Does impending end of entry visa effect 90 days to marry

[DAAG 1]

My fiancees K1 entry visa into the USA from the Philippines will have only 9 days left when her flight arrives in the USA. does that have any effect on her visa status once she arrives in the country?

That is to say will she still have the full 90 days to marry me, once that entry visa date passes? I know normally she would have 90 days once she enters for us to marry, and we never meant to get this close to the expiration of the initial entry visa but health problems with her mother, surgery for me, and Jane innocently trying to speed things up by going to manila before getting an interview appointment, and going up there again for that infernal Filipino overseas seminar that tries to talk Filipinas out of going to the USA, and wasting time and money there, recession job layoffs etc have brought us to this point.

The visa is always discussed as just one visa, but she was given only 5 months and week on her visa from the date of her interview, vice the advertised 6 months which one would assume would start when the visa was issued, not 3 weeks before her interview. For unknown reasons hers wound up nearly a month and a half short.

I'm sure everyone is familiar with the 90 days a couple on fiancee visa has to marry once she arrives. so that almost seems like it could be like 2 visas in a way. the one allowing her to enter the country and then the one for 90 days, once shes in the country. what i don't know is does that expiration of the visa she's entering on effect the time she is allowed to stay in the USA once shes entered? does the expiration of the entry visa end her visa altogether? If it does we'd have to be in a rush to marry, and just throw plans out the window, to avoid her visa expiring. on the other hand if she starts all over again with a full 90 days once shes in the country all is well, and we can enjoy the summer a while before panicking over expirations and deadlines again as we have been doing for the past 2 years.

Its been a long hard road that I'll post more on after we get together and aren't so busy. We're very happy Jane is almost here at long last. she should arrive in LA 30 Apr, 2011, after starting this whole procedure on my arrival home from spending the summer with her in the Philippines in 2009 but just needed to air this concern and see if anyone has an answer. the people on this site have been a big help, by having experienced the frustrations one can encounter along the way and having found answers to what seemed impossible questions when they first faced them. -Daag

[Harpa Timsah 13,258]

She will get 90 days at entry. K-1 is one-time use - you just have to use it before it expires. Once it's used, any visa-related dates don't matter. Good luck.

[RenCor 2]

I am not a master of this.. but as I have understand and read from some here...once the visa is issued to her she have the 6 months expiration and she need to leave before the expiry date and once she entered the states she has 90 days to marry the USC or else she will go back home if that expires...goodluck and hope it helps

[Darnell 8,478]

ya, focus more on the I-94, it's dates, and why it's important.

As long as she's in the USA prior to the visa expiration date, she's OK for ENTRY.

Once she's ENTERED - she has to pay attention to the dates on the I-94 document, not the VISA stamp.

[DAAG 1]

Thanks all of you Harpa, Rencor, and Darnell for answering my question. i thought that is probably how it works, because it makes sense, but if I've learned anything in this process it is you can't always rely on logic. and I take nothing for granted. so sometimes maybe the questions i ask may sound like the answer would be intuitively obvious, but i rely on people who've gotten past the point where i am and help those who haven't yet, kasi (because in visaya)its the only way for us to all muddle through a complicated process. i just felt really antsy because its so close to her expiration date and couldn't sit still and wait to see if my guess was right. 22 years in the Navy, 3 as a navy instructor taught me the only dumb question is the one you don't ask. so if i ask any that seem obvious, its only because its so important. its also because on the second and final run through this process, i don't want to leave anything to chance.

Darnell your use of the language looks letter perfect to me. I've gotten this far before, with a beautiful Filipina who used me just to get to America, then didn't like me or America much and went back home. so everything past this point is new territory to me. I am not familiar with the I-94. is that where you request change of status after marriage. I never saw much of my first filipina fiancees paperwork, She left so fast I'd read about it all before but like i said never got past this point the first try, and I'm afraid I've forgotten a lot of what was clear in my head the first time around but was driven out of my memory by the pain of loss of the last woman i loved, and the little son I'd taken in as my own. i will of course research it all again.

I do remember something seemed a bit confusing about my fiancee being allowed to work for a very exorbitant price that would have made it almost wasted effort before marriage, and other things like her not being allowed to leave the USA even in cases of family emergency, in the Philippines, without getting some kind of early parole. I read last year that you can now request change of status, early parole, and permission to work all at the same time and only pay one huge fee vice the three fees that used to be required. one thing about that, that i don't know is, Can and Should we request early parole even without reason, encase a reason comes up and requesting then would take too long? The reason i ask is my fiancees mother is having serious health issues. none are life threatening at present, but that could easily change in how ever long it takes to get it where my fiancee and i are allowed to return to the Philippines for a visit, without requesting permission.

Restricting people from just doing such things, when necessary, seems cruel and weird to me, but as long as there is a way to make it be allowed, if it doesn't cost too much more than we can afford, we may request that if were allowed to do so, just in case a problem arises. it seems to me it would make more sense to just make it a blanket approval for everyone, considering how inhumane the alternative is, of forcing them to sit here, for no good reason, if a parent is dieing or other emergency, back home. after all it isn't like they've done something bad. they're just in another country to start a new life with someone they fell in love with. Why try to isolate them, and to stop them from having a normal family relationship with their parents, and to punish them for simply being here, when something like that happens? but that's a rhetorical question. i know we aren't likely to have any effect on such laws no matter how weird they may seem. Maybe its to keep them from running home just due to homesickness and possibly ruining a potentially good marriage. I suppose there's some logic in that. I don't know. Id better go research the I-94. Thanks again guys.