The Difference Between a Fiance Visa And Marriage-Based Green Card
The fiancé visa, also known as the K-1 Visa, can be thought of as the first step for couples where one of the parties is still living overseas, but wishes to enter the United States to marry his or her fiancé. Since the K-1 visa is designed to allow the spouse living outside the United States to enter the country for the sole purpose of getting married to his or her fiancé, this visa can only be issued at a U.S. Embassy or Consulate overseas.
In the case of the fiancé visa, the couple must get married within 90 days of the foreign spouse’s entry into the United States. The couple must have also met in person at least one time within the past two years.
The American citizen in the relationship headed towards marriage would file a Petition for Alien Fiance at his local USCIS office. If they approve the petition they would then send it to the National Visa Center for processing where it would eventually land in the overseas embassy or consulate of the country of the foreign national.
At this point the foreign national fiancé would then be able to apply for a non-immigrant fiancé visa. Eventually there would be an interview at the embassy or consulate to collect fingerprints, birth certificates, police certificates and evidence of the relationship with the fiancé.
If the foreign spouse is already living in the United States, the process is a bit shorter because there is no need to apply for the non-immigrant visa. Applying for a fiancé visa requires the foreign spouse to apply and interview at a U.S. embassy or consulate in the home country. Having see a few embassies overseas and the seemingly endless lines of people waiting outside of them, I would prefer to deal with the USCIS in this country. I admire the patience of anyone who endures these types of bureaucratic hurdles and delays an embassy or consulate overseas.
The green card application, on the other hand, is filed in the United States only after the foreign spouse has already married a U.S. citizen or permanent resident. This marriage doesn’t necessarily have to be done is the United States, but the foreign spouse does have to be currently living in the United States and marred to a U.S citizen or permanent resident to apply for the green card. In many cases, the foreign spouse might already be living in the United States under a non-permanent resident status under a student visa or an employment-based visa, but wishes to obtain the permanent resident status of a green card holder. Once the non-permanent resident marries a U.S. citizen or permanent resident he or she can then begin the green card application process.
Contrary to what some Americans might believe, simply getting married to a U.S citizen does not automatically confer a green card to the foreign spouse. And even if a green card is granted initially, it is issued “conditionally”, meaning that is good for only two years. After two years the green card applicant must file to have these conditions removed or risk losing his or her original immigration status. There is a lengthy and tedious application process culminating in what is commonly called the green card interview where the couple’s marriage is reviewed and scrutinized by a USCIS officer.
The USCIS officer has been trained to uncover any marriages done for the sole purpose of obtaining a green card for one of the parties. The marriage is simply a charade, intended to fool the U.S government into issuing a green card for a marriage based not on love, but on ulterior motive of obtaining a green card. These “sham” marriages carry severe penalties to both the U.S. citizen and the foreign spouse. The U.S citizen would be looking at a possible felony conviction and the accompanying fines and jail time that a felony conviction brings. It would be a lot easier to just tell the truth and if that isn’t possible then simply withdraw the petition.
The Risks of Trying to Outsmart The USCIS Officer
While marrying a U.S citizen is the easiest and quickest path for a foreign national to gain permanent residency status in the United States, there are still many misconceptions as to how easy it is to obtain a green card through marriage.
Many people mistakenly believe that all they have to do is pick up their marriage certificate at their local city hall, file their immigration petition, answer a few questions at a green card interview, and then, like magic, the green card will arrive in the mail.
One of the reasons for this misconception is that many would-be green card petitioners have heard stories of over-worked immigration officers dealing with more immigration cases than they can possibly handle. Hence, there is little time to pay too much attention to the millions of green card applicants that pass through the immigration system every year.
It is certainly true that that the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) has seen a tremendous increase in the number of green card applications being submitted every year. But it is also true that since the first attack on the World Trade Center in 1993 and continuing with a series of terrorist plots that were thwarted such as the plot to bomb New York City landmarks a few months later and the Millennium Plot to bomb the Los Angeles International Airport in 1997, and, of course, the attack on 9/11, immigration has become a national security issue.
Most of the terrorists involved in these plots and attacks on American soil exploited the U.S immigration system in some way. Some of them entered as students, businessmen, or tourists, but many also married American citizens so they could obtain legal permanent status, i.e., a green card. This was especially true for the conspirators of the plot to bomb several New York City landmarks in 1993. Out of the eleven terrorists involved in this plot, nine had at one time or another married an American citizen to obtain permanent residency status.
Because of this exploitation of the immigration system to enter the country and possibly plot another terrorist attack, the USCIS is not in the business of rubber-stamping any marriage-based green card applications that come their way, regardless of how much in love the married couple might appear. No USCIS officer wants to have the burden knowing that he or she was the one who approved the petition of someone who latercommitted a terrorist act or some other violent crime.
What this means for you, the innocent U.S citizen or foreign national who is married and needs a green card in order to keep your marriage together, is that you need to convince the USCIS officer that your marriage is legitimate. This will require you to document everything about your marriage, your living arrangements, your financial records, your relationship before the marriage, anything that proves that your marriage is bona fide.
If you fail to convince the USCIS officer at the green card interview that you and your spouse are not really a couple in love, but are merely trying your hand at obtaining a green card and all the benefits it bestows, then both of you will quickly find yourselves in what is known as a Stokes interview, or fraud interview. In this interview the two of you are separated and asked an identical set of very personal and probing questions designed to see how well you know your spouse. After you answer these very personal, even trivial, questions regarding your marriage and the relationship that preceded it, without your spouse present, then they repeat the same questions to the other spouse to see if the answers match.
And don’t think this can only happen to married couples that have only gotten married with the green card in mind. Perfectly innocent couples completely in love can find themselves unexpectedly thrown into a fraud interview because they said something or answered a question in a way that raised the suspicions of the interviewing officer. And if they haven’t prepared for such an interview they are in deep trouble.
The questions asked at such an interview are normally all about the minutia of your married life; what color is the comforter on your bed? what does your wife have for breakfast, etc. These are not the types of questions one can easily guess at, and even if you could the stakes are way too high to even try. Unlike, say, a high school English test you couldn’t take because you were sick, there are no make-up tests or do-overs when it comes to the green card interview.
So while the USCIS does its best to screen out those fraudulent couples that do, in fact, wish to exploit the immigration laws of our country for their own criminal benefit, the sad reality is that every married couple that sits before a USCIS officer is automatically viewed with suspicion and scrutiny. This is simply the job of the USCIS officer, to try to spot the lying couples from the honest ones. Unfortunately, sometimes the honest ones get mistakenly thrown in with the dishonest ones because they were unable to convince the officer of the legitimacy of their marriage.
So if even honest couples can sometimes get caught in the net with dishonest ones, it should be a lesson to any couples even considering trying their luck in a sham marriage, to think again. The USCIS officers have made their living spotting fraudulent marriages for years and given the severe penalties and consequences of what happens to those couples who attempt it, one wonders why they would even try.
How Long Will I Have To Wait For My Green Card?
Normally, immediately at the conclusion of your green card interview you will know if the interview was successful or not. At the end of the interview USCIS officer will tell you if he or she is approving your application and, if so, he or she will provide you what is called a Notice of Approval (I-797). A few weeks later you will receive your official USCIS letter and green card in the mail.
Finding out whether or not you or your spouse will be receiving a green card immediately following the interview spares both of you an agonizing period of stressful waiting. There is nothing more stressful than simply waiting around for a test result, a verdict, or decision from a USCIS officer.
There are some occasions, however, that do in fact cause the couples to have to wait around for the decision of the USCIS. This delay can be caused because the U.S. citizen or foreign spouse was unable to provide adequate proof or evidence at the interview regarding a particular issue. If, for example, the interviewing officer asks the U.S. citizen if he shares a joint bank accounts with his spouse and is told yes, but the U.S citizen is unable to provide any documentation proving the existence of that account then there is going to be a delay.
In most cases these delays could have been averted if only the married couple had spent a little bit of time organizing the paper trail of their marriage before the interview. Since there is no standard set of questions that each USCIS officer is required to follow at every interview, you have to be prepared to provide documentation for anything that you have claimed on the paperwork you submitted or anything you might say at the interview.
If the USCIS officer asks you what sort of activities you and your spouse do together and you claim that both of you joined the local gym or enrolled in a class together, you had better be prepared to provide the enrollment form showing both of your names. If you are unable to prove something you might have claimed in response to a question, you will eventually have to provide that proof and this means that you will not be leaving the interview with a Notice of Approval.
The frustrating part of the delay is that is could have very easily been avoided with even a minimum amount of preparation and legwork in the days before the interview.
There is only one thing worse than leaving the green card interview without a decision being made by the interviewing officer: Being told that the green card application has been denied. In such a case, a written explanation would be provided covering the reasons for the denial of the application. Depending on the reason for the denial, the U.S citizen in the marriage, if deemed to be a participant in a marriage scam, could be looking at a felony charges for fraud and the foreign spouse would probably be given notice to depart the United States.
While there is no requirement that any marriage-based green card applicant needs to hire an immigration attorney to assist him or her through the application process, once there is a charge of marriage fraud, or any other kind of illegality, it would be highly recommended to secure the services of one. The potential consequences are simply too severe to go up against an army of USCIS lawyers alone.
Getting A Green Card Through The Diversity Lottery
If obtaining a green card through a relative or employer is not possible, or marriage to your partner is not appealing enough, there is always the Diversity Lottery which is held every year by the State Department’s National Visa Center. The Lottery is held for the benefit of immigrants from countries with low rates of immigration to the United States.
While the odds of actually obtaining a green card through the Diversity Lottery are not as steep as perhaps winning the Mega Millions lottery, it still is no easy feat. The number of applicants entering the Lottery has been increasing every year, increasing the odds of winning that much more difficulty.
In last year’s Diversity Lottery (DV-2009), there were over 9.1 million qualified entries, all vying for a mere 50,000 available permanent resident visas. Since some of those who are randomly drawn from the Lottery do not follow-up and go through the process of securing their visa, 99,600 entries were actually drawn to ensure that all 50,000 visas would be issued. This is typical for every year’s lottery given the number of entries who, for whatever reason, fail to follow through on their good fortune.
The visas were distributed to applicants across six geographic regions, with no more than 7% being issued to the applicants from any one country.
Just to give you an idea of how long the odds are to obtain one of these Diversity Lottery permanent resident visas let’s take a look at a few countries and the number of successful applicants.
Japanese nationals comprised just 320 of the total number of those registered through the DV-2009 Lottery. Nationals from Costa Rica comprised just a fraction of that number, 67. But there were a few countries that did quite well in the lottery due to the emphasis on increasing the immigration of those countries that have not had historically high immigration numbers. Albania, for example, had a total of 2,894 who were registered through the lottery and Cameroon had 3,659. If you or your spouse is from a country with historically low immigration numbers to the United States you will find that your odds of winning one of these Diversity Lottery visas increases, but obviously it is far from being a good bet that you will be successful. Having said that, however, it sill costs you nothing to enter the lottery so why not enter it and try your luck.
For those lucky enough to have been chosen, they will still need to meet a few minimum conditions in order to receive their permanent resident visas. They must eventually show that they have completed high school or its equivalent or, lacking a high school diploma, prove that they have at least two years of work experience at a job, within the past five years, that requires at least two years of training.
Since the lottery is intended for foreigners from countries with low immigration rates to the United States, the lottery does not accept applicants for the lottery from countries that have sent more than 50,000 immigrants here in the past five years. This would include quite a few countries. For DV-2009 the would-be applicants from the following countries were not allowed to enter the Diversity Lottery:
Brazil
Canada
China (mainland-born, excluding Hong Kong and Taiwan)
Colombia
Dominican Republic
Ecuador
El Salvador
Guatemala
Haiti
India
Jamaica
Mexico
Pakistan
Peru
Philippines
Poland
Russia
South Korea
United Kingdom (except Northern Ireland and its dependent territories)
Vietnam
If these odds have not discouraged you too much and you are interested in entering the Diversity Lottery simply to http://travel.state.gov/visa/immigrants/types/types_1318.html to get the most updated information. Good luck!
Getting a Green Card Through a Family Member
The seemingly complicated path to a green card through a family member can be intimidating to someone who is just starting out. Navigating through the maze of paperwork, requirements, and rules can be challenging to say the least. So what do you do if you are a parent or other relative of a family member residing in the United States and you wish to come to the United States to live and work?
The first thing to understand is that if you wish to become a permanent legal resident of the United States through a relationship with a family member, that family member must already be a citizen or a lawful permanent resident of the United States.
If that condition is met, you can then begin the process of applying for what is known as a green card, i.e, permanent resident status in the United States.
The first step in the process is having the relative or sponsor file an immigrant visa petition or, to be more exact, an I-130 Petition for Alien Relative, for you. The relative filing this petition must also include proof that the two of you are, in fact, related.
Once this is done the U.S. State Department will check to see if there is a visa number available for you. If there is a visa number available you can apply to have that number assigned to you. The State Department maintains a status board for these visa numbers on their Visa Bulletin site, http://travel.state.gov/visa/frvi/bulletin/bulletin_4558.html
If a number does become available to you and you are already in the United States, you are eligible to apply for that number and become a lawful permanent status by filing form I-485, Application to Register Permanent Residence or Adjust Status. If you happen to be outside the United States when a visa number becomes available you must go to U.S. consulate in your country to process your application.
The relative who is sponsoring you must also prove that he or she is capable of supporting you financially. The sponsoring relative would not need to show an incredible amount of wealth, only that he or she is at least 125% above the established poverty line at the time of the application. The sponsor would file Form I-485, Affidavit of Support to prove that supporting you would not be a problem.
So which relatives can be sponsored to come and live as a lawful permanent resident of the United States? Well, it depends on what the status is of the sponsoring relative.
If the sponsoring relative is a U.S. citizen, the following relatives can be petitioned to immigrate to the United States:
a) Husband or wife
b) Children
c) Brother or sister, if the sponsor is at least 21 years old
d) Parent, if the sponsor is at least 21 years old
If the sponsoring relative is not a U.S. citizen, but is a lawful permanent resident of the U.S, the following relatives can be sponsored”
a) Husband or wife
b) Unmarried son or daughter (any age)
And as with most things in life there are preferences as to which immigrants get priority when it comes to issuing green cards. Immediate relatives of U.S. citizens, which includes parents, spouses and unmarried children under the age of 21, are given special preference and are exempt from having to wait around for a visa number to become available once the visa petition is filed and approved by the USCIS. Since they are an immediate relative of the sponsor and are considered in a preferred category, their visa number will be automatically available to them as soon as the petition is approved. relatives in the remaining categories must wait for an immigrant visa number to become available according to the following preferences:
Other relatives, outside this category of immediate relatives, have to wait for a visa number to become available. And these remaining categories are further ranked on the basis of preference. There are four preference categories for these relatives hoping to obtain lawful permanent resident status in the United States:
Preference #1
Adult children (over 21) of U.S. citizens who are unmarried.
Preference #2
Applicants of U.S. lawful permanent residents, their unmarried non-adult (under 21) children, and the unmarried children of lawful permanent residents.
Preference #3
Married children of U.S. Citizens.
Preference #4
Brothers and sisters of adult(over 21) U.S. Citizens.
As you can see, the fastest and easiest path to obtaining lawful permanent resident status in the United States, i.e. getting a green card, is marrying a U.S. citizen. And because of this, the USCIS investigates all marriages where a green card might possibly be the prime motive for the couple getting married.
Top 3 Mistakes To Avoid Before Green Card Interview
Are you worried about your upcoming green card interview? Are you worried that you or your spouse might not be granted the green card because the interview may not go as smoothly as you would like? Correct these mistakes before they happen to make sure you leave with what you came for.
For what might be considered the most important interview of their lives, it is surprising to hear about the many couples that enter the green card interview having already committed some key mistakes, even before the interview begins.
Avoid these mistakes and increase your chances of leaving the interview with your green card.
Mistake # 1: Failure to prepare for the interview
Many couples believe that the green card interview can be entered into without any prior preparation if they simply answer all the questions honestly. While being honest at the interview is a given, both morally and legally, it may not always be enough to ensure a successful outcome at the interview.
Spending some time getting familiar with the types of questions you are most likely to face at the interview will guarantee that no one question will catch you off guard. And unlike a multiple-choice test you may have taken at school or for a government job, you cannot simply guess what the answer is or skip it and come back to it later. If you are asked a question by the interviewing USCIS officer and are unable to answer it or you seem unsure what to say, your interview could very quickly unravel even if you are telling the truth.
The solution is to prepare for the green card interview just as you would for any performance event such as a test, a job interview, or a speech.
Mistake # 2: Failure to organize your paperwork and documents before the interview
We have all seen the absent-minded professor or teacher who enters his classroom with a briefcase half-open with various papers of all shapes and sizes sticking out, a shirt half-tucked in, and head full of hair that looks like it hasn’t been combed in a few days.
When the professor reaches his desk he opens his briefcase and then proceeds to weed through the mess of papers looking for his lecture notes for the class. The class waits patiently and after a few minutes the professor digs out what he was looking for and takes it to the lectern where he begins his lecture.
While a classroom of students intent on getting a good grade might patiently wait as a professor digs through a stack of papers in his briefcase, the USCIS officer at your green card interview will not be as accommodating. Having your paperwork and documents in order before you enter the interview will be much appreciated by the officer. The officer most probably has a full case load and can’t afford to waste time idly waiting as you shuffle through your file of paperwork looking for a particular document.
Since you want to use every tool available to win the approval of the interviewing officer, to get him or her to like you and your spouse, don’t lose points unnecessarily by testing their patience. Simply take some time before the interview to organize your documents and have them ready in case you are asked for them at the interview. The interviewing officer will certainly appreciate it and be more likely to view you as a responsible and credible applicant. This can only help your case when it comes time to decide whether you and your spouse will be leaving the interview with a green card.
Mistake # 3: Treating the Green Card Interview as a mere formality
At one extreme there is the married couple that views the upcoming green card interview with extreme dread and anxiety, as though they have an appointment with a verbal firing squad.
At the other extreme there is the couple who feels absolutely no anxiety at all, believing that if they simply arrive on time, tell the truth, and hold hands during the interview to show the USCIS officer that they are happily married, then they will surely walk out with the green card. No big deal.
While neither couple is correct is their thinking–they are both at unproductive extremes–the couple that shudders at the thought of having their marriage questioned and scrutinized is at least going to be motivated to do something about their state of anxiety. They will find a way to prepare themselves for the interview, not just to alleviate their feelings of anxiety regarding the interview, but to arm themselves with information that will increase their chances of performing well at the interview.
The couple that believes honesty and love alone will carry the day at the interview is mistaken. The green card interview is as much about preparation and performance as it is about truth and love. Believing that all one has to do is sit down, hold hands, and speak from the heart is headed for disaster. The stakes are too high to enter this interview with such an attitude. There are no do-overs when it comes to green card interviews.
Tips For The Green Card Interview
It’s not enough to simply think you and your spouse are the model of the perfect couple–the USICS officer may think otherwise. Unless you are able to prove you are, in fact, a legitmate married couple, one that didn’t get married solely for the benefit of getting a green card for one of you, don’t expect to be leaving the interview with that green card. No matter how much you are convinced that you and your spouse are the best married couple in the world, it makes no difference if the USCIS officer thinks both of you are just putting on an act to fool the U.S. government into granting you a green card. He has seen it all before. The married couple who has elaborately staged the appearance of a real marriage, but behind the curtains there is nothing but a scam to get a green card.
The interview is far from a multiple-choice test where the outcome is assured as long as you answer all the questions correctly. The fact is that the USCUS officer who will be interviewing you is not some programmed robot who will simply ask you a set number of questions and then assign your answers an objective value on a truth scale. No, you will be questioned by an actual, live human being with all of the built-in biases, prejudices, and errors in judgment we are all prone to.
Even the closest and loving of couples could end up in a fraud interview. A fraud interview is assigned to a couple when the USCIS officer believes the couple may be involved in a marriage fraud, a scam designed to fool the U.S. government into granting a green card to a member of the couple. Due to some inadvertent remark or answer at the green card interview, a married couple could quickly discover that what they thought was going to be rubber-stamp interview with little drama or problems, could turn into a fight for the their future as a married couple.
While having an immigration attorney at your side during the green card interview might provide a source of psychological comfort and security, the reality is that he or she will not be able to coach or consult with you in how you will answer a particular question from the immigration officer. You and your spouse can definitely benefit from an immigration attorney in the process leading up to the interview, but once the interivew begins the two of you are on your own.
The objective of the interviewing immigration officer: A sales manager interviewing job canddiates for an open sales rep position will ask each candidate at the job interview a series of questions to find out whom he thinks will be the best fit for the job. An admissions officer for a prestigious Ivy League university will interview potential Freshmen determine which one would enhance the overall academic environment of the university. A USCIS immigration officer interviewing married couples who have applied for a green card, will use all of his training, education, common sense, and judgment to determine if the couple seated in front of him is telling him the truth.
