K1 vs k3 and CR1

[pushbrk 12,901]

1 hour ago, asheville57 said:

I am an USC. Do I record the previous k1 A number on the I130? It asks for an account number but all i received was the A number for the withdrawal. Thank you all for your assistance. It is greatly appreciated.

Provide what you have.  If you only have an A-number, so be it.

 

[asheville57 1]

For our situation the Cr1 works best. We were only concerned if the timeframe was alot longer.

 

 

[Sunnyland 639]

1 hour ago, Dutchster said:

Most importantly, the spouse that will immigrate has to decide what will work the best for her too. I, as many others here, underestimated the K-1 visa and the longevity of doing adjustment of status was horrible.

 

Perfect word to describe the never ending ordeal that most of the time it takes to do the AOS and waiting more than 1 year to get the GC. If I could do this all over again we would go for the spouse visa but we could not do it that way. Oh well.

OP, compare the 2 visas and see which one will give you or your fiancee "less" headaches in the long run. 

[JFH 12,190]

1 hour ago, SlavicPrincess said:

Idk what is ROC. And it was in 2016 but maybe it takes longer now, I didnt even have to go to the interview.

Things have changed substantially in the last year. Pretty much everyone is being interviewed and the process is taking a lot longer. There are discussions and proposals to make the interview mandatory. It's great that you got through it so quickly but @Dutchster is not joking when she says "approximately a year". Everything is taking longer now. My IR-1 took 10 months 1 day in 2016 from sending the I-130 to interview. People are lucky now if they get through all of that in 13 months. 

[Dutchster 1,107]

1 hour ago, asheville57 said:

For our situation the Cr1 works best. We were only concerned if the timeframe was alot longer.

 

 

At this point it honestly don't matter if you focus on timeframes. I'd suggest CR-1, timeframe, money and best decision wise. 

[Roel 7,192]

I wish people would start to use search button because the k1 vs. Cr1 threads are literally posted few times a months. And regular forum members pretty much always post the same answers... eh! 

[mrmvkjts 459]

I feel like everybody is totally advertising the CR1( probably because it just is the „better“ way) 

But man, maybe we should start selling the K1 again so that the workload for the CR1 isn’t AS much anymore  and it won’t take as long anymore because you know....waiting sucks lol...(one can dream)😂

 

No but seriously...even tho this topic is on here quite a lot...I would also suggest the CR1 because the K1 is just not as simple  besides the fact that it COULD be a tiny little bit faster but has all the other disadvantages

[asheville57 1]

The reason all of us are on this forum is because we found someone we want to share the rest of our life together. The internet is over whelming with good and bad information on how to get your loved one closer to you. K1, k3, CR1, i-129f, i130, i130a, USCIS make the process difficult for a reason. I understand and accept that. I have no problem with the process. But until i heard each persons experience i only focused on the separation not the total experience. The process is daunting and I need to focus on the entire process not just getting Delaida to me rapidly. Thank you everyone for sharing your experiences so it helps me and others to understand the entire process. Gracias, gracias, gracias.

[Russ&Caro 1,549]

4 years ago I married my wife in Colombia and I don't regret the path we took, i.e. CR1. It was really important to my wife, her family and friends to marry there. I was fortunate because 5 of my family members took the initiative and visited Colombia for the first time to attend my wedding. After the wedding, we filed the CR1 and it took 14 months before she received her green card. It did take over a month to file after the wedding due to her name change, but once she changed her name, all other filings were much easier as we didn't need to reconcile her married and maiden names within the applications.

 

As for the timeline, well, it is what it is. You can't affect it. We were disappointed by the extra months it took but all the patience paid off in the end.

 

Good luck to you and your wife to be.

[Pennycat 880]

15 hours ago, Dutchster said:

At this point it honestly don't matter if you focus on timeframes. I'd suggest CR-1, timeframe, money and best decision wise. 

This still really really depends on the couple. I'd still go K1 for us, even knowing what I know now and my husband grudgingly agrees (he would have wanted to work sooner than he did, but a good part of that is our fault for taking forever to apply for AOS). He'd never been out of his home county, forget to the US before. He needed time to adjust (and some English classes). Even if he'd had a green card on arrival, we'd have given him some time and space to adjust and take English classes. For us, the "down time" between immigration and work was part of the plan, not a negative downside to be endured. So, may as well get those few months started sooner than later, and stop paying to maintain two houses in two countries, when one would be sufficient. 

 

Plus, on a more personal level, I didn't want to go from engaged to married in a matter of days both by preference and family considerations, so even if we had decided on CR1, it would have been even more of a time difference between the two visas. I was (and still would be) willing to pay the difference for the (relative) speed. 

 

The only thing I'd do differently is apply for AOS sooner. I do recognize that we're not the norm, but it should be understood that there ARE people for whom the K1 has no downsides except for cost and even then that can be mitigated by closing the distance quicker.

[JFH 12,190]

1 hour ago, CatherineA said:

This still really really depends on the couple. I'd still go K1 for us, even knowing what I know now and my husband grudgingly agrees (he would have wanted to work sooner than he did, but a good part of that is our fault for taking forever to apply for AOS). He'd never been out of his home county, forget to the US before. He needed time to adjust (and some English classes). Even if he'd had a green card on arrival, we'd have given him some time and space to adjust and take English classes. For us, the "down time" between immigration and work was part of the plan, not a negative downside to be endured. So, may as well get those few months started sooner than later, and stop paying to maintain two houses in two countries, when one would be sufficient. 

 

Plus, on a more personal level, I didn't want to go from engaged to married in a matter of days both by preference and family considerations, so even if we had decided on CR1, it would have been even more of a time difference between the two visas. I was (and still would be) willing to pay the difference for the (relative) speed. 

 

The only thing I'd do differently is apply for AOS sooner. I do recognize that we're not the norm, but it should be understood that there ARE people for whom the K1 has no downsides except for cost and even then that can be mitigated by closing the distance quicker.

I don’t know what you mean by going “from engaged to married in a matter of days”. Surely each couple had as long or as short an engagement as they wish? We didn’t “get engaged” because we are not interested in jewelry and Facebook announcements. We made a personal, mutual decision to get married and then chose a date and a venue that fitted our work and financial arrangements. As it was, we got married over a year after we realized that marriage was what we both wanted and that suited us. But we didn’t suddenly miss each other more because we were now “engaged” or even after we got married. I know a lot of K-1 people feel that they couldn’t bear to be married and living apart like it’s impossible to do. But it was no different from being “engaged” abc apart. Apart is apart. 

 

On our personal level, my not being able to work for 4 months would have cost us $24,000 in lost wages plus I would have to pay healthcare premiums in full out of our own pocket rather than my employer pay it so that’s another couple of hundred a month. I didn’t need to adjust or learn English, though. I had been here more than 40 times before and I’m from the U.K. Actually it was going to work and having a routine right away that made it easier for me. For that reason I’m constantly surprised at the number of Canadian, Australian, New Zealand and British K-1 applicants. 

 

Ultimately the best time to move is the time that’s right for you as a couple.  And that right visa is the one that’s right for you as a couple. 

[Pennycat 880]

28 minutes ago, JFH said:

I don’t know what you mean by going “from engaged to married in a matter of days”. Surely each couple had as long or as short an engagement as they wish? We didn’t “get engaged” because we are not interested in jewelry and Facebook announcements. We made a personal, mutual decision to get married and then chose a date and a venue that fitted our work and financial arrangements. As it was, we got married over a year after we realized that marriage was what we both wanted and that suited us. But we didn’t suddenly miss each other more because we were now “engaged” or even after we got married. I know a lot of K-1 people feel that they couldn’t bear to be married and living apart like it’s impossible to do. But it was no different from being “engaged” abc apart. Apart is apart. 

 

On our personal level, my not being able to work for 4 months would have cost us $24,000 in lost wages plus I would have to pay healthcare premiums in full out of our own pocket rather than my employer pay it so that’s another couple of hundred a month. I didn’t need to adjust or learn English, though. I had been here more than 40 times before and I’m from the U.K. Actually it was going to work and having a routine right away that made it easier for me. For that reason I’m constantly surprised at the number of Canadian, Australian, New Zealand and British K-1 applicants. 

 

Ultimately the best time to move is the time that’s right for you as a couple.  And that right visa is the one that’s right for you as a couple. 

Of course everyone can do as they wish, I personally didn't want a short engagement/ rushed marriage/however you'd want to look at it especially because he and my family had never met, but that's more about my own personal desires than anything. And of course that the right visa is the one that works for the couple. That's my entire point.

 

The day we decided to get married is the day we "got engaged" and could have applied for the fiance visa. If we'd wanted the CR1 visa, we'd have had to have gone to the courthouse in the next few days (I was visiting him in Costa Rica at the time and I had an airplane ticket out of the country the next week) or wait until we were ready to be married or at least until my next visit. Basically, in addition to the CR1 visas taking ~6 months longer than fiance visas, for couples who aren't already married, there will likely be at least some between deciding to marry/ deciding to immigrate and actually getting legally married which adds to the overall time difference. 

 

We decided that yes, we'd like to get married in early January 2015. Applied for fiance visa February 2015. Immigrated late October 2015, married mid-January 2016, he started working August 2016 (mostly through our own AOS delay). Had we wanted CR1 instead, unless we also got married in early January 2015, there would have been at least *some* time between then and marriage (likely at least 6 months). So we'd have applied for CR1 in ~June of 2015, immigrated sometime around August 2016. And THEN we'd have started adjustment/ English classes. So longer time to immigration, shorter engagement (which i did not want), longer time to start working. I said nothing about missing each other more or jewelry or announcements. Just that we arrived at a decision at a particular point in time.

 

Your personal and work details are completely different from ours, which is why the CR1 was clearly better for you, and I suspect would be for most people in a similar situation. I still think that the K1 was absolutely the right path for us, and could be for others in a similar situation. That's why the which visa is better thing is a situational discussion not a pure and simple "here's best one". I didn't say or suggest as much. 

 

Edited because I messed up dates. I am getting old, apparently. 

Edited April 2, 2018 by CatherineA

[Crazy Cat 41,898]

2 minutes ago, CatherineA said:

Immigrated late October 2015, married mid-January 2016, he started working August 2017

Another thing regarding K-1 visa holders is that many people don't realize that a person who enters the US via a K-1 and fails to marry AND file AOS within 90days (expiration date of I-94) is out of status and is subject to be deported until they file AOS.....there is even a recent case where immigration agents came to a VJ poster's home and warned the spouse.

[Dutchster 1,107]

2 hours ago, CatherineA said:

This still really really depends on the couple. 

If you read back a couple of comments, you will see I already said it's important to find out what works te best for them -- before I suggested (just a simple suggestion) what way to go, based on my own experience with K-1. 

[initials123 6]

OP, as many others have said, it's really your priorities you need to figure out first. 

 

For myself, we went the CR1 route as both of us had solid jobs and wanted him to be able to work right when we got here. We visited each other over the 13 months it took be get approved without any trouble. We also like that it was cheaper! 

 

Both are decent options though, and both take almost the same amount of time in terms of immigration (from my point of view).

Good luck! It's a long arduous process but you can do it!