CinderSoul

Hey everyone, I don't know if anyone else has gone through this scenario, but I'm expecting to fill up my I-130 application soon, but while it processes my husband has plans to travel to the US to meet some friends. He is Brazilian and has a valid tourist Visa, and he has visited the country many times before. Those trips would not even be related to what we are doing whatsoever since we are not even going to meet, I live in Ohio and he was planning short trips to Chicago and New York City, so I'm assuming there would be no issue for him to get in the country and leave afterwards, right? For reference, we were planning on submitting the application this month, he would make one trip in May, then the next one in July. After that, he would wait in Brazil until the application finishes processing, he wants to have those trips because he had them planned for a while now.

Thank you to everyone who commented, I really appreciate the help! We have decided to go ahead and perform the Utah online marriage, it went pretty smoothly, and it was surprisingly fast and simple. We already have our marriage certificates emailed to us, and a printed version will arrive in the mail in the next few days. Next week I will be visiting my now spouse in Brazil so we can consummate the marriage, and following that we are gonna prepare for the CR1 Visa submission. Fingers crossed that everything goes well.

Hi @SalishSea Thank you for sharing this, yes that's what I thought as well, we both did a lot of research to plan things right and we also saw many people recommending the utah online marriage and saying it was legit. We thought about asking for an attorney just in case we missed anything or any details we should be aware of, but it only made us more anxious lol. We are trying to go with all of this very carefully, but we would also want to speed it up as much as we can, so if we can make it work through route it would be great for us.

My fiancee and I are trying to go through the CR1 route, and we wanted to make it happen as soon as possible. The Utah Online Marriage seemed to be the quickest way for us to officially marry while he is in Brazil and Im in the US, and then we would physically meet to consummate it, so we can start the CR1 application afterwards. After checking for advice with an attorney however, they didn't recommend using the Utah service saying it's too risky, though they also say they don't have a lot of knowledge about it. That got us a bit worried, we already got the marriage licence and we were just waiting to schedule the ceremony now, but would it be better to not move forward with that route with the risk of being denied in the long wrong? Does anyone have any experience with this? For context, we are in a same-sex relationship (M22 and M32), have been together for 3 years, and we've met in person 3 times before during trips.