US Citizen, Filipina Fiancee

[chrisepic 0]

I never would have thought! Anyway, I'll be on here a lot, so I'll give you a little history of my relationship. 27 year old business student here in the States (citizen, born and raised). My father worked with a 22 year old nursing student in the Philippines last July on a missions trip. He gave me her email. We fell in love (yes I've seen pictures and talked with her on the phone). A couple of weeks ago I went out there and met her. I proposed to her.

She is a registared nurse, starting work at her home soon. We want to marry in July 2007 in the Philippines for her family's sake and start the process. I wanted to start a fiancee (K-1) visa as soon as she got her passport, marry her in July, and whenever the fiancee visa is approved, get her and bring her back to the US. But then I found that once I marry her, she cant use the fiancee visa. So we cant start the Spouse visa application until we marry in July and she will have to wait even longer than expected. about 6 months or even longer, right?

Anyway, I'll be asking alot of questions from here on out. Believe me, I am also going to all the web sites: US Department of State, US Embassy in Manila, Philippines. One question that's popped up

Whats the difference between a I-30 and an I-130? Are they both petitions for a spouse visa? Or is one the petition and the other the visa? They looked like they're being used interchangebly.

Any other heads up would be appreciated.

OR- should I just get her over to the US on a work visa and wait to marry once she's here and then return to the Philippines to marry there?

Thanks

Chris and Kristine

Bottom line: I want to marry her in July in the Philippines

[chrisepic 0]

Whats the difference between a I-30 and an I-130? Are they both petitions for a spouse visa? Or is one the petition and the other the visa? They looked like they're being used interchangebly.

I think I know

I-30 is a general Immigrant Visa Petition

I-130 is an Immediate Relative Visa Petition

So do both need to be applied for? Or do I pick one?

[Fofire 0]

I never would have thought! Anyway, I'll be on here a lot, so I'll give you a little history of my relationship. 27 year old business student here in the States (citizen, born and raised). My father worked with a 22 year old nursing student in the Philippines last July on a missions trip. He gave me her email. We fell in love (yes I've seen pictures and talked with her on the phone). A couple of weeks ago I went out there and met her. I proposed to her.

She is a registared nurse, starting work at her home soon. We want to marry in July 2007 in the Philippines for her family's sake and start the process. I wanted to start a fiancee (K-1) visa as soon as she got her passport, marry her in July, and whenever the fiancee visa is approved, get her and bring her back to the US. But then I found that once I marry her, she cant use the fiancee visa. So we cant start the Spouse visa application until we marry in July and she will have to wait even longer than expected. about 6 months or even longer, right?

Anyway, I'll be asking alot of questions from here on out. Believe me, I am also going to all the web sites: US Department of State, US Embassy in Manila, Philippines. One question that's popped up

Whats the difference between a I-30 and an I-130? Are they both petitions for a spouse visa? Or is one the petition and the other the visa? They looked like they're being used interchangebly.

Any other heads up would be appreciated.

OR- should I just get her over to the US on a work visa and wait to marry once she's here and then return to the Philippines to marry there?

Thanks

Chris and Kristine

Bottom line: I want to marry her in July in the Philippines

Well I think the I-30 is just a typo first of all. Here is a link to USCIS it will tell you all of the forms you could possibly ever need with regards to immigration.

http://www.uscis.gov/portal/site/uscis/men...00045f3d6a1RCRD

Im not really sure why you really want to marry her over here unless you are just doing it for the sake of speeding up the process. It seems like an awful lot of money and time to be spent just to get her here to marry her to speed up the process. Besides then you are kinda entering a grey area with regards to coming over here to work and with the intention of getting married. on top of that unless you know someone personally that would hire her work visa's arent the easiest thing in the world to get contrary to popular belief . . . Especially since she's not in a NAFTA country.

My best advice is to either do the fiancee thing here

get her over here and she will be even be able to work and such (unless they have changed it recently and I know that they did have that on their agenda but I dont know if it went through or not). regardless you should get her over here on the Fiancee then mary her get her working papers (should take about 6 weeks after the mariage) and then do it all over again in the Phillipines. But you cant do both marriages right after each other though it will take some time for her travel papers to come through. Somebody else will have to comment on that. I think it takes like 3 months for that to come through but thats just a guess.

Otherwise for the longer route you could do it as you mentioned before.Get married there and then file for a K3. But it would be at least 6 month to (usually) 1 year maybe even (rarely) 18 months before you would be together.

Fofire

[chrisepic 0]

Well, her and her family wanted us to marry in the Philippines first, thats why. I was all about doing the fiancee thing and getting her over to the US first, marrying her, both of us working and saving, and then going back to the Philippines to marry. Its seems more practicle to me.

So the fiancee route then eh?

Otherwise she wont be able to come over until a year after we marry? Yeah- lots of stuff to think about- this stuff is so exhausting...

Thanks!

[payxibka 10,045]

Somebody will post this so it might as well be me.... In order to inform yourself of all available options:

[ELECTRAGLIDE 0]

Your girlfriend lives in PI and it is a big thing to have her family present to see wedding . I can tell you that I married in PI for alot of reasons . 1 you can have a very big wedding that all girls dream of at a fraction of the cost here in the states . 2 it was what my girl really wanted . 3 there is no divorce in PI . 4 it isn't that much longer for her to get here going the K3 route . heck I am glad that seeing my wife's face with all the happyness of getting married there but it's you and your girlfriend's choice .

[Dan J 277]

K-1 vs K-3, takes about the same amout of time (6-12 months depending which service center and consulate you go through). K-1 you can start now (since you have met in the past 2 years) and K-3 you cannot start until you are married.

If you want to get married in July and take the K-1 path, you can do so, as long as the marriage is not legally binding (no marriage cert) and you do not refer to each other as husband and wife for offical purposes (Interview, etc). Then follow that up with a civil wedding here in the US, after the K-1 is approved. Thats probably the quickest way the two of you will be able to get together in the US. Assuming no delays.

[Michael and Milahjean 0]

Chris,

Welcome to the VJ family. As has been stated already check the guides for the K-1 and also the CR-1 visa petitioning and application options. If you do decide to marry in the Phils, you'll be doing the CR-1 visa, and might possibly consider the K-3 NON-immimgrant visa to accelerate her arrival in the US. In our case, the CR-1 was scheduled for the interview first, and being an IMMIGRANT VISA, that's really the best route to take.

There are many Phil-Am couples here. I suggest that you find your way to the Embassy Forum and scroll the many many pages of VERY helpful info on the Manila Embassy topic. It's one of the largest threads going now and it will enlighten you greatly. These are the folks who have been through the USCIS petition processing. Many of us who have completed or are near the end of the process will assist you with the Philippines quirks.

Regarding marriage in the Phils, that was our choice for many reasons, most of which it was very important to me that she be married where everyone in her family, her friends and her entire community could attend. It was the most amazing event I had ever experienced and I would never have had it any other way. It was truly HER day!!!

My spouse has her interview next week, so we are at the jumping off point. I'd be happy to assist.

Michael in Ohio

I never would have thought! Anyway, I'll be on here a lot, so I'll give you a little history of my relationship. 27 year old business student here in the States (citizen, born and raised). My father worked with a 22 year old nursing student in the Philippines last July on a missions trip. He gave me her email. We fell in love (yes I've seen pictures and talked with her on the phone). A couple of weeks ago I went out there and met her. I proposed to her.

She is a registared nurse, starting work at her home soon. We want to marry in July 2007 in the Philippines for her family's sake and start the process. I wanted to start a fiancee (K-1) visa as soon as she got her passport, marry her in July, and whenever the fiancee visa is approved, get her and bring her back to the US. But then I found that once I marry her, she cant use the fiancee visa. So we cant start the Spouse visa application until we marry in July and she will have to wait even longer than expected. about 6 months or even longer, right?

Anyway, I'll be asking alot of questions from here on out. Believe me, I am also going to all the web sites: US Department of State, US Embassy in Manila, Philippines. One question that's popped up

Whats the difference between a I-30 and an I-130? Are they both petitions for a spouse visa? Or is one the petition and the other the visa? They looked like they're being used interchangebly.

Any other heads up would be appreciated.

OR- should I just get her over to the US on a work visa and wait to marry once she's here and then return to the Philippines to marry there?

Thanks

Chris and Kristine

Bottom line: I want to marry her in July in the Philippines

[soulm8z0928 0]

hi! welcome to vj! if you go into the foreign embasssy forums you will find a very lengthy, very informative, and very active manila embassy thread with lots and lots of info to glean over. my wife and i did the cr-1 route. there were several of us that were basically on the same time track, and we had or will have our interviews about 10 months after we filed the original petition. there is even 1 person there that went the k-3 route, and got their cr-1 interview prior to their k-3 interview. one person had their k-3 interview just 1 month prior to the cr-1 and was told at that k-3 interview to just come back next month for the cr-1. years back the cr-1 process was very lengthy, but they are getting very fast at processing, with automation and and updating, that the cr-1 is much much faster than it used to be. some of us got cr-1 interviews just as fast as some k-1's did, but that was bcz they had the IMBRA issue to deal with mid-2006, so i expect they will probably be 1 or 2 months quicker again, but still, 10 months from filing to interview for a cr-1 is pretty good. anyway, i'm sure you will spend many many hours on this sight as we all do, so much info here. good luck!

[soulm8z0928 0]

Chris,

Welcome to the VJ family. As has been stated already check the guides for the K-1 and also the CR-1 visa petitioning and application options. If you do decide to marry in the Phils, you'll be doing the CR-1 visa, and might possibly consider the K-3 NON-immimgrant visa to accelerate her arrival in the US. In our case, the CR-1 was scheduled for the interview first, and being an IMMIGRANT VISA, that's really the best route to take.

There are many Phil-Am couples here. I suggest that you find your way to the Embassy Forum and scroll the many many pages of VERY helpful info on the Manila Embassy topic. It's one of the largest threads going now and it will enlighten you greatly. These are the folks who have been through the USCIS petition processing. Many of us who have completed or are near the end of the process will assist you with the Philippines quirks.

Regarding marriage in the Phils, that was our choice for many reasons, most of which it was very important to me that she be married where everyone in her family, her friends and her entire community could attend. It was the most amazing event I had ever experienced and I would never have had it any other way. It was truly HER day!!!

My spouse has her interview next week, so we are at the jumping off point. I'd be happy to assist.

Michael in Ohio

I never would have thought! Anyway, I'll be on here a lot, so I'll give you a little history of my relationship. 27 year old business student here in the States (citizen, born and raised). My father worked with a 22 year old nursing student in the Philippines last July on a missions trip. He gave me her email. We fell in love (yes I've seen pictures and talked with her on the phone). A couple of weeks ago I went out there and met her. I proposed to her.

She is a registared nurse, starting work at her home soon. We want to marry in July 2007 in the Philippines for her family's sake and start the process. I wanted to start a fiancee (K-1) visa as soon as she got her passport, marry her in July, and whenever the fiancee visa is approved, get her and bring her back to the US. But then I found that once I marry her, she cant use the fiancee visa. So we cant start the Spouse visa application until we marry in July and she will have to wait even longer than expected. about 6 months or even longer, right?

Anyway, I'll be asking alot of questions from here on out. Believe me, I am also going to all the web sites: US Department of State, US Embassy in Manila, Philippines. One question that's popped up

Whats the difference between a I-30 and an I-130? Are they both petitions for a spouse visa? Or is one the petition and the other the visa? They looked like they're being used interchangebly.

Any other heads up would be appreciated.

OR- should I just get her over to the US on a work visa and wait to marry once she's here and then return to the Philippines to marry there?

Thanks

Chris and Kristine

Bottom line: I want to marry her in July in the Philippines

he he, if i waited 1 more minute i could have said "ditto wut mike just said".

[Niels Bohr 72]

WELCOME TO VJ!!!

[TimsDaisy 0]

You can always have a ceremony - a NON-LEGAL - marriage in PI and then legally marry once you are here in the U.S. Most of us here face two weddings - one at city hall to get things legally settled so we can start on adjusting paperwork, etc, and then one that we actually have time to plan and invite our loved ones too.

If you start the K1 process now, it wouldn't likely get her here by July 2007 anyway - but if you have the ability to travel, then perhaps you can split the ceremony and legal joining and satisfy the government's and the family's timeline.

Make sure you have plenty of evidence to show that you aren't really getting married, however, you don't want to jeopardize your K1 application.

[chrisepic 0]

If you want to get married in July and take the K-1 path, you can do so, as long as the marriage is not legally binding (no marriage cert) and you do not refer to each other as husband and wife for offical purposes (Interview, etc). Then follow that up with a civil wedding here in the US, after the K-1 is approved. Thats probably the quickest way the two of you will be able to get together in the US. Assuming no delays.

Thats a good idea! I'll see if her parents approve now

[chrisepic 0]

Make sure you have plenty of evidence to show that you aren't really getting married, however, you don't want to jeopardize your K1 application.

Well, as far as money goes, thank God for student loans! I'm traveling to the Philippines in July, I could only probably plan one more trip after that (to pick her up when she gets her visa!)

So, yeah, I'd like to do the wedding ceremony without the legal marriage in the Philippines so I can get jump started on the K-1 Visa as soon as she gets her brith certificate corrected so she can get her passport. But even at that rate, the time difference between the K-1 and the K-3 is only a matter of a couple of months or so, so I may want to do it by the book so I dont risk scrutiny, right?

What kind of evidence do you mean? Not calling each other husband and wife in customs? Not wearing the wedding rings? Stuff like that?

['my_destiny' 0]

Be sure to take lots of pictures of you being together, pictures of you with her family and relatives and get to know her while you are there in the Philippines!

Good luck!!!