Hi, everyone. Welcome to our weekly live immigration attorney chat. I'm Attorney
Megan Pastrana of Immigration for Couples and I'd like to start out by welcoming all of our
new members to our Immigration for Couples Facebook group. We're excited to have you and we're
excited to see that our group continues to grow. Also, congratulations to all of you in
the group who have posted that you have received interviews and approvals at your interview
for your fiancé visa or for your spouse visa or adjustment of status. We've had a lot of great news
in the group and so, congratulations! We're so excited for all of you. Thank you so much
for sharing your great news. It's really important for other couples in the group
to receive that support and to be able to see that light at the end of the tunnel.
For those of you who are new, the way that our weekly chat works is that we pick topics that we see
that we're frequently receiving questions about. Questions that we're receiving on our
YouTube channel and our Facebook group so we can give you clarity and address those questions
to help you on your immigration journey. I have a lot of you who are joining
now so, welcome. Thank you so much for being with us. If you want to just say hi in the comments, you're
welcome to do that and if you have questions, feel free to put those in the comments.
I will answer those at the end of the topic that we've chosen for this week.
One of the most frequently asked questions we have been receiving in the past few weeks and
months is whether it's faster to do the fiancé visa or faster to do the spouse visa.
I know a lot of couples almost become paralyzed by this decision. Life decisions are great
but sometimes when you have two paths and there's just so much conflicting
and contradicting information on both sides, it makes you feel paralyzed and you're not sure
what path to choose. For those of you who are just starting out on your immigration journey,
I want to quickly explain this alphabet soup of K1 and CR1 for those of you who are new
to these terms. The K1 is the fiancé visa route and then the CR1, and also called IR1,
and also called a spouse visa is the spouse visa route. It's the difference between
whether or not you file your immigration case while you're engaged
or you file based on marriage. These are two very common options for couples and
I will start out by saying historically which has been fastest is the fiancé visa. The fiancé visa
was historically the faster option for couples to be together. Before COVID typically we would
be able to help couples be able to be together, get through the fiancé visa process typically
in under six to eight months and be in the US. Those were the good old days and we used to be
able to complete the entire process from fiancé visa through green card in under a year.
Then immigration began to slow down and then COVID happened. There was just backlogs in general with
immigration and then COVID happened and things just really became very very slow for the
fiancé visa. But historically, yes. That was the fastest option for couples to be together.
The part that becomes confusing about which option is faster is specifically that
COVID and then the long delays that have have been created by immigration backlogs
I know no one likes to hear, but the answer to this question
is it really depends which one would be faster based on your particular situation or
your particular circumstances. But I want to go through what depends, what are factors to
be taken into account when choosing between these two options. When we meet with couples
we ask a lot of questions to get to know them as a couple and to get to understand
what their goals are. One of the things that it depends is if you aren't married yet
how soon can you reasonably get married to be able to file the spouse visa?
Because if you can't actually be together, some couples say,
"We won't actually be able to be together for six months, eight months, maybe a year."
Maybe there's work obligations or with travel bans and things like that, there just might
be things in the way that you actually can't be in the same country and get married anytime soon.
In that situation, we would tell couples that's something really important to think about
if you actually can't be in the same place and you're not going to be able to get married soon,
then it would be faster to think about the fiancé visa because that is something that
you can file right away once you meet certain requirements and you have actually met in person.
If you meet all the requirements for the fiancé visa and you aren't going to be able to
be together soon to get married, if that won't be feasible, then the fiancé visa in that case would
be likely a faster option. That's one of the factors that we take into account.
The other big part of it depends is it depends on what country the immigrant, the beneficiary
is from. That's a very big thing that we ask and find out.
What country are you from? Because while the US embassies and consulates
don't do processing times, they don't clearly post processing times like USCIS, there are ways
that we can check and I have a video about how to check visa statistics and I walk through
in that video how you can check visa processing times. In general, how many visas they've processed.
But that's one of the tools we use. Also, we've helped hundreds and hundreds
and we are able to see daily how things are moving. How things are progressing
for certain individuals from certain countries, We use this information
to say we see you're from this country and this is what we're seeing right now
for processing times with the fiancé visa or with the spouse visa. That's the other
thing that depends, it depends what country you're from. For some immigrants, well we
ask everyone this, are you a citizen of multiple countries? That's something else that we
use as a technique, if they're a citizen maybe of Australia and Japan
and United Kingdom or if they have multiple countries.
If you're a citizen of these other countries, it would be fastest for us to ask to have the interview
in whatever country, a certain country that seems to be processing them faster. The other part
again of it depends is it depends on that country. There are a lot of rumors that the
fiancé visa is slower than the spouse visa and that you shouldn't do the fiance visa. Don't do the
fiancé visa. And then, I hear the same with don't do the spouse visa, it takes too long.
These are just rumors because each person has their own unique
set of facts, their own situation. Everybody going through this process has a
unique relationship and everybody's from different countries, different
situations, different times that they filed. While that might be one person's experience
take that with a grain of salt because it could be very different from you based on when you're
filing and the specifics of your case and what countries that you could possibly process through
for the fiancé or spouse visa. Just know that right now, it'll really depend on which one
is faster. We really are seeing certain couples from certain countries that we would recommend
the fiancé visa over the spouse visa. For others, we're actually seeing that the fiancé and
the spouse visa are processing about the same time. What we like to say here at Immigration for
Couples is while going through the immigration process and in life, there are a
finite amount of things that we can control and we cannot control the chaos that is immigration.
But what you can control is taking steps forward and making a decision and getting something filed
and not letting yourself be paralyzed by that decision-making process.
Hopefully, that makes sense. I wish there was just a crystal clear answer
but really it depends and I would highly recommend if you're starting out at the
beginning of your immigration journey, our firm created a free green card webinar
that walks through the various options that are available to couples and helps you to
get clarity and understand the next step. We have a free resource center on our website,
Immigration for Couples, where we have videos and charts and a lot of information
to help give you clarity and help you get clarity on the truth of things that you
hear out there in the world of immigration for couples. I hope all of that information
helps and that you can check out our free resource center again at immigration for couples.