U.S. citizen and Cameroonian living outside the U.S.

[laura547 0]

Greetings.

I, Laura, am a U.S. citizen and am married to a Cameroonian citizen, Michel. Michel has been living in Spain for 5 years doing his doctorate. He has a student visa in Spain. This past spring (March 2007) Michel applied at the U.S. embassy in Madrid to come to the U.S. on a tourist visa. He was granted a visa for 1 year. He came to the U.S. in June 2007 for two months. While in the U.S. we got married.

(We did plan to get married in March when he applied for a visa, but we did not apply for a fiancé visa because we we had no plans of staying in the U.S. and naturalizing because Michel had to return to Spain for work, study reasons).

After the wedding this past summer Michel (and I) returned to Spain where we currently reside. We have no plans of living in the U.S. in the future. Our primary interest is in being able to travel to the U.S. to visit family every other year or so. How would you recommend that we do this?

Obviously applying for a tourist visa for Michel every time we travel to the U.S. is not the answer and possibly will be impossible if Immigration knows that Michel is married to a U.S. citizen. (Which will imply that he intends to immigrate to the U.S. and stay there).

What other options exist? (Any options that would allow us to keep living in Spain?)

Will moving to the U.S. for a certain period of time be necessary? How long?

If we did decide to return to the U.S. to apply for Michel, how should he re-enter?

Thank you in advance for your consideration and advice,

Laura

[gwenneh 7]

Even if you do move to the US and complete a visa process, by living outside of the country you will jeopardize his permanent resident status gained by the visa and adjusting status. The visas you see described on this site (K-3, CR-1/IR-1, etc.) and a green card are for settling in the US and are made invalid if you do not spend the majority of your time within US borders.

Unfortunately there is no real easy way to do this - he will have to have a valid tourist visa to visit. Perhaps he should look into the residency requirements for Spanish citizenship, and then would be eligible to travel visa-free under the visa waiver program.

[desert_fox 32]

Obviously applying for a tourist visa for Michel every time we travel to the U.S. is not the answer and possibly will be impossible if Immigration knows that Michel is married to a U.S. citizen. (Which will imply that he intends to immigrate to the U.S. and stay there).

obviously??

why not?? as long as he demonstrates that he has no intent of staying..shouldnt be a problem.

He already has a history of leaving.