K1 or spousal visa for Croatian citizen

[ms1987 2]

I live in the US and my fiancé is residing in Croatia. The plan is for him to become an American citizen and stay in the US, however, he and I are stuck as how to proceed with this. We’ve been debating whether or not we should do the K1 visa or the spousal visa. We are leaning more towards getting married in Croatia and then going through with the spousal visa, yet we don’t know the steps to take to achieve this. What are the pros and cons for both K1 and spousal visa? Croatia requires my documents to be legally translated to Croatian. Is it best to just hire a lawyer for this kind of thing? Thanks in advance for your help!

[milimelo 4,476]

Spousal visa definitely. We got married in Bosnia and my husband had to have couple documents translated before we could sign up for marriage ceremony (30 day waiting period) but after that it was same day marriage certificate and back then we applied for spousal visa two weeks later (DCF was the way to go). Had to go to Zagreb for medical and immigrant visa interview but we made it a trip out of each necessary visit. 

[ms1987 2]

Thank you for your response! It is very helpfull!

[JeanneAdil 6,491]

spousal visa definitelty / it has several advantages

 

crazy cat will point out the advantages when he chimes in

 

all my documents had to be translated to Arabic to marry in Morocco 

 

 

[ms1987 2]

29 minutes ago, JeanneAdil said:

spousal visa definitelty / it has several advantages

 

crazy cat will point out the advantages when he chimes in

 

all my documents had to be translated to Arabic to marry in Morocco 

 

 

How did you go about translating your documents? Did you hire professional you found online? Is it generally better to do it in country I am getting married in, or in US, or it doesn't matter?

[Crazy Cat 41,828]

54 minutes ago, ms1987 said:

We’ve been debating whether or not we should do the K1 visa or the spousal visa.

Every couple has their own priorities, and each couple must decide which visa is better for their situation.

K-1        
    More expensive than CR-1    
    Requires Adjustment of Status after marriage (expensive and requires a lot of paperwork)    
    Spouse can not leave the US until she/he receives approved Advance Parole (approx 6-8 months)    
    Spouse can not work until she/he receives EAD (approx 6-8 months)    
    Some people have had problems with driver licenses, Social Security cards, leases, bank account during this period    
    Spouse will not receive Green Card for many months after Adjustment of Status is filed.
    A K-1 might be a better choice when 18-21 year old children are immigrating also
    In some situations, marriage can affect certain Home country benefits, making a K-1 a better choice   
    A denied K-1 is sent back to USCIS to expire
    

CR-1
    Less expensive than K-1    
    No Adjustment of Status(I-485, I-131, I-765) required.    
    Spouse can immediately travel outside the US    
    Spouse is authorized to work immediately upon arrival.    
    Spouse receives Social Security Card and Green Card within 2 or 3 weeks after entering the US    
    Opening a bank account, getting a driver's license, etc. are very easily accomplished with GC, SS card, and passport.
    Spouse has legal permanent Resident status IMMEDIATELY upon entry to US.
   

 

[JeanneAdil 6,491]

34 minutes ago, ms1987 said:

How did you go about translating your documents? Did you hire professional you found online? Is it generally better to do it in country I am getting married in, or in US, or it doesn't matter?

in Moroc there were many

i am sure if u do the timeline on your profile (which will put this in the Crotia portal ,  u will get the best answers there

BTW in our country translations were the expensive part of the process .   applying for marriage was cheap

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[DaveAndAnastasia 2,092]

1 hour ago, ms1987 said:

I live in the US and my fiancé is residing in Croatia. The plan is for him to become an American citizen and stay in the US, however, he and I are stuck as how to proceed with this. We’ve been debating whether or not we should do the K1 visa or the spousal visa. We are leaning more towards getting married in Croatia and then going through with the spousal visa, yet we don’t know the steps to take to achieve this.

Depending on what's involved in legally marrying a foreigner in Croatia (this is more complicated than you'd think in many countries), you might consider marrying in the US (Croatia is visa waiver program eligible, in most states marrying a foreigner quickly is pretty simple, and if you have documents in English to start with then you don't have to get them translated later for US immigration stuff) or doing a Utah Zoom marriage (perhaps while in Croatia) rather than getting legally married by Croatian authorities.

 

It doesn't matter where you get married before starting the spousal visa process, as long as the wedding is legal there, being married to that person is legal where you live in the US, and you've been together in person between the time of the wedding and the time you file (aka online/proxy marriages don't count until consummated, but for immigration purposes that just means you're together in the same place at the same time).

[SalishSea 17,818]

2 hours ago, ms1987 said:

I live in the US and my fiancé is residing in Croatia. The plan is for him to become an American citizen and stay in the US, however, he and I are stuck as how to proceed with this. We’ve been debating whether or not we should do the K1 visa or the spousal visa. We are leaning more towards getting married in Croatia and then going through with the spousal visa, yet we don’t know the steps to take to achieve this. What are the pros and cons for both K1 and spousal visa? Croatia requires my documents to be legally translated to Croatian. Is it best to just hire a lawyer for this kind of thing? Thanks in advance for your help!

US citizenship would be many years away.   Focus on the visa process- both CR and K are long and expensive processes.

 

CR-1 is the better visa because there is no adjustment of status.

[DaveAndAnastasia 2,092]

2 hours ago, Jorgedig said:

CR-1 is the better visa because there is no adjustment of status.

Yup.

CR-1/IR-1 was always the better visa once you had it.

K-1 used to be a better process if actually getting married prior to entry to the US was difficult (that's why we did one; young single Russians couldn't easily get tourist visas even in 2018, marrying in Russia was a pain, marrying in a third country would have taken another trip to somewhere we wouldn't have otherwise gone just to get married) and/or if you wanted to get to living together in the US significantly faster even if you had to then do AOS.

 

However, since then ...

• Covid made it clear that fiancé(e)s' (as opposed spouses') needs won't be prioritized in emergencies
• Utah Zoom marriages made difficulties with marrying in some countries largely moot
• Processing time differentials have fallen a lot (when we first filed it took about twice as long on average to get to the US as a spouse vs a fiancé(e) -- ~9 months vs ~18 months; I understand the numbers are quite different now)

... and even back in 2018, I would have advised someone from a VWP-eligible country to do a CR-1 in most cases.

[agrabs 241]

My husband is from Romania and we did the K1 visa but if I had it to do all over again I would go the Cr1 route.  I severely under estimated how difficult those first 6 months would be for my husband to not be able to work while we were waiting on the work permit during the  adjustment of status. We were so excited to finally be together that we thought it would be no big deal.  The reality was that after the first couple of weeks I had to go back to work and he spent most of his time hanging out in the apartment alone.    I was the only one here that he knew so it wasn't like he could go hang out with friends and in our state he could not get a driver's license until we had the EAD approval.   It was the perfect recipe for homesickness.   It would have been a lot easier for him to adjust to life here if he had the green card when he entered the country.  We celebrated our 10 year  wedding anniversary a few months ago - can't believe how fast it has gone by.  Good luck with whatever route you take - both will eventually give you the same outcome!

[chrissandra 59]

We did K1…but that was when process was not as slow as I see it is now. 
And even though our Adjustment of Status was processed really fast (I’m from Zagreb, hubby American) not being able to work for months until my green card and work permit was issued was fun maybe for 2 weeks…

as others are mentioning, spousal visa would definitely be my choice. Don’t get discouraged by paperwork though. Paperwork is a huge part of immigration reality for years until you are at the finishing line. I personally think that the attorney is not necessary, unless you have a complicated situation. Having an attorney will still require you to do the legwork. 
 

 

[ms1987 2]

Thank you so much for your thoughtful responses. All of you helped us tremendously! CR1 will be our choice!

[travusb 69]

15 hours ago, chrissandra said:

We did K1…but that was when process was not as slow as I see it is now. 
And even though our Adjustment of Status was processed really fast (I’m from Zagreb, hubby American) not being able to work for months until my green card and work permit was issued was fun maybe for 2 weeks…

as others are mentioning, spousal visa would definitely be my choice. Don’t get discouraged by paperwork though. Paperwork is a huge part of immigration reality for years until you are at the finishing line. I personally think that the attorney is not necessary, unless you have a complicated situation. Having an attorney will still require you to do the legwork. 
 

 

Totally agree with chrissandra on everything.

 

My wife found not working fun for a couple of weeks before it started driving her crazy, or was I the one doing that?

We ended up getting a puppy since she was home to train her all day. So all in all now we have a well trained 9 month old lab that we both adore so it wasn't all bad.

The biggest issue is that she was unable to travel back to Canada while we waited forever for her greencard.

Her father passed away from covid right before moving to the US and we we're worried about the same happening to her mother during this time.

 

The CR1 is by far the best the way to go. We only went with the K1 because at the time it was faster and gave us a 3 month living together trial run before anything was super final, but we regretted that immediately after she got here.

 

We also did all the paperwork ourselves and while it can be overwhelming sometimes it saved us a ton of money.

Edited November 2, 2022 by travusb