lovinglive

Hi Discover USA, those are some good things to consider. It wouldbe a good chance for her to consider a totally different lifestyle. Hopefully her B1-B2 would be approved but it's very difficult.

Hi, she has a state ID, card, which is what people would normally carry around with them. WIll probably go with that and an enlarged copy or scan of passport. Or possibly getting a passport card. Thanks, that's a good idea! Will look into that.

Thanks, that's interesting. What do you mean about copying the part showing her name? You mean on the naturalization certificate, right?

All right, thanks Crazy Cat!

Yes, great point, If she's asked if she intends to immigrate in the interview, she must be honest. Is it true that immediate family members of USCs (like parents) are pretty much guaranteed to receive an immigrant visa? In this discussion, no one has indicated that the B1-B2 visa could affect her chances of getting the immigrant visa, which seems to indicate it is pretty safe.

We're not planning to use the B1-B2 visa to get an immigrant status. She would return to her home country before/at the end of her B1-B2 visa while waiting for the immigrant visa to be processed. But thanks for noting that as I'll have to make clear that they can't overstay.

Hi, Thanks, she has a passport and I think in walking around on an every day basis she can keep a copy of it on her person (as it would be sad to lose it).

Thanks for your reply! So, my question is not about getting the B1-B2 visa (which is probably a long shot). My question is, will having applied for a B1-B2 visa (and potentially succeeding), affect her chances of getting the immigrant visa?

Right, so I'm not sure if I communicated this well, but we would apply for the B1/B2 first. So at the time of applying for that, they would not know she intends to apply for an immigrant visa. But then when she's applying for her immigrant visa, would that in any way be affected by the fact that she had already applied for the B1-B2 visa? Thank you for your reply!

Hello, My wife became a US citizen in 2023 and would like to petition for her mother to get permanent resident status in the fairly near future. In the meantime, we wanted to apply for her to get a B1-B2 visa to visit us in the US. I've heard that having an active application for green card would prejudice the Embassy to refuse a B1-B2 application. So we would probably apply for a B1-B2 visa first in case we get it. My question is: would her having applied and/or succeeded in getting a B1-B2 visa in any way reduce her chances of getting a her green card application approved? (assuming she returns to her home country and doesn't overstay her visa.) Could we even submit the petitioning paperwork while she is in the US? Thanks in advance for any replies.

All right, thanks! All right, thanks!

Hi forum members, This may seem like a dumb question for those of you who are regular on here. My wife is a naturalized US citizen since 2023. She was in the US for a number of months in 2024 and then we went abroad to spend time in her home country. Now we want to return to live in the US. One family member keeps bringing up that it is a bad time to be in the US now due to the political climate, the deportations and the ICE arrests. My view is that my wife is a US citizen, and it seems there is very little likelihood of her being detained by ICE. I've read of like one case of a US citizen being detained by ICE (the Georgia -Florida border case, later released). Is my family member being overly paranoid or is there a genuine concern here? Please advise. Thanks!

We were facing the same issue that you raised - if you are overseas and applying for expeditious naturalization, do you still need to abide by the 6 month rule? For us, my wife had already been overseas for about 5 months when we applied for expeditious naturalization. I tried to ask this question in this thread to people like @Qian but I don't think anyone has a clear answer. We decided to play it on the safe side, and when my wife was close to 6 months, she returned to the US. Fortunately it was not long before she had her naturalization interview. So my thoughts to you would be to apply as soon as possible and if you're lucky your naturalization interview will come up well before 6 months.

Well, my wife has been naturalized and received her naturalization certificate, it seems that it is all over except for getting a passport. I'd like to write back to inform the group what happened. My wife and I had been in a long relationship and had one child, and then were married in the US in 2022. My wife received her green card in record time in October, 2022. Then in late 2022, I was offered a job overseas, but for different reasons had to wait in order to start until earlier this year. My contract was only for one year exactly, with the possibility of extensions. I believed that my wife was still eligible, as long as we applied before my contract actually started. So we applied one day beforehand, the key documents of course being my contract, and a letter from my employer. My employer wasn't willing even to mention my wife by name or refer to her identification documents, but in the end this made no difference since the employer's letter referred to me and we had a marriage certificate. We applied online one day before my contract started. We were already overseas at that time. We didn't submit fingerprints because they would only be able to be taken at the US Embassy, but they were never requested. Of course, however, we did pay the biometrics fee. We chose Washington, DC because others on here advised that they are used to these types of cases and we would face no hiccups. Within about two months my wife received an email asking her to set up an appointment with choices that were within about three months of our original application. By that time she had returned to the US to be in compliance with the unofficial, informal rule for green card holders not to be abroad for more than six months. Since I had been the one to figure most of this out, and my wife is taking care of our child, it was quite hard to get all the requirements communicated to her in preparation for the interview, get her to assemble all the documents, etc. I was stressed out before her interview because she went to Washington with out originals of our marriage certificate, her birth certificate or my birth certificate. It made no difference, though. It sounds like the interview was very easy. She arrived and had to tell them her name is on the military list. The interviewer complimented her on her dress and another IO even came over thinking it was her case. The IO asked a few questions like wanting to see her main documents like passport, green card, my "travel orders" (which my wife just gave her my employment letter). She asked to see my wife's travel itinerary, they asked where I am. Then they ask her a few questions from the civics test but it didn’t seem like it was even 10 questions. Then there was the English test, which involved writing on a tablet. It was quite easy. They also asked her some of the long list of questions from the end of the N-400 application. They did not ask whether she was planning to get a passport or not. Then they told her to come back the next day, and she had her naturalization swearing in ceremony the next day! It seems like it is all over for us. A few lessons learned as I already mentioned: -You can apply from overseas -You can apply online (in fact that may be better) -You may not even need the fingerprints but you have to pay the biometrics fee -You don't need to be married for one year to apply -If you're already overseas you can choose the location of your interview, and Washington DC is a good choice -Since it could not be guaranteed that my wife would succeed with this application, we opted for her to return to the US to avoid staying overseas too long and triggering the 6 month rule -We applied for the re-entry permit before we even went overseas in the first place but it never came back -The process was surprisingly fast -My wife's interview was easy and consistent with the descriptions of other people on this thread. Thanks to everyone who shared their experience here. We learned so much form it and ultimately, had success.

Right, we could do that. I'm guessing the ACA provisions will not apply if you apply directly to the insurers, correct? I.e. denial or pre-existing conditions, and of course you don't get a subsidy. It looks like my wife will be leaving the US in 6-8 weeks, though. So we are probably going to get one of those visitor policies again- it's an insurance policy that people who visit the US for a fairly long period of time (like a few months) use. I have to check the T&Cs and make sure we can use it.