What are the rules regarding immigration and marriage?

Here’s some good information.

I am going through the same situation right now. Since she left, they will have to apply for a k-1 Fiance visa. The requirements to meet this visa have been met by what you described, Which is met within the last 2 years and proof of this. The other big one is financially able to support someone, but normally you can get around this if you have parents who can vouch for you as well (if you don’t make a certain % over the poverty level). Anyways yeah coming back because you are engaged is not an issue. From the date of filing the paper work, its about 6 months, but this is an average and it is dependent on what district in the states you are filing in, and the consulates work load in her region of china. For example I live in columbus, and my fiancee is a citizen of uzbekistan so the wait time out of here is around 4 to 6 months, but out of california from china it might be longer. During this time you will at some point be required to interview to assure that the marriage is not a fraudulent marriage (in other words she is not just paying you money to get citizenship) and then she will have to get a physical exam. Not a big deal they just make sure she doesn’t have aids or tuberculosis or other things like that. If you do it without a lawyer the filing fees are about $1465 for the entire process start to finish, with a lawyer, it will probably come up to around $3000 after its all said and done. The paper work is not to difficult, but if there are any major mistakes, they may require you to refile the documents, adding onto the overall cost and time if you do it yourself. Also, if you choose a lawyer it is less stress and a lot more reassuring for the person considering the move over to the states. It can be really intimidating and scary since the person is leaving their family and possibly considering surrendering their citizenship (some countries do not allow dual citizenship) However, she can attain permanent residence and retain her chinese citizenship. The only problem with this is if she wanted to bring her family over she couldn’t and of course the government can deport her if for some reason she commits a felony or something they decide they don’t want to tolerate. But that is rare cases.

Anyways, I recommend at least consulting a lawyer even if you decide not to hire one.

I should add, if this waiting period is not desirable she probably can apply for a visitor visa and shouldn’t have any issues getting it since she is in good standings with the U.S. and didn’t violate her previous Visa limitations. Once she is here, and after 3 months (this period of time is pretty important) then you can apply for marriage, and she will be able to stay in the states until she is approved for a green card, which will allow her to stay permanently.
Now, the trick with this is that when she applies for her visitor visa she has to state her intentions for visiting. Obviously if she intended to get married, then her intentions weren’t to just visit. So you can’t put down to get married because then you will be directed to get a K-1 Visa instead. So, you do not want any signs that her intention was to get married when she applied for the visitor visa. So in other words, it was a recent decision you made with no knowledge prior to her visiting. This is why the 3 months is important because they assume that’s enough time to decide you want to get married without previous intentions. So you know, don’t go reserving any dinner Halls 8 months in advance or buy a white dress and stuff it in her suit case for when she comes over. Stuff like that, customs will send her right back onto the plane she came over on.
Typically there are no problems with doing it like this, and if there are they still will not deny her a green card to stay permanently. But the less hassle the better.

So once she gets here, step one will be applying for the green card, and that takes about 3 months. Then you have to wait about 3 years before she can apply for citizenship, and there will be another interview etc etc. I wouldn’t worry too much, people scam the government all the time just to get people over here with no intentions of having a real marriage. So if its legit it will be obvious and you will have few problems.

@LKidKyle1985 That sounds very similar to what my dad and his wife went through, although she is originally from Canada. The process took so long, cost so much, and was quite a hassle. One thing she had to do was get a lot of vaccinations, even though she’d had many of them before in Canada. The cost of the vaccinations was not covered by insurance, so they had to pay out of pocket for those. It’s something else to be aware of when planning on how much money the process will cost.

@MissAusten yeah that is a good point. Though my lawyer didn’t mention anything like that I wouldn’t be suprised. Luckily my fiancee lives in uzbekistan and medicine is dirt cheap out there. But who knows. But you know, since his and my and his future fiancee has already been to the states she may of already gotten them, because she was probably here for like 4 years if it was a student visa.

My dad’s wife was here for over a year before they got married, but I don’t know under what conditions. I don’t know if you actually need a visa to come from Canada, but maybe that’s changed in the past several years.

One thing that was funny was how nervous my dad and his wife were for their interview. They were told to bring photo albums to document their relationship. Over and over again, they heard, “Take pictures of everything!” When they had the actual interview, they lugged all these photo albums along and no one even glanced at them. :)