Entering a US territory with K1 visa possible?

[Joanne82 1]

Hi.

I am a uk citizen and my fiancé is a US citizen in the US navy.

My fiancé and I are a year an a half in to our visa journey. We are due to receive my K1 visa in the next few weeks.

Unfortunately owing to the delays, many of which were last minute and unexpected, we will now most likely miss our wedding. My fiancé will be deployed for 7 months by the end of the month and we are unlikely to be able to marry before he leaves. Apart from the obvious awfulness of waiting another year, it also means that my visa we paid all this money for and waited all this time for will be invalid by the time he gets back. Even if we could afford to reapply to get things started now ready for next year, we couldn't as they insist on him filling out and receiving all the forms, doing any chasing up over the phone and they won't send them to the ship. He has restricted Internet and phone only late in the evening and it causes huge problems. Also for some reason we had 5 months of 'lost in the post' nonsense last time.

I am clutching at straws here but I was hoping that when he has a port visit in Italy, we could get married on the ship or the base as it's still classed as America. The navy Chaplin said this is fine. The problem is what to do with the sealed packet of passport/ visa documents. These are opened by US immigration on entry. How could I fly to Italy with sealed documents? Who would open them?

I can't get any advice on this from the embassy or USCIS. I have thought about contacting an immigration lawyer but I am reluctant to pay out a tonne of money only for them to not really know either or to just do what I could do anyway. When I called to enquiry about it, they didn't give anything at all away. Perhaps this is just to avoid people getting any free advice but I'm just not that convinced they could help.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated. Or recommendations for online good quality advice.

Thank you.

[canadian_wife 1,822]

The issue I see is that even though you technically would have married in the US, you'd be unable to travel to the United States on your K-1 visa. This is because the K-1 visa is for fiances, and you'd be a spouse.

I hope other people can offer advice, I am not sure how to handle this situation. Is an expedite possible?

good luck

[Nich-Nick 3,354]

It won't work for you to marry in Italy.

1) If you go from the UK to Italy and marry first, you are a spouse and can't enter the US on a fiancé visa. You would have to start over on a spouse visa.

2) If you enter the US first as an unmarried fiancé, you can't leave for Italy until you have an Advance Parole travel document. The only way to get that is marry and file for it with your adjustment of status.

Can you explain with dates exactly where you are in the process? Have you had a medical exam? Have you interviewed in London?

[Harpa Timsah 13,258]

You should be able to get an expedite for his deployment, but it seems a little late to ask now if he will be deployed in a month. Did he just get his orders? It would also be difficult for you, probably, to stay in the US and live there alone while he is deployed. Maybe better to stay in the Uk with your friends and family until his deployment is over?

[Joanne82 1]

Thanks for your replies everyone.

Unfortunately staying in the uk is not an attractive option as we already bought a house together. I sold my house and my business here as it was coming up for renewal of everything for another year. I have been in the US on my holiday visa for the last 6 weeks as I wanted to spend 3 of those with my partner as we really wanted to spend some quality time together before he left.

We already put in expedited requests on account of his deployment twice and they were ignored by USCS. That and the fact they kept losing paperwork and requesting the same thing, meant we had this huge delay.

I came back for my medical and visa appointment. Unfortunately my visa was rejected on the grounds I had a criminal caution 15 years ago when I was a minor, something that previously had been approved by USCIS and on my estas. The clerk told me he was almost certain my waver would be granted as it was so minor and a long time ago but for procedural purposes I had to do an i-601. I am waiting to hear if my expedited request to file this form in London will be accepted. If it is, we could be talking weeks but if it isn't then up to 8 months.

If it does come through in the next month then we will miss the wedding so that is why I was hoping to do it on the ship or base. As one of you pointed out, I won't be able to go back to my home in the states once were married as I will be a spouse, so that's no good. It was just an idea but clearly a pipe dream. Ah well.

Thanks