such as police records from every country you lived in for the last 5 years. If you’re from one country, that’s not a problem, but if you’re a serial expat like me getting these police reports are costly, time-consuming and difficult.
Cons:
You can’t have a proper wedding. Since everything has to be done last minute, the only thing we could do was get married at a courthouse or in Las Vegas. Most couples choose to have another proper wedding with the family once the green card process is over.
Since you enter as a tourist and have to wait to get married and then wait for your documents to get adjusted, you will have a few months of doing nothing. You can’t work, you can’t travel abroad, you can’t get a driver’s license, you can’t study, you can’t even volunteer in most places.
If I didn’t have my blog I’d have gone crazy doing nothing…
Do You Need a Lawyer?
While we hired a lawyer based on some recommendations I can confidently say that you probably don’t need a lawyer. Getting an immigration lawyer isn’t cheap and she or he is basically going to fill the documents for you based on questionnaires and show you where to sign them.
In my case, the lawyer we had was very nice, but having her actually made the process slightly slower and I wish I knew about it beforehand (more on this further down).