Okay so the k3 spousal visa we want to touch on that you know technically we
like to say it's obsolete technically it's still out there but you know a
brief history on the k3 is that there was a time many years ago it's probably
been 7-8 years or longer now when the cr1 visa was taking much longer than it
is now it's taken much longer than a year sometimes two or three years and by
cr1 or I mean a you know a regular green card application for spouse and to try
and speed things up a little bit they created kind of a loophole or back door
method where if you had a and as I 130 application pending which would be a CR1
or an IR 1 and you it was already approved at the first step and you were
just waiting and because of this big backlog they said ok if you're waiting
and we know there's a long wait so it's kind of an end run or to help you out go
ahead and follow the i-130 up with an i129f which is typically meant for
fiancee visa and they called it a k3 and what what happened was that would allow
your spouse to get here a little quicker because there was a little bit of
perhaps some people might have seen at that time of unfair situation where the
k1 which is the fiancee visa folks we're getting in here in much less than
a year where spouses who were married and felt like maybe they have a slightly
higher status because they were married were actually taking longer, so they said
ok if you have if you're waiting on your i-130 it's already been approved by the
CS you're waiting on the State Department we will let you file a i129f
and bring your wife here as a basically a non-immigrant at just as we
do with the k1 and then you could apply for the adjustment status so that's what
was going on since then those wait times have dramatically decreased down now
they're always under a year unless you have a specific problem with your case
and so because of that now what happens is while you can technically still
follow up the i-130 with an i-129f now it doesn't speed anything up because
what's going to happen what we seen happen is that as soon as the NVC
approves your petition NVC being the National Visa Center the second step of
the process they will then cancel your k3 and you'll go back to your i-130
applications so anyway we're probably getting in the weeds a little bit here
but the bottom line is, how many Rick we're done last year? I saw a
number some 160 or something up there in the saga of the thousands and thousands
of spousal visas done so they very rarely very rarely benefits you to do a
a k3 it usually ends up getting approved at the State Department level before it
ever gets to judicata as a k3 which means you've kind of wasted your time
and effort on the k3 and even worse there are some problems if there are
children involved and you do and you do a k3 it becomes problematic too and it
costs you more money because you got to do an adjustment status which you
wouldn't do with a straight CR 1 or IR1 so for all of these reasons
not only is it almost never almost never works and it's not necessary because
it's not going to speed anything up it's also going to cost you a lot more money
so it's just not a wise thing to do but because for several years it was the
right way to go there are still people out there talk it up and even sometimes
if you call the helpline for the CIS somebody will mention that because
they're just reading from a script' and so that's what we know about it it's
it's probably it's not necessary it's basically obsolete is it technically
still available yes it is.