Transcript:

Narrator 

Welcome to Immigration Nation, the podcast that dives deep into the complex and often misunderstood world of United States immigration. Through interviews with leading US immigration Attorneys, this podcast aims to provide a comprehensive overview of the policies, struggles and victories within the ever changing world of immigration. Each episode will offer fresh perspectives and valuable insight using real life stories to navigate our nation’s immigration system. If you have an immigration question or an existing case, join us here on immigration nation because this podcast was made for you. 

Kleine Powell 

Hi. And thanks for tuning in. My name is Kleine and I’m your podcast host and marketing professional. And today we have our special guest, Mr. Garry Davis, and he is an immigration lawyer with over 20 years of Experience board certified based in Dallas and Houston. And today, we’ll be talking about how you can live out your own 90 day fiance dreams. Or otherwise known as getting the fiance visa. So let’s get into it. So. Start off by telling. You a little bit about yourself. 

Garry Davis 

Sure, I am. My name is Garry Davis. I’m an immigration lawyer, board certified by the Texas Board of Legal Specialization in immigration law, and I’ve been practicing immigration for over 20 years. 

Kleine Powell 

Sweet. So we just wanted to start off by. Saying if you are not familiar with the TV show 90 day fiance, basically it’s reality TV show that follows a handful of couples that all have K1 visas or fiance visas, which I didn’t know that cause. I’ve never seen the show and I was like, oh, well, that makes sense. So one of the conditions of the K1 visa is that once the foreign partner enters the United States. They have 90 days to marry their U.S. citizen partner, otherwise the fiance must leave the US. Immediately or risk deportation, so hence the name 90 day fiance. Now this show, like any reality TV show, is absolutely dramatized. But there’s a lot of truth in it. So could you speak a? Little bit about that. 

Garry Davis 

Absolutely. I mean, one of the purposes for the fiance visa is to help people that are engaged to be married come together and actually get married here in the US, and there’s lots of reasons why someone want to do that. For example, you know, frequently people will meet online and start a relationship, get to know each other. And then have an opportunity to meet each other face to face and and if things lead to things and they decide they want to be married, then there is a process that the US government provides to for a U.S. citizen to be able to bring a fiance into the into the country for the purpose of getting married. So the part that I guess is the most accurate in the story is the fact that you have 90 days to. Get married once you arrive here. And that’s a really important. Rule and part of the reason I think that that the rule is what it is. Is that uh. The US government doesn’t want to give a fiance visa to a couple that’s not committed, right? And so that commitment is basically proven by getting married quickly after entry into the country. 

Kleine Powell 

That makes sense. So could you then tell us who would be eligible for a K1 visa or fiance visa? 

Garry Davis 

Sure, it’s basically anyone that’s a foreign national. It doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to to do a fiance visa if the person’s here in the US, so I would say that that a functional requirement would be that they would not only not be here, but possibly don’t have any other kind of visa to come to the US. So it creates the opportunity for them to have a visa and and let me just take a step back and explain so that everybody understands. People kind of think of the term as visa as anything that relates to coming to or being in the US. But the truth is that visa is just a travel document. So once you come to inspection with a visa to the US and your passport, that visa becomes kind of irrelevant. At that point. It’s just an entry. Document. So if they don’t have another kind of visa or entry document document to come to the US, the fiance visa can create that opportunity for them to. Come. And so foreign national engaged to a U.S. citizen. Frequently amassed, you know, whether permanent residents can bring a fiancee. The answer is no. Only U.S. citizens have that opportunity. So U.S. citizen fiance. And outside the US needing a visa and the the last requirement that’s really, really important is a face to face meeting within the last two years. And that’s been really tricky, especially during COVID, because with COVID international travel restrictions and things like that, it’s been really, really challenging to make fiance visas work. But those are the basic requirements and and who would benefit from that kind of opportunity. 

Kleine Powell 

So in your experience, are all the couples that you come across like the ones in 90 day fiance? Are they all long distance? Are they all having those like similar consequences? Or do you see other things? 

Garry Davis 

There’s other situations also, although that’s the most common, I would say is that people have met online, but sometimes they’ve been introduced by family members, sometimes they were the non-us citizen. The foreign national was here in the US, perhaps in school, and they met in school. The foreign national went home to work or whatever get on with life and then they realized, hey, we really. Like to being together. But now they don’t have a visa to get back together and so they use the fiance visa to to move forward with their relationship and that kind of. Thing other situations would be the US citizen may be an expatriate living outside the US and working and met someone and fell in love there where they’re working or or maybe on vacation or extended vacation or whatever outside the country. And so it’s those kinds of situations where you would see people looking for a fiance visa as a solution to be together. 

Kleine Powell 

Oh, gotcha. So once they’ve established that they’re eligible for K1 visa. Then how would they apply? 

Garry Davis 

The process starts with a petition, and that’s not uncommon in immigration. The agency that that processes that petition is called US Citizenship and Immigration Services, or USCIS, which is a I’m going to nerd out a little bit here. Sorry it make it. 

Kleine Powell 

Do it. 

Garry Davis 

1. Little make it a little dry, but but people may finding it. Information useful to them, but basically USCIS is part of the Department of Homeland Security. And and USCIS is is tasked with managing the bureaucratic process of a petition where the US citizen actually files a that application with USCIS asking for the fiance visa opportunity for their fiancee. It’s filed on a form I129F as in fiance. And so all you have to really prove there is that the person is a U.S. citizen that’s filing the the petition. You have to prove that they’ve met face to face in the last two years and and we’ll talk about how that could be somewhat challenging culturally or religiously for some folks. But but the basic requirement is face to face meeting within the last two years. And you got to be able to prove that both have to be eligible to marry. So if they’ve been married to someone else, or frankly even claimed to be married to someone else, like in a common law marriage relationship or on a visa application, something like that. They have to prove that they are unencumbered by those marriages through a divorce or a death of that spouse. So they both have to be eligible to marry, and they also have to show that they intend to marry within 90 days of entry and that could be a little bit tricky because how do you prove an intention, right? But basically it’s just a letter from each of them saying, look, we know each other, we love each other. We want to be together. So we’re planning to get married as quickly as we can. After, after I or he or she enters the US. So those are the basic requirements and the basic way to start the process. You also have to pay the government a fee. One thing that people may find interesting is, you know, in some countries immigration is something that is managed through the tax system. In other words, the citizens are taxed and then budget goes to the agency to manage that bureaucratic process. In the US is not the case. A very small portion, something like 5% or less of USCIS’s budget comes from tax money, so they have to charge fees for the work that they do and they can be somewhat substantial. And we could talk about what the what’s involved here because it it winds up being. You know. Over $2000 but $2500 in the end to pay all the fees that you need to pay to get through the process. But the reason for that is because they don’t have tax money to offset, you know, their expenses as an agency, it has to come through fees. So there’s a fee that’s required as well. Currently it’s 535, but it could. Change. At any time, and that goes as a check to USCIS with that. 129th petition. And that’s basically it.

Kleine Powell 

That’s, I guess that’s still. Less expensive than a normal wedding these. Days. 

Garry Davis 

Well, that’s true. It’s significantly less expensive than a wedding, but you also have to consider it as part of the budget, right? And and for some people could be somewhat substantial to come up with that much money over the course of the process. But, but yeah, it’s it’s it’s a lot. 

Kleine Powell 

Oh, absolutely, yeah. Engaged. And they do want to get married right away as soon as possible. How long would it take for them to obtain a fiance? 

Garry Davis 

Visa. That’s a very difficult question to answer, although a good one and one that we get in every consultation that we have on these. But it’s hard to know because there’s more steps to the process than just the petition part. So the petition part generally is about 6 to 8 months, something like that. As long as there’s no issues in the US, citizens pass that would, you know, like a criminal record or something like that, that USCIS has to investigate because they don’t want people to. Come into the US on a fiance visa into a dangerous situation, so if there’s criminal history and stuff like that, or if there’s previous applications that were filed for other fiances they don’t want people running. The business of being a fiance, you know, kind of, you know, making money, doing that kind of thing. So there’s certain things that will trigger a longer time span as they’re trying to sort all that background, you know, stuff out. But when it comes to the typical kind of vanilla process you’re looking at probably about 6 to 8 months just for the petition. 

Kleine Powell 

Right. 

Garry Davis 

Once the petition is approved, then it’s forwarded through an office of the Department of State. So we’re moving from Homeland Security, which handles things here to the Department of State, which handles all of the embassies and consulates and things like that throughout the world. Visa processing, travel document processing, right. And so it goes to the national visa. Center. And then it’s forwarded to the US consulate that’s going to be responsible for handling those K1 fiance visa applications for that fiancee’s country of nationality and most most countries only have one U.S. consulate that handles. All of the green card and fiance visa processing, so they have to sometimes travel to that one location to be able to to process the visa. And you’re subject to that one consulate’s schedule, which there’s no way to know in advance what their schedule is when they have an opening to actually accept the processing of the application and give you an interview, because part of the visa application process involves an interview, so it can be somewhat challenging for, for even even us that do a high volume of these kinds of cases. Give you an idea about when the consulate will have an opening to schedule you for the interview and so with COVID and everything and the Council is basically being shut down. We’re just now having several of our clients that hired us back at the early days of COVID get their fiance visa. Because they just haven’t had appointment times open. They were either closed in response to the pandemic or they they are just now have this huge pile of work that they have to work through this backlog before they can get to a a new case. Right? And so it’s a little bit challenging to to sort that out. As far as the time frame. 

Kleine Powell 

Oh jeez. 

Garry Davis 

But they have. They have notified us how reliable is the information. Your guess is as good. As. Mine, but they’ve told us that they are increasing capacity for visa applications 30% higher than pre pandemic capacity. In an effort to try to bring the processing time back to some sense of normal as we kind of move out of the. Pandemic. And the government response to that and back in back pre COVID we were just at about like 9 to 12 months to be able to get through the process. So we’re hoping to get back to that hopefully in not too much time. 

Kleine Powell 

Wow, OK so. Jeez, that’s got to be frustrating for like people. 

Garry Davis 

It’s incredibly frustrating for for those that were trying to help with this process because they want to be together and frankly a lot of them have friends that have done it and so they’re they’re hearing from them. Well, it only took me 12 months to get my fiance hear. What’s? Going on somehow, people forget that COVID is having an impact on. On the world, right? 

Kleine Powell 

So. 

Garry Davis 

True. And so we we spent a lot of time, you know, as a firm, we filed thousands of cases a year. And So what happened to us in COVID is that the volume of pending cases increased dramatically, just like it has for the government. USCIS currently reports having over 8 million pending applications right now imagine that, I know. And so everything’s kind of busted. On the government side of things and of course, we have this volume of, you know, cases that are pending and everybody wants answers, right. And so it could be somewhat challenging for us as well to be able to accommodate those. You know you you guys told me a year and a half ago would take a year and a half and here it is. And well, we didn’t really know that he was going to have this kind of impact. So it’s really it’s really tough to answer that question. It’s a very good one. But what I tell people currently is just understand that it’s going to take some time. And as we go through the different phases of the process, starting with the petition that we talked about before moving through the visa application and the interview schedule, as we go through the process will have a better sense of where that individual. Consulate is at scheduling and stuff like that and so. It’s one of those things where we’re going to have to get take a step at a time. I know that, you know, we talked about that a lot in in life and in the world that you got to kind of take a deep breath and take a step at a time. But you got to get through it, step at a time in this process and and once the person has the visa, they can come. And that’s all great. But then there’s more processing on the back end of it. That you have to deal with as well. 

Kleine Powell 

So for couples planning weddings, I know you. You said, you know, typically 9 to 12 months pre COVID. Right. Which at this point sounds like a dream come true to some people. So would you recommend going ahead and planning things like the venue and and you know, vendors like that before getting the visa? Or would you recommend people to wait? 

Garry Davis 

It would be, yeah. I definitely don’t recommend it and the reason I don’t recommend it is there are so many variables that we can’t control either as attorneys or if people try to do it on their own. There’s so much that’s out of their control that if they if they make deposits and commitments and and plans and arrangements and things don’t work out timing wise because it’s very unpredictable. Now they’re going to be very frustrated, OK? And maybe lose some deposit and earn us money and things like that. What I tell people is to plan on doing what I colloquially refer to as a paper wedding, right? A paper marriage. Where they basically just come and within the 90 days they do the the deed right they go to the county and get the license, they go to their priest, Minister Imam, justice of the peace, whatever authority they want to go to. To get actually married on paper so that they meet the requirement for the 90 days and then plan. Their. Big Wedding for whenever they want to do it. After that it’s not ideal because of course people would prefer sometimes not everyone, but sometimes people would prefer to do it all as. 1. Thing. But the chances of of them being able to sort all that out. On the visa process side of things and still make it all happen the way they want it within the 90. It’s just so remote, right? It’s just it’s just so challenging. And so I I tell people, look, if you going to do it this way, there’s other ways to do it, which we can talk about. But if you’re going to do it this particular way, my recommendation is just plan on. 

Kleine Powell 

Yeah. 

Garry Davis 

Separating the actual marriage itself, the legal part with the party part right and just do it in two separate phases. And frankly, I don’t really care and the law doesn’t really care what day you deem to be your kind of wedding for anniversary celebration purposes and stuff like that, you can figure that out however you. Want to? 

Kleine Powell 

Right. 

Garry Davis 

But as far as the law is concerned. We got to have that piece of paper within that 90 days or the strategy doesn’t work. So so anyway, that’s that’s my take on that. I don’t recommend it if they’re really committed to it. Just make sure that there’s some flexibility with the venue or with the costs and that kind of thing so that they can have this celebration that they want with their friends and family and each other, but then don’t wind up getting kind of, you know, hog tied by. The timing issues, which are so out of our. Control. 

Kleine Powell 

Right. So then that brings up this next question. What happens if you don’t get married within the 90? 

Garry Davis 

Days. So there’s two scenarios in which that may happen. 1 is that some well, three really. One is that someone comes. Here. And and they just decide, you know what this. Isn’t for me. And so maybe the answer to that situation is to just plan to go back because you didn’t want to be here anyway. There’s something about being here that just wasn’t what they thought it would be. Or being with that person, that was what they thought it would be. And so they always have the option to just leave without consequence. The next one would be a situation in which they get here and this is the most tragic and breaks my heart to hear it and to have to even share it. But it is what it is. It happens that they come here. The person thinks that they have a lot of control now that they are subject to their sponsorship to legalize their status here in the US and so they become very abusive. In that scenario, there is an alternate path, probably a U visa. If they’ve gotten married, there is something called violence Against Women Act or Vala that allows them to self sponsor for the green card and get out of that terrible situation. But if they haven’t married yet, they would need to file report that abuse to the police and then have the police sponsor them for what’s called a U visa for the victim of crime. So there’s a couple paths there and and they may not have gotten married within 90 days because. You know they got abused when they got to the US. And then the last one is a situation in which they just need more time. To. Figure things out, and I frequently have people come in and say, you know, we thought that’s what we wanted to do. But now we realize that since we’re we’re living together for the first time. There are some things we got to work out first. What are our options? And the answer is it’s no problem to wait after the 90 days to get married. It’s just that that petition that was filed at the beginning, the 129F no longer supports the green card effort. So if they get married after the 90 day period, then they have to file a different petition sponsoring. All over again, which adds to your costs, doesn’t really add to the time though, which is nice, but it adds to the cost because you have a separate petition to. But let’s say it takes us six months or 12 months before they decide we OK now we really want to do this and they’re outside the 90 days. They don’t benefit from the 129 F petition, but they can still file an I130 petition, which is the spouse petition and get the green card that way because in that scenario all we have to prove is legal entry and the K1 visa is absolutely a legal entry. Now, if they decide not to get married and stay and they get married to someone else, there is a bar in the law that prevents that person, that fiance from being able to get a green card from here through that new marriage that was not tied to the fiance visa. 

Kleine Powell 

Ohh interesting. 

Garry Davis 

And they would have to actually leave the country and go to the US consulate back home to actually become a permanent resident here. That’s something that the law mandates because they don’t want people to use the abuse the fiance visa system to come in. And then, you know, marry someone else. And so anyway, that’s the other scenario that you would have and. And the consequence there. Is that the person has to leave the country to to finish the cycle and actually become. A permanent resident, right? 

Kleine Powell 

So. For these long distance couples, if they happen to be, you know, out and they can’t see each other for a long time, I’m sure that’s, you know, heartbreaking. I mean, I’ve done long distance before and it’s awful. So are these foreign couples? Are they allowed to get a visitors visa and come and visit their spouse over in the US while they wait for the K1? 

Garry Davis 

Yeah. 

Kleine Powell 

Visa? Or is that not allowed? 

Garry Davis 

So one of the questions it’s a it’s a tough question to answer. I’ll do my best. The the law doesn’t prevent. Someone who is engaged to a U.S. citizen. From applying for and receiving a visitor visa, for example. However, one of the questions on the application form, which is a DS160. D stands for Department of State because as I said, they’re the ones that take care. Of these. Applications darting out. Again, sorry. Sorry. OK. 

Kleine Powell 

I was just about to say here he is. 

Garry Davis 

So the DS160 form specifically asks for a disclosure about whether or not a person is engaged and who that person is and what their US immigration status is and all that. And that disclosure will probably lead to a refusal of a visitor visa. Not, not necessarily, but it probably would, simply because the person would have the opportunity through a marriage if they’re already engaged, to just stay in the US so there is a way for someone to come on a different kind of visa. As I mentioned earlier, one of the things that I look at is does the person already have a different kind of visa because there are some challenges with getting the fiance visa like we talked about the time and the unpredictability of the interview and all that stuff. So if they already have it like a visitor visa for example, a lot of times I just encourage them. Don’t bother with the fiance visa. Just come. Only come with enough luggage for a couple of weeks. Round trip ticket, right? You need to have at least somewhere in your brain. That this we we’re trying to figure this out. Still don’t know for sure. This is where this is heading, you know, that’s what I tell people. This kind of have it. It’s a mindset thing. Really. Come into the country on the visit visa with the intention to depart, but then change your mind. And as long as you give the government some space between the entry and the marriage and filing for the green card. Then they don’t really get too bothered by using a another kind of visa to come in that eventually leads to permanent resident status here. So really someone trying to get a visit visa while they’re in the process of, you know, being engaged and possibly looking for a fiance visa. It it probably doesn’t work out, but there’s nothing in the law that prevents them from being able to try it. And some people do, and sometimes they get it, and most times they don’t. But there’s no consequence from that other than the fee, which in this case is $160.00. So it’s not. You. Know life changing money to have to pay that fee if they want to try it, they can. And then if they wind up getting the visit visa to come for a visit. But they’re able to stay. They may choose to do that and just get the green card from here and just abandon the the fiance visa process. 

Kleine Powell 

Oh, gotcha. So I know probably for many immigrants the most stressful part of the immigration process is the interview, which would make sense even if it is a legit relationship. Interviews are always stressful. So what can people expect from that? 

Garry Davis 

Yeah, sure. Well, so there’s going to be two interviews in the process. The first one is going to be for the visa itself. And mainly the counselor officer is going to want to get comfortable with whether or not the person actually knows the person they’re engaged to, right the visa applicant. So they’re going to ask a lot of questions about what is, what is this your fiance do? And how old is your fiance? And do they have any kids and where they live and that kind of thing? Where you going to be living with that person and when do you guys plan to get married? They’re going to ask those kinds of questions just to get comfortable with whether or not they understand what’s going on because they don’t want them to be taken advantage of or victims of anything as well. And so the more information that they have. About their fiancee, the more comfortable the council officers going to be and granting the visa. They also look at background, so they they look at prior immigration history to the US status violations in the US in the past deportations. Criminal record visa applications that were presented previously. They’re going to compare those to the one that’s filed now to see if there’s any discrepancies, see if there was any fraud committed in in visa applications in the past. So there is a background component to it as well. And then ask a few questions about the person’s background. Just. To confirm. Their identity and to confirm that they don’t have something, some criminal issue or something in their closet. Some skeleton in their closet that that would bar them from getting. The. Visa. So that’s basically the the Visa interview part. 

Kleine Powell 

Is there anything you want to let us know any last minute? 

Garry Davis 

Facts. Absolutely. So there’s two things that I’ll share. The first one is just what it takes to finish this cycle. So someones arrived here, they got married within 90 days and now it’s time to actually do the green card application itself. And so they file an application back with USCIS like we started with with the I129F, it’s now an I480. 5. Application and then I 485 comes with work and travel permission as part of the application process at no additional charge. And it also has a financial sponsorship component that the US citizen fiance, 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 in, in Dallas and Houston, it’s about 12-15 months after submitting that application to get the. The actual green card itself. Let’s say you finish the cycle SO129F 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 fiance visa path. The other thing I wanted to share is. Anytime I have a consultation with someone who asks about the fiance visa, I also share with them the advantages to doing it through a marriage relationship. So one of the things that. We. We have to have to be able to do the 129 F is that meeting face to face within the last two years? There are some exceptions to that. It can be somewhat challenging to meet those exceptions, but if there’s, you know, the the 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 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. 

Kleine Powell 

Hmm. 

Garry Davis 

Just didn’t want to go down. That. Road. And so. 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. These. 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 fiancee, 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 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 fiance 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 fiance visa approach, even though it’s more expensive and even though it takes longer in total to process the case to get to the actual green card, is because of the speed and getting the fiance 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 visa, the K1 visa application. There’s not. We’re not really seeing much time savings between the. 2. 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. So yeah, fiance visa is still out there. It’s a thing, but the advantages that we once had from that approach just aren’t there right now with COVID. Maybe they come back. And so generally what I advise people is you only want to do the fiance visa approach if. You are really committed to being married in the US. You need some time together in the US to make sure this is what you want to do. Or the the person has no other visa option to come here if they have another visa option, probably better to do it through marriage and do it here through the marriage. Or there is they’ve met face to face within the last two years, but currently they can’t, so they can’t get married because of COVID travel restrictions or some disability that makes it difficult to travel. Or just they don’t really want to travel and go do that because of some risk in the home country. Whatever. And so part of my responsibility and our. Attorneys responsibilities. We’re doing a consultation for the K1 fiance. He’s a is to help our potential client assess those two approaches to see which one is more advantageous to them or fits better with their goals and and what they’re hoping to accomplish. Sometimes they still choose the fiance visa approach which we absolutely support, and we do those all the time. Sometimes they’re like, oh, OK, well, maybe I need to think more about doing the marriage approach. One last comment. That’s a little bit more nerding out, but it’s actually something that’s really critical for people to know as you’re making this decision. Not a lot of attorneys will do it this way. We do, and I’ll explain why. There is a an option to take advantage of the. So when you look at an I129F petition which says the fiance visa and you look at an I130 petition which says it through the marriage. The the 1:30 petition is reported to take much longer than the I129F petition. OK. And that’s one reason why people want to do the fiance because they. Think it? Makes it go. Faster. Well, back in 2000. There was a an issue with. People coming on fiance visas within 9 to 12 months like it used to be before COVID and at that time for a spouse to come, took about 30 months. About 2 1/2 years, significant difference in time. Well, people were not real happy about that. And Congress thought, yeah, that makes sense that people would be unhappy about that. Why would it be faster for a fiance to come than for a spouse to come? That’s dumb. And So what they did is they created a subcategory of the fiance visa. It’s a K3 instead. Of a K. One which is for spouses of citizens, but this is speculation on my part, but I think because Congress was frustrated that they had to deal with the issue at all. They sort of punished immigration by saying you can’t charge a fee. To do the 129 F for a spouse, you can for a fiance, but not for a spouse. And the idea behind it was to let the spouse get here in the same time frame as the fiance would be able to. So they created the K3 visa. Well, immigration looked at that and said, yeah, we don’t get a fee for that back to what I said earlier, there is no tax money coming in for their budget. They get all through fees. So they have to absorb the cost of processing these K threes so. They don’t. Like them. So what they do is they pull. You have to file an I130 petition to be able to file for a K. 

Kleine Powell 

Oh. 

Garry Davis 

3. As a spouse, and so they pull the I130 petition forward to when they would process the the 129 F and approve the I130. But then they deny the 129 F because it’s moot because now we have an approved I. 130 petition. The reason that other attorneys that at least I don’t know anyone else that does it this way. The reason they don’t is because they don’t like to have to explain to their client why they have a denied. Condition. It’s a it’s it’s technical. It’s complicated. It’s hard to explain. And so they’re just like, you know, we’re going to do it through the 1:30. And if it takes 2. And. 1/2 years whatever. We don’t really care because we don’t have that discussion. We don’t do it that way. We talked to our potential clients at the beginning. Say look, if time is the issue. Get married. Let’s file an I 1:30 and we’ll do the fiance visa petition. And that will make it so that the the time savings that you get on that 129F versus the I130 becomes a. Non. Issue we actually get it done in the same time and then it’s just a matter of going through the visa application process, getting the interview at the consulate and they come with the green card, OK. So that’s something to consider as well is if if you’re out there and you’re not going to be using Davis and associates, you can do it on your own or have another lawyer you like. You want to work with, that’s fine, but I would press them. If you’re doing it through the I 130 route to take advantage of those benefits, make sure there’s a one. 20. 9F in there as well understand it’s going to be denied, but at the end of the day. What you really care about is the result and the speed, and you will get that by doing it with that strategy. And then the last thing to mention, as we wrap up here is that kids count as well. And so if there are kids under age 21 that are that want to come with their parent that’s now engaged to an American citizen, that’s a K2 visa and they can come and and get green cards as well. Yeah. Up to at stage 21 so.

Kleine Powell 

I’m good. Well, thank you so much for coming and sharing all this great information with us and I learned a lot and I’m sure that this is going to be so useful for U.S. citizens, immigrants and honestly, anyone who wants to know more. 

Garry Davis 

Happy to do it. 

Kleine Powell 

It’s good. 

Garry Davis 

I hope so. 

Kleine Powell 

I guess that’s a lot. 

Garry Davis 

Awesome. Thanks. 

Narrator 

But. For general. Purposes only. It’s not legal advice. This information is intended to create and receipt of it does not constitute an attorney-client relationship.