Taperman articles

K1 Visa or fiancee immigration for the United States

K1  visa is the fiancee immigration term visa for the United States. This visa is issued to those people from other countries who are marrying a US citizen and coming to stay in the US permanently. After the marriage, they become US citizens.

When the concept of KI visa was not introduced, the spousal visa could still be introduced if the couple had married in the migrant's country. But because in that system, one could apply for the visa only after marriage, the migrating fiancée did not get any time to be habituated with the United States and its culture. This is a very big change in the life of an individual as two important changes: moving to a different county and getting married occur concurrently. To avoid the difficulties associated with this situation, K1 visa was introduced.

Another problem with spousal visa was that the couples could not be together as the applications for such visas were increasing and due to delayed approval, couples were not able to start their lives together. K1 visa saw the end of this problem as well.

The K1 visa is valid for a period of 90 days and based on the fiancé's experience in the new environment, the couple decides whether they want to marry of not. Getting married in 90 days sees the visa giving way for a green card whereas in case of a change of heart and mind, the migrant fiancée must leave the US before the visa expires. The couple might also choose to shift to the other person's native country and then, that country's laws would determine the citizenship criteria for the newly migrant.

The K1 visa has also led to increased cases of immigration frauds as people marry just for the sake of entering US and getting citizenship. Once they are a legal US citizen, they will divorce or separate. US government has defined immigration laws to study such cases and find out the truth and punish people accordingly if found guilty.

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