My fiancee (Chinese) and I (American) have been in a long distance relationship since 2018. Since the COVID lockdowns finally ended, we have been back and forth to visit each other 4 times and want to secure a visa so we can be together in the states. Unfortunately, she is a member of the CCP for work reasons, so I had retained a lawyer to help with the fiancee visa process and issues around her party affiliation. However, information here and elsewhere made us reconsider whether the K1 route was best for us, since we might rather wait longer earning our separate incomes and with our own freedom of movement than have her be stuck in limbo before her status is adjusted / advance parole granted.
We are currently leaning towards getting married and filing for a K3 / CR1 visa, but the lawyer's advice has been less than clear. For one thing, he has repeatedly stressed the idea of her coming on her tourist visa, staying for at least 60 days, then for us to marry and adjust status after that point. This doesn't seem appealing both because it seems to entail at least a certain degree of fraud at the point of entry, and would also exacerbate her being in limbo / vulnerable as the status was being resolved. She also has a cat that she dearly loves, so abandoning him for months to maintain the pretense of arriving on a tourist visit is not appealing. The lawyer doubled down on this advice recently after the Munoz supreme court case, I'm guessing for the sake of having the application be processed domestically rather than by a consulate, but he didn't clarify further. He also said some things that seemed off about K1 visas de facto allowing people to work on arrival, since it is understood they are stuck in administrative limbo... Developing some trust issues with this lawyer..
My fiancee has some time to come visit this October, during which we are considering a marriage in California where I live, after which she would return to China and we would file an application. I wanted to ask
Are there any potential issues with getting married in the USA while she is visiting on a tourist visa? Is there a reason it might be potentially more advisable to get married in China?
Are we likely to have any issues with her visiting on her tourist visa later on once we have filed for a spousal visa?
Since I haven't gotten clear advice on these ideas from the lawyer, I wanted to ask for advice here. Thanks so much for your help!