Critical Dos and Don’ts of Marrying Your Foreign Fiance
February 13th, 2009 by Art Saborio, under Travel and Leisure. No Comments
A few things you need to know if you are submitting your K1 Fiance Visa without the aid of an attorney.
An important requirement that you must comply with before submitting. You must have met your fiance within two years of submitting the application. If you met your fiance say three years ago and wanted to file, it is not a good idea. You will need to take another trip to see her and update your current travel documents before submitting.
There are a number of things that these trips prove to the USCIS officers reviewing your application. For one it ensures your relationship is current. They tend to not trust a long distance relationship that does not show face to face contact within two years. As they see it, most normal relationships have personal contact. If you have not seen your fiance in two years, then something is not right. This will definitely keep your application from being approved.
See your fiance twice within this two year period. Once is good, but it really does not show a trend. Usually meeting only once does not show that your intentions are true. This is just my personal opinion but a lot can happen over three years of not seeing each other. That bond that you had with her, may not be there once you are ready to file. Best to keep that bond strong with meetings every 6 months and at the least once a year. But ultimately that decision is up to you or both of you.
Not all K1 Fiance couples are compatible. I have met many that are not. The worst part of it is they found this out after they were finally together in the USA. The comfort level was not there and they even had a hard time just trying to sleep with each other.
I met my fiance every four to six months and spent a total of three weeks each time I flew out to see her. The first time was very uncomfortable. The second time it was better. The third time I knew she was the right one for me. It is tough to make these trips, but well worth it once your fiance is in the USA with you.
Take a trip to see your fiance regularly. Spend time with her. Here are a few things you must consider when on your trips. Keep all plane ticket stubs, hotel receipts and currency exchange receipts.
These are the items I collected from my travels. I kept plane ticket stubs, hotel receipts, currency exchange receipts, and retail shop receipts. I would buy her things while I was with her, so the retail receipts worked great. These receipts would usually have the name of the store, date and its address.
Pictures were something I took a lot of when we took our trips together. I would take as many as I could of just her and me. The date and time stamp feature on the camera came in handy on my travels. I took a minimum of two pictures of use together on every trip. When I did submit my application, these pictures went right along with my K1 Visa Application.
