URGENT ADVICE - Husband needs to travel home

[ereddekopp 0]

Hello everyone...

 

I am hoping someone might have some insight, experience with this issue and can provide advice:

 

My husband is here on a K1 visa from Russia. We are married, but we had not started his Change of Status process....so no I-485 form is filed...we are in that limbo state.

 

At the end of last week his father suffered a stroke and was hospitalized in ICU. His mother has been stressed and wanting him to come home to help. Because of the attitudes about same sex couples there...he has not told his family about us. They think he is just doing some business dealings here. Her stress and problems have rolled over on to him and he is a mess, plus his own worries about his father. He wants to go back to help them right away.

 

We went down to our local USCIS office in hopes to obtain an emergency Advanced Parole for him, but I had misunderstood there site and did not realize we can not request that until after we at least receive the receipt for the I-485 filing. The officer at USCIS informed us of this fact. She gave us two options...file that and bring the receipt to them and they can help. Or he can leave and I would need to file something to try and make the case of them allowing him to return...though I am not clear if that is the I-131 or not. I am also not clear if we still must file the I-485 first...no matter what before either option.

 

Has anyone been in this situation? And if so, what did you do and did it work? Desperate and open to any education and advice. 

 

Thank you!

[Hypnos 6,578]

As you say, he must have filed his I-485 before he can receive Advance Parole, emergency or otherwise. 

 

If he leaves before receiving AP then you would need to petition him for a CR-1 immigrant visa. That would take ~12-14 months, and he probably wouldn't be granted a B-2 to come and visit you in the meantime, so he'd be stuck outside the US. 

 

So, you can either file for his AoS and try for emergency AP that may or may not be granted, or he can leave and probably wouldn't be able to return to the US until 2019.

 

Those are your only options. 

[ereddekopp 0]

Thank you Hypnos...I really appreciate the information, etc. Is there any advantage or disadvantage in doing the K3 instead of the CR-1? 

[Hypnos 6,578]

K-3s are very very rarely granted. Your application for a K-3 world likely be administratively closed in favour of the CR-1.

Edited December 8, 2017 by Hypnos

[ereddekopp 0]

Thank you Hypnos, I am very appreciative for the info and help!

[NikLR 13,232]

And by likely Hypnos means about 99.8% likely.  

I am sorry about your husband's family. 

[Unidentified 2,930]

On 12/7/2017 at 3:24 AM, ereddekopp said:

Hello everyone...

 

I am hoping someone might have some insight, experience with this issue and can provide advice:

 

My husband is here on a K1 visa from Russia. We are married, but we had not started his Change of Status process....so no I-485 form is filed...we are in that limbo state.

 

At the end of last week his father suffered a stroke and was hospitalized in ICU. His mother has been stressed and wanting him to come home to help. Because of the attitudes about same sex couples there...he has not told his family about us. They think he is just doing some business dealings here. Her stress and problems have rolled over on to him and he is a mess, plus his own worries about his father. He wants to go back to help them right away.

 

We went down to our local USCIS office in hopes to obtain an emergency Advanced Parole for him, but I had misunderstood there site and did not realize we can not request that until after we at least receive the receipt for the I-485 filing. The officer at USCIS informed us of this fact. She gave us two options...file that and bring the receipt to them and they can help. Or he can leave and I would need to file something to try and make the case of them allowing him to return...though I am not clear if that is the I-131 or not. I am also not clear if we still must file the I-485 first...no matter what before either option.

 

Has anyone been in this situation? And if so, what did you do and did it work? Desperate and open to any education and advice. 

 

Thank you!

I see that this is a few days old and I am not sure which way you decided: to file for AOS or go with the CR1 route. I just wanted to let you know I have been in a sort of similar situation. The day before me and my husband got married I found out that my father had cancer. We thought we'd have a few months with him so we didn't rush to send my AOS in though we did start. Few days later, biopsy came back which told us it was pancreatic cancer and I had to hurry home. I was also struggling with do I file for AOS and wait for the case number or do I leave everything and go and see him? My brother said something very smart to me: "You can't change the outcome". If I came home or not would not change the fact that my father had only days left and if I left before AOS we'd have a whole year ahead of us once again waiting to be together.  So we filled for AOS and as soon as I got the case number I went and got the Emergency Advance Parole the same day. 

 

He can't change the fact that his father had a stroke. His father is going to need a lot of help. If your husband wants to help him out, then maybe CR1 is a good option for you guys even though you'll be away from each other a long time. If his father is already receiving help from the Russian health care system and family, maybe he doesn't need to rush home and he can take his time filing for AOS and go there. He can go there for 6 months before they might give him a hard time once he returns. He should also expect to have to go through secondary once he returns as that is standard procedure. 

 

Let us know how things are going, what did you guys end up doing? Let us know if you guys have any more questions!

 

[ereddekopp 0]

Thank you for sharing your story Unidentified...it was really nice to read about others who have run into this issue and can relate. To be honest we argued for the better part of a week over this issue. We had already been separated 4 years by this point, so they idea we would be separated another year or more was a hard pill to swallow. I wanted him to wait until we could get the advanced parole. Like you said Unidentified, we had spoken to immigration and knew that if we just got the receipt number we could get the emergency advanced parole. Out of curiousity how long did it take to get the receipt number?

 

But he wanted to go right away. Part of the issue was his poor mother was overwhelmed and stressed out. She has been working two jobs...has his drunk sister, boyfriend and daughter all there, crammed in their 1 bedroom apartment and no help. So the whole situation was just a terrible mess at the worst possible time. I eventually saw no choice but to give in and support him and do my best to go through this with him. 

[Unidentified 2,930]

3 minutes ago, ereddekopp said:

Thank you for sharing your story Unidentified...it was really nice to read about others who have run into this issue and can relate. To be honest we argued for the better part of a week over this issue. We had already been separated 4 years by this point, so they idea we would be separated another year or more was a hard pill to swallow. I wanted him to wait until we could get the advanced parole. Like you said Unidentified, we had spoken to immigration and knew that if we just got the receipt number we could get the emergency advanced parole. Out of curiousity how long did it take to get the receipt number?

 

But he wanted to go right away. Part of the issue was his poor mother was overwhelmed and stressed out. She has been working two jobs...has his drunk sister, boyfriend and daughter all there, crammed in their 1 bedroom apartment and no help. So the whole situation was just a terrible mess at the worst possible time. I eventually saw no choice but to give in and support him and do my best to go through this with him. 

If I remember correctly it took us 4 days to get the receipt number. I got it late in the evening, went to the local office the next day and traveled back to Sweden which made me lose yet another day and sadly I didn't make it in time, he had passed away about an hour before my arrival. But I am still glad we waited. Sad to hear that you will have to go through even more time apart and sad to hear about his family's situation. I hope everything work out for the both of you! 

[ereddekopp 0]

Yeah the sad part is, if I could have gotten him to listen to me from the get go we could have had his receipt number and his parole before he had left. I told him it would only take a few days. Sigh. Oh well. I can’t change what is now. Yes I am sad too, but my hope is all will go smoothly and Trump won’t mess up anything with either immigration or same sex couples before he can get back here. Thank you so much!