I met my wife while I was in France on a temporary residency carte de séjour(Sojourners card), and she came down to the South of France as a Swedish citizen. France is an EU country so she didn't have to deal with immigration whatsoever, however as I am an American citizen I had been dealing with the French immigration system for quite a while. Luckily I had help, and proof that I had been there for some time. We started dating in December, got married in late September. We decided to get married in a country that wasn't (legally)home to either of us, and so had to go through the proper legal steps in order to be allowed marriage. We had to work with our respective embassies, and the local authorities in order to pull it off... That, we thought, was tough.
Fast forward a couple months, and we go to the states to visit my family. We learn that she can't stay for longer than 90 days and the U.S immigration system doesn't allow the ESTA (visa waiver program) to be extended. But we did our research and found that I could petition on her behalf for her to receive an immigrant visa (the I-130). So we filled out the application, - which took about two hours - and $545 later we find that average processing times for the immigrant visa ARE 3-5 YEARS. And that's just for the form to get in the hands of the case worker. Many people haven't seen their families for 10-12 years waiting for their petitions to go through. There are certain things that you can try to expedite this process, but as of writing this I haven't tried any of those things. So within the U.S Immigration laws, she's not allowed to be here more than 90 days, legally, and is expected to stay in her home country while I wait in the U.S for years hoping I'll get to see her one day.
Strike. There must be a way around this? Or so we thought. We figured "well she could just stay here in a visitor visa while I work and we can make it that way!" So we decided to send her to Luxembourg to see if we could get an appointment for a B-2 visitor visa (DS160 application). She got the appointment, and all seemed to be going well... Until we find out that if she has intent to immigrate the USCIS will reject her visitor visa, and since we have the application on her behalf immigrant visa underway, she is unable to come to the states. Ok, so plan C, come back on an ESTA and figure it out from there? Oops, because her passport has a rejected mark on it, that too will get rejected. Meaning she's not even legally allowed to SET FOOT on American soil. Ok so now what? I guess I go to her.
Well, if you do marry a foreign citizen, try to be in the same legal jurisdiction from an immigration standpoint. (EU, Switzerland, or EEA countries for instance, or America, and its territories.) Or be prepared to have met your wife or husband, and that's about it for the first years of your marriage, especially if you plan on getting into America with them. Don't get scammed. Be good, and do things right. If I were to do this over again, I'd probably have started the immigrant visa the day we met, or never have submitted it at all and just had her get a visitor visa to get in, and while she's in renew that every year or so. Now we don't have that chance. We do have the chance to be in Europe, but until I get residency somewhere I can't make money there quite yet.
So there's that. Feel free to comment. And may God be with you!
No comments:
Post a Comment