What are the primary differences between a fiancé or marriage visa? This is among the most frequently asked questions for the team at Davis & Associates, so join attorney Garry Davis as he explains the different advantages and disadvantages of obtaining a fiancé vs. marriage visa.
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So someone's arrived here, they got married within 90 days, and now it's time to actually do the Green Card application itself. And so they filed an application back with USCIS, like we started with, the I-129F, it's now an I-485 application. And then I-485 comes with work and travel permission as part of the application process and no additional charge. And it also has a financial sponsorship component that the US citizen fiancé, now spouse, has to meet, or they'll have to find some U.S. citizen or Permanent Resident Co-sponsor to help meet that financial requirement. And currently, in Dallas and Houston, it's about 12-15 months after submitting that application to get the actual green card itself. Let's say you finish the cycle, so I-129F, do the visa application at the consulate, marry within 90 days, and then do the green card application on the back end. And that's the typical fiancé visa path. The other thing I wanted to share is. Anytime I have a consultation with someone who asks about the fiancé visa, I also share with them the advantages to doing it through a marriage relationship. So, one of the things that we have to have to be able to do the I-129F is that meeting face-to-face within the last two. There are some exceptions to that, it can be somewhat challenging to meet those exceptions, but if there's, you know, some sort of hardship that makes it impossible to travel, if there's a cultural or religious norm that prevents a face-to-face meeting, we want to be respectful of that in the law. And so they provide an opportunity to ask for an exception to that face-to-face meeting, but in most cases you're going to have to meet face-to-face. Even COVID wasn't really an excuse to not meet face-to-face. Europe just didn't want to go down that road. And so, you got to meet face-to-face. So if it's been more than two years since that last face-to-face meeting or they've never met face-to-face, there are significant advantages to, since you have to meet face-to-face anyway, to just getting married. And then coming into the US as a spouse. So let's talk about those just real briefly. The first one is.: the person comes with work and travel permission from the moment they land here, whereas if they come as a fiancé they've got potentially 6 to 9 months before they have work and travel authorization after getting married. OK, so there's this huge gap in the ability to work and as adults, that may be a little bit frustrating. What do you do all day if you don't have authorization to work for maybe a year? But if you do it as a spouse, then you come with everything. There's no I-485 to file at the end. There's nothing to wait for. They have work and travel permission from day one. The other thing is that the exact same unit that does the fiancé visa interview that we talked about, does the visa interview for the green cards. The exact same consulate does the interview for the green cards, so there's not a ton of time savings between the two options. One of the reasons that people prefer the fiancé visa approach, even though it's more expensive and even though it takes longer in total to process the case to get to two of the actual green card, is because of the speed and getting the fiancé here. And while that was true pre-COVID, now that we've gone through COVID and we have this gigantic backlog. And it's the same unit doing both applications, the green card applications and the K-1 visa application. So there's not a ton of time savings between the two. So, because there's no time advantage, it's cheaper to do it as a spouse, and it's faster to get to the green card, and when they land here, they have everything they need.
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About Davis & Associates:

Davis & Associates is the immigration law firm of choice in Dallas & Houston Texas. Their attorneys provide expert legal counsel for all aspects of immigration law, including deportation defense, writs of habeas corpus and mandamus, family-sponsored immigration, employment-sponsored immigration, investment immigration, employer compliance, temporary visas for work and college, permanent residence, naturalization, consular visa processing, waivers, and appeals. Attorney Garry L. Davis is Board Certified in Immigration and Nationality Law by the Texas Board of Legal Specialization.
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Contact Info:
Dallas Location:
17750 Preston Rd,
Dallas, TX 75252
Phone: 469-957-0508

Houston Location:
Address: 6220 Westpark Dr # 110
Houston, TX 77057
Phone: 832-742-0066