My background first...
Me: US Citizen
Husband: Afghan National
Age gap-12 years I am in my early 30s and my husband is in his early 20s
Nationality: We are both Afghan
Religion: We are both Muslim
K1 petition filed : Nov 2021
K1 petition sent back after interview: Oct 2022
Married: Oct 2022
CR1-plan to file in Feb 2023
Visits: 2x : 1st visit Oct 2022- 17 days
2nd visit Feb 2023- 10 days
I met my husband originally online on a social media platform. We were not able to meet at that time due to the situation in Afghanistan and borders being closed. After a few months of us talking every single day we decided to get engaged and I started the K1 process (Nov 2021). USCIS approved our 2 year meeting waiver and our case was approved after 2 months (Jan 2022). After he was finally able to leave Afghanistan and go to Pakistan we transferred our case to Islamabad and had our interview for (Oct 2022). I finally flew out to him during his interview time. The Pakistani national only grabbed some of our paperwork. She didn't care about the photos, affidavit of support. Next he went to the CO window and was asked only these questions.
How did we meet?
Where do I work?
How old are we both? (When he said our age he just said this is unusual and nothing else. Gave my fiancé a white 221g form that said "sent back to USCIS for revocation" and the window was slammed shut on my fiancé)
I called USCIS and spoke with a Consular Officer from the California office & I spoke with my attorney and they both stated it can take over a year to hear back on a reason for the petition being sent back.
My fiancé and I decided to get married while I was still in Pakistan. Since he was leaving to go back to our country in Afghanistan since we didn't know when we would see each other or what will happen to our case. All his family is in Afghanistan and all of mine are in the U.S. So none of our relatives or friends were able to come to our Nikah (wedding ceremony). We just had our attorney and witnesses that was there for our ceremony and we didn't take any photos. To be honest I didn't even want any taken as I plan on having the ceremony in the U.S with our loved ones.
I am returning to Pakistan on Feb 2023 to finish registering our Nikah paperwork we did in Oct 2022 since we ran out of time and didn't have everything we needed when I was there to finish the registration. After my trip in Feb 2023 when I come back to the U.S. I plan to file the CR1.
My fear now is will I just keep getting denial after denial. Just because of our age gap of 12 years?
Im scared that no matter all the proper ways I do everything that we wont be approved or that we have to keep going into Admin Processing hell for years. If anyone can share their experience whether you're also an Afghan couple, have an age gap, went through Islamabad embassy. I guess I'm trying to be hopeful but fear of not being with my husband and starting our lives is slowly sinking in.
Because of work I cant live with him or spend so much time over there. My first visit with him was for 17 days in Oct 2022 and my second visit with him will be for 10 days. I wish I could live there. I have pages and pages of text messages, phone/video calls. I hope I provided as much detail as possible for people to share their stories, advise, or anything. I don't know if there were other red flags in our case besides the age (which to me isn't even a red flag) as our own prophet was married at 25 to his first wife Khadija who was around 40.