Hi everyone,

I'm hoping someone can give me a quick answer for my situation...

I'm currently waiting for approval for a K1 visa I filed in January for my fiance. I filed this because I assumed my fiance would move to the US and we would get married and live there.

However, my situation has changed and it looks like we will live in South Korea together for at least the next few years. After that, I would like to be able to enter the US with her as a permanent resident. We will get married in Korea, but we can choose whether or not to make that marriage legal and official. So basically we can choose where to get legally married, the US or Korea.

My goal is to choose the process that will allow my fiancee to achieve permanent status the quickest and easiest way, given that we'll be living overseas the next few years. Also important is the ability for her to be able to travel back and forth from the US and Korea without advance parole.

I know I'm probably leaving out some important details, but I'd appreciate it if some of the experts can give me their thoughts on what process would be best for me.

Thanks!

Since you are planning on living in South Korea for the next few years, none of the mentioned visas is appropriate. If your spouse wants to visit the US regularly while you live in South Korea, apply for a vist visa. If you are married and residing in South Korea, getting a visit visa will most likely not be difficult.

Based on what you have written above, (fiance not coming to US any time soon) I would immediately withdraw the K1 petition. Just write a notarized letter to USCIS, referring to the case number and asking for it to be withdrawn.

If you want to have her come here and achieve permanent status the quickest and easiest way, I would get married (legally) in Korea at least two years before you plan to bring her to the US. A year or so in advance of your planned move, petition for an IR1 visa. Once she has the visa in hand, she has 6 months to enter the USA. She will then qualify for and quickly be mailed a 10 year green card.

Visits in the meantime would be best as a tourist.

Direct Consular Filing, when you are 6 months or so from wanting to move to the US.
http://www.visajourney.com/forums/index.ph...om&page=dcf

Designed for expat Americans, you'll find this to be the fastest way. Your wife can't be a Permanent Resident (Green Card) and be living abroad (well, yes, under very spedicif circs) so she will want to travel to the US as a visitor. This will be easier for her when her US citizen spouse is also living abroad.
Our case took 33 days, but there was a lot of research ahead of that, and document ordering. You will always be better off if you are prepared to pull the trigger, so don't forget to set yourself up for online everything from the US, look into maintaining your domicile in the US (Even when you don't live here, you can keep your domicile here + banking, voting, taxes etc), bring crucial docs (oringals of some bank statements, investment statements, birth cert etc) and set up a home secretary to capture an US mail you get--all the usual stuff you'd do when moving overseas.

Have a great adventure!




Spot on, except he can actually petition overseas if he lives overseas. That cuts the lead time considerably!

If you are working in Korea for a company that is doing business in Korea or are in the U.S. Military stationed in Korea and are paying U.S. Income Taxes then you will be qualified to petition for a foreign fiance or spouse and you will not have forsaken your U.S. Domicile status and you will also be able to file an Affidavit of Support. You would have to check with the U.S. Embassy for advice on when (timing) to file the petition.

The other possibility is that you have sufficient resources (assets) and/or retirement income and can prove that you still have domicile status in the U.S. - then you could remain in Korea and return to the U.S. just prior to the spousal interview at the U.S. Embassy. However, then you would have to wait to file the petition until about 6 months to one year prior to exiting Korea and returning to the United States (depending upon the type of petition).

If you are giving up your domicile status in the United States you will lack the ability to "petition" anyone from any country to "join you" in the U.S.

Domicile outside the US does not prohibit any US citizen from petitioning a foreign relative.
It does interfere with filing the I-864; no visa can be issued without an I-864.

It's pretty difficult to give up your US domicile.

I beg to differ with you. I know of thousands of ex-pat Americans living in the Philippines who have given up all hope of ever taking their Filipina wives to the United States because they have forsaken all ties with the U.S. territories. They have not had a "Stateside" address for years, don't pay State income taxes, don't have any bank accounts in the U.S., don't have a State drivers license, and haven't even been to the U.S. in many years, etc. They have given up their "domicile" status in the U.S. and have faced rejection of petitions for spouses by U.S. Immigration because of it.

Eh? I lived overseas for years and had no 'domicile' in the US at all, and had no trouble with the I-864 whatsoever. I was the ONLY sponsor on my husband's visa application.



That sounds ridiculous; plenty of Americans living overseas are able to bring their spouses with them when they return...like US.

If a lack of domicile is the only thing holding them back, they could take the obvious step of moving back to the US and leaving their Filipina wives behind while they re-establish residency, then apply to bring them over.

Sorry, it is a requirement to be "domiciled" in the U.S. It is neither ridiculous nor funny.
These people have long since retired and lack the resources to start all over again in the U.S.
I, on the other hand, never forsook my domicile status and am returning to the U.S. to work after a 3 year
"semi-retirement".

Here is the quote: "Proving Domicile:
In order for an application for an immigrant visa to be approved, the petitioner, whether a United States citizen or a permanent resident, must be domiciled in the United States. That is, while a petitioner may spend a significant amount of time abroad, he or she must demonstrate that his or her life is based primarily in the United States, and will be for the foreseeable future.

The reason for this requirement is simple: Immigrant visas are intended to reunite families. There is no reunification to be accomplished - and therefore no reason to issue an immigrant visa - if the petitioner is not residing in the country to which the applicants intend to move.
Proving Domicile

Domicile can be re-established, even for people currently in the circumstances you describe. If they can afford to bring their spouses to the USA to live, they can take the steps needed to accomplish it.

Well, all I can tell you is I sold all of my possessions in the United States to move here to the UK. I have no job, no bank account, etc. in the USA. So tell me...precisely what must one do to forsake domicile status? I find all of this very hard to believe.

I should add we applied via DCF at the US Embassy in London, and these are their rules regarding domicile:



http://london.usembassy.gov/cons_new/faqs/...tml#domicile001

So, why is there a different set of rules in Manila and London? Sounds fishy to me.

That sounds more like you intend to immigrate to the United Kingdom.

When submitting the I-864 you need to demonstrate that you are financially able to take care of the one being petitioned. In other words, that the person that you are petitioning will not become a "welfare recipient" of the U.S. welfare system - a taxpayer burden. I don't make up the rules for immigration - in the first half of the last century there were many who immigrated without any means of support whatsoever. At that time, there was no "welfare system" and really not much in the way of immigration rules or laws. Times have changed since the mid-sixties when Senator Ted Kennedy assured Senators that passage of 1965 Immigration Reform would leave no one as a "charge of the state" (welfare). He lied because countless illegal aliens from south-of-the-border have been freely given welfare benefits for decades - rewarded for breaking the law. And now, the burden is even heavier on the Petitioner to financially Sponsor any immigrants being petitioned for legal immigration, hence the newer form I-864. You should read the "fine print".

Now maybe the U.S. and the U.K. have some special kind of mutual agreement regarding immigration, I don't know.

I did. I'm in the UK as we speak.



My husband's visa has already been issued, and like I said before I was the only sponsor on the app; no co-sponsors. But thanks for the tip.



I would not assume so. I had to jump through the same hoops to come here that are there for any other non-EU citizen. It appears to me that the US is actively discouraging immigration from the Philippines by applying one set of rules in Manila and another in London. I'm no dummy, I've read these forums and seen how a lot of British applicants sail through while ones from certain other countries hit barrier after barrier. The rules for family visas should be the same for every immigrant from every country. I think it's outrageous.

Those are all deliberate acts--I should've qualifed my comment to apply more specifically to this OP. It's hard to accidently give up your domicile.
I lived outside the US for nearly 3 years and never abandoned my US domicile.

To clarify again: US domicile has ZERO bearing on the ability to petition a spouse or other family member. Zero.

But beameup said that some US citizens in the Philippines couldn't get their Filipina wives into the US because of the domicile issue.

homesick_american,

Yes he did. And he is wrong about it, or he is simply mis-understanding something. beameup wrote, "If you are giving up your domicile status in the United States you will lack the ability to "petition" anyone from any country to "join you" in the U.S." Domicile is not required to petition for an alien relative.

Domicile is required to sponsor an alien, and the petitioner is required to sponsor in order for an immigrant visa application to be approved. A petioner who has given up their domicile can resolve the problem quite simply - re-establish domicile. This does not have to be done before the petition can be submitted and approved, but it does have to be done before the visa can be issued.

Yodrak

That's what I thought; I thought for sure he had to be wrong, otherwise I wouldn't have been able to sponsor my husband. The information on the Manila site does seem to clash with the info on the London site, though maybe I'm just not reading it closely enough.

I am just relaying to you the information on the U.S. Embassy Philippines (Manila) website.
There are "exceptions" such as: "Petitioners who can show that they had a domicile in the U.S., but who are now living temporarily abroad because of certain types of employment, shall be considered to have retained their domicile in the United States." This of course includes members of the U.S. military stationed abroad.
Proving Domicile - US Embassy Manila

I would like to hear from someone who is petitioning from S.E. Asia.

Anyway, had I submitted the I-130 with a Philippine address instead of using my U.S. address I'm sure that it would have been REJECTED.
The issue of DOMICILE also has also come up in regard to filing taxes and submitting a W-7 for ITIN. For example, I am required to file a California Tax Return even though I have no California income because I have a California address. Many ex-pats retired in the Philippines wish now that they had not cut-off all ties with the United States.

Bizarre. I used my UK address on the I-130 and I use my UK address on my tax returns for the IRS and we had no domicile issues whatsoever.

I will make again the point I made earlier, i.e. it appears that the USCIS is applying different rules in Manila and London. Whether this is deliberate I don't know, but it does seem rather suspicious that the restrictions are so tight in the Philippines, a country that sends over so many immigrants that it blazes through its quota of non-immediate family visas in a heartbeat. It almost looks as if they want to restrict Philippine immigration still further while giving every concession to UK immigrants. It's weird, though; the UK sends over too many immigrants to qualify for the green card lottery (and is one of the only European countries that doesn't qualify) but it does appear that British applicants have it easier than Filipino/a applicants. I'm not basing that on anything concrete; it's just a hunch. It isn't as if the US is struggling to attract UK immigrants; they send over 50,000 immigrants to the USA every five years and it's in the top 5 destinations of the 300,000 UK citizens who emigrate every YEAR. (There are so many people migrating TO the UK that they still have a net gain every year, and right now there are more Americans going to the UK than Brits going to America, but they're counting members of the US military in that figure.)

I have to say that my immigration to the UK was easy, easy, easy, easy, EASY. My visas were processed in a matter of weeks, not months; my fiancee visa was processed in a matter of HOURS. I think the Home Office probably either prioritizes applications from certain countries as an unwritten rule, or does not subject white, English-speaking, university-educated applicants to as much scrutiny as other applicants. That's my suspicion anyway; I used to work with a guy from Zimbabwe who waited about 10x as long for his indefinite leave to remain visa as I did.