Hello one and all! New user to the forum here, so apologies if I break any conventions or rules set by the forum in this post, I will simply act on the basis of being polite and courteous.
I have been in a long-distance relationship for coming up on 5 years now. My girlfriend, 21F, lives in the Midwest of the U.S. whereas I, 22M, live in Northern England. My girlfriend and I have met IRL 3 times now during that period (would've been more if not for COVID) and have spent a combined 6 weeks in very close quarters with one another, and each of our lives have only been improved and accelerated forward in one another's presence, for example my career has taken off motivated by my own ambition for a future with my girlfriend.
Brief introductory aside, my partner and I had our most recent IRL meeting circa 2 months ago now, and ever since she had to leave and go back to her own country, we've both been pretty dead set on beginning to plan and execute ONE OF US going to live in permanent residence with the other. It was decided years ago that it ought to be myself going to live in the U.S. due to my girlfriend's connections across the U.S. being much wider spread than my own connections across the comparatively minuscule United Kingdom, but recent discussions have more the opened up the possibility of her coming to live over here in England.
Anyway, with that in mind, I've spent the last 2 months every few nights setting aside maybe 3 hours or so on average very actively researching as if a college-level paper resources towards a tailor-made guide for the parties involved with the visa application, that parties being my own family and my girlfriend's family, so that we could all do what was needed to ensure the baseline objective of myself moving country to go live in the Midwest of the U.S. with my girlfriend and her family.
The beginning of my research lead me to find that my most opportune chance of securing permanent residence in the United States given the context of my immigration was a spousal or fiancée Visa, those of course being CR-1 and K-1 respectively. As my girlfriend and I are not yet married nor are we engaged, it made sense to me to assume my best option was to go with the K-1 Visa and then once a full plan of action was mapped out through research as to how the application for the K-1 Visa would go down, my girlfriend and I could decide to become fiancées to one another.
However, as the research sessions continued, the costs to invest in the K-1 Visa application process were mounting as were the points of error that could drastically increase these costs as I'm sure you all know most if not all of the Visa application process is non-refundable. Financially, I've been saving up money for a long time for this whole ordeal, so mounting costs isn't looking to be a major roadblock yet given the figures I've read for the sum total of the K-1 Visa application process if executed to perfection and without any rejection, it's just that of course I wouldn't like money to go down the drain due to one of us filling out something like Form I-129F incorrectly in a few places therefore requiring a refiling of said form. I also noticed contradictory information sprouting up surrounding the K-1 Visa as I researched into it further and further, but as the sessions went on I was coming to a realization that the information wasn't so much contradictory as it was too full of jargon and legal speak for me to get a plain terms grasp on the aforementioned "plan of action". Websites like Boundless have been a major source of help in that department, since they put this information into exactly those plain terms I require. In fact, it is through Boundless that I discovered that recent proposed price hikes to the K-1 Visa on top of paid separate application for a right to work and travel in the United States should I even secure a K-1 Visa make the proposition of the Visa look increasingly less appealing.
My girlfriend and I have no opposition to getting married whatsoever as we could not be more sure we're the one for one another, so it was at this point weighing up the odds and ends that I move on from my first draft of my "plan of action" restarting research from the ground-up focused on the CR-1 Visa. I of course don't need to tell you good folks that the key difference between the CR-1 Visa and the K-1 Visa is that the former required the couple to already be married as a prerequisite for application whereas the latter requires only an engagement with the promise of marriage within 90 days of residency in the U.S. post-obtaining the K-1 Visa as a prerequisite, and so having personally known mutuals of mutuals who are themselves U.S. citizens marrying non-U.S. citizens in order to begin their own application to the CR-1 Visa process, it seemed at this point that the sum total and effort of the K-1 Visa was being actively discouraged and "priced out" in favour of application for the CR-1 Visa. After a week or two researching the CR-1 Visa, I then came across a new major roadblock in that in order for a U.S. citizen to marry a non-citizen in the United States, that non-citizen has to already be on some sort of visa to stay within the U.S. when the marriage occurs, which for me would mean that I might as well apply for the K-1 Visa in the first place if it's in practicality required to begin applying for the CR-1 Visa at all.
However, this is where I tried to broaden my horizons a bit. I thought "well why does the marriage have to be in the United States? Couldn't myself and my girlfriend get married in the UK under a marriage visa, only costing £100 to apply for at least initially so?" and the answer to that is yes, it seems as though we can. Right now, CR-1 application with the prerequisite marriage being done through a UK Marriage Visa seems like it'd be the way to go, as ultimately it'd be about as long as the K-1 Visa compared to the CR-1 Visa with this addition of the UK Marriage Visa but it would be at less risk to both myself and my girlfriend, allowing me immediate rights to work and travel upon taking permanent residency in the U.S..
What I'm trying to get at with the way I'm describing all this is that it seems no matter how hard I research and the time I put in, there's some tucked-away rule or clause that completely crumbles any plan my girlfriend and I hope to stick to. Around now is the time I'm considering instead to look into immigration firms, completing my research merely as an advisory to myself and to get smart about the kind of tricks certain firms may try to pull on me in favour of their own business. It is my hope that, by going with a firm, I can have someone who is careful enough with all the bureaucracy of this process that there will be virtually no risk of rejection for a visa application on the grounds of some human error in the application process, though I am aware the chances for rejection are always present for tons of different reasons even so (which by the way, the rejection rate comparison between CR-1 and K-1 is another reason I dropped my research into the K-1 Visa).
So what do you guys think, what's the next move here? Do you think I've been doing the right thing in how I've been conducting my research? Is there a resource by which to index reputable immigration firms, are they even something I should consider? Most importantly, which Visa do you guys think is best for a couple like us who is at this stage open to residency in both the United States or the United Kingdom and is actively interested in doing so under a form of Marriage Visa? I look forward to your input!
