devid456

@Boiler@Mike E@JeanneAdil@appleblossom Good morning, I waited a bit on this decision, but i had some questions. I have discarded the plan of a F1 visa looking at the approval rate for an F1 visa and the increased cost of attending college here in the US. I wanted to proceed on with this plan: (a) File for I-130 in Apr 2025 (b) Wait until I am a citizen so I could upgrade the petition to a CR1/IR1. That way I would not be bothered about the visa numbers for F2A being available (c) No kids until I become a citizen This plan is about 4 years as I plan to file for my citizenship in Feb 2027 (I got my green card in December 2021). After compulsively checking out the stories on this forum of filing for the K1 visa and the excellent @Crazy Cat comparison about CR1/IR1 and K1, I was thinking that it might be better to go for K1 visa based on the processing times. Pros: (a) I am waiting for my citizenship anyway so K1 might be faster (b) My fiance would not be working when she comes into the US, so the K1 might be a better fit (c) I could take the time to visit her in Nigeria more to gather more evidence (d) K1 looks more bounded, that is. it will take at most 1 year for approval (Service Center + NVC). Cons: (a) She might not be able to travel immediately to Nigeria after receiving the K1 visa My question is that , would it be safer for me to just file I-130 and wait or to get my citizenship and then file the K-1 visa? Thank you all for your continued clarification about this process.

Everyone, please do not be offended if it looks like I am not serious with my questions. I am trying to gather as much information as possible. I appreciate your candid responses to the topic. There is not a lot of places where I can get the actual experiences of those who have gone to through the process I am about to take. So summarizing, (a) my fiance can come to the US on an F1 visa., file the I-130 (maybe after 5 months) but has to leave the country once the I-130 petition is approved and it has reached the NVC stage, correct? (b) @JeanneAdil when you talked about derivatives, did you mean that my fiance can bring any kid we have (unlikely) to the US on an F-2 visa if she gets granted an F1 visa? (c) Based on the above, I am trying to timebox my attempts. That is, apply for the F1 visa for next year January 2024 and wait to see if it gets approved or denied? If it gets denied, then apply for I-130 in December 2024. Is this timeline even doable? (d) @Mike E What did you mean by delaying the kids' US citizenship? Based on the replies above, I cannot depend on an expedited I-130 application. So if I want to have my kids be US citizens using a CBRA, then I and my fiance would have to wait until August 2027 before we can start trying to have kids. Is my understanding incorrect? Thanks.

Thanks @Boiler .for your patience and responses. Some follow-up questions: (a) Based on your response, is that even if the I-130 was approved today, the PD (Priority Date which is 01 Jan 2018) determines when the visa would be available, that is, when the NVC can schedule an interview with the Lagos consulate? (b) As for the student visa, she is not from a family that can get that amount of money together ($26,000) for tuition. So I would have to be her sponsor. She has a degree from a trade school. Would that fly with USCIS? (c) What are the approval times for an expedited I-130? Do you know where I could find those. (d) Based on my own experience with the student visa, I was denied initially and had a six month wait before I could file for an F-1 visa again, which I was subsequently approved for. I was wondering if the reason why most people do the I-130 instead of the F-1 route is to remove the visa officer's discretion in the process? Thanks.

Thanks @Mike E. @Boiler @appleblossom Based on your answers, it is most likely that I would get my citizenship before the I-130 process is approved . If you will indulge me, I have some followup questions: (a) Can I take the F-1 visa route for her instead? That is, try to find her a school here in Virginia that can take her in January 2024. (b) If (a) is viable, then what are the consequences of taking that approach? (c) If (a) is viable, why don't green card holders choose (a) instead of I-130? (d) If (a) is not viable, would it be better to not apply for citizenship and instead just add the kids to her I-130 and wait for them (my fiance and any kids we may have) to come to the US? Thanks for your answers.

Good morning, I am 34 years old and a green card holder. I currently live in the US. I got my employment based green card in December 2021. My fiance is in Nigeria and she is 34 years old as well and she is not a LPR or US Citizen. I wanted to bring her to the US. We are planning to get married next year March. Going what I have read so far on the internet and on this forum, it seems that the I-130 is the path to bring her to the US. But I had a few questions: (a) does anyone know the average processing times for the I-130 currently? And are the processing times based by country or by service center? (b) If by the time I get my citizenship (3 years and 6 months) from this year), the I-130 is still waiting to be approved, should I be ready to upgrade to the CR-1 visa? If I upgrade it then, would the time it took to process the I-130 be counted towards the CR-1 visa processing time (resulting in a speedup) or would that result in a new petition and a new processing time (that is, tra time to be added onto it) (c) If by the time I get my citizenship (3 years and 6 months) from this year), the I-130 has been approved but the NVC has not scheduled a visa interview, would getting my citizenship speed up the process of scheduling the visa interview and by how much roughly? (d) if we have children before the visa interview at the Lagos consulate is scheduled and I have my citizenship, would I have to start a new process for each of the children? How long would that take on average? (e) If I have not gotten my citizenship and the I-130 is still being processed, can we add any children we might have to the application? (f) There is a visa in the UK called the Skilled Visitors visa. The benefits of this visa is that you can bring your dependents with you almost immediately to the UK. Can I emigrate temporarily to the UK, while keeping my status as a green card holder so that me and my fiance could be together faster? (g) I saw mentions of a Facebook and Whatsapp group for Nigerians embarking on this journey. Are they still accepting new members? If yes, could you be so kind as to post the link? Thanks for your answers.