Thoroughly confused. Need some advice/ Suggestion

[Ryan H 3,790]

Just be sure to get in your marriage certificate the " apostille de la Haya" its a requirement that will allow you to present any italian document in any american authorities and be recognized as good.

This is completely and totally unnecessary, as Hypnos already posted, this is not even a requirement for USCIS.

[hellraiser 42]

I think you are going to make it unnecessarily complicated. What is your plan? To Bering your fiancé ASAP once she completed her school in 2017?

Instead of all these u would recommend one of the suggestion. Get married in your native country and you can complete any ritual formalities whenever you want but register now. Start the CR1/IR1 process now and keep it simple for you. This is a long process and you will need to send docs to few different parties and you will be asking for trouble/delay if you fail to provide what they want on time.

Do a ceremony in Italy or Vatican or wherever but register in native country and kick off the process early. With IR1/CR1 you can finish it in less than a year if you are proactive and work within the process. Again, you may as there is no certainty with the immigration process.

Best wishes for you. Good luck

[dhman2006 0]

I think you are going to make it unnecessarily complicated. What is your plan? To Bering your fiancé ASAP once she completed her school in 2017?

Instead of all these u would recommend one of the suggestion. Get married in your native country and you can complete any ritual formalities whenever you want but register now. Start the CR1/IR1 process now and keep it simple for you. This is a long process and you will need to send docs to few different parties and you will be asking for trouble/delay if you fail to provide what they want on time.

Do a ceremony in Italy or Vatican or wherever but register in native country and kick off the process early. With IR1/CR1 you can finish it in less than a year if you are proactive and work within the process. Again, you may as there is no certainty with the immigration process.

Best wishes for you. Good luck

Yes, the plan is to bring my fiance here as soon as her school is over.

I think I sort of like your plan. What do you think about doing the wedding at Bangladesh Embassy in Italy. The problem with me going to Bangladesh is that it will take at least 3-4 days for the back and forth travel and I only have 5 days of vacation left after taking a month long vacation this year already. Do you think it'll complicate the process?

Edited January 28, 2015 by dhman2006

[hellraiser 42]

It's all matter of raising suspicion on your marriage and intent. USCIS, NVC, Embassy will want to make sure they are avoiding sham marriages. Getting married in Italy may sound sexy but will raise questions. The question would be obvious why you two got married in Italy and not in your native country? Even if someone raises a question or askes for further RFE, guess what? That round trip communication will take months. Your core objective would be to avoid any uncertainty or challenges throughout this process.

The immigration process is beauracratic, time consuming and painful. You don't want to add fuel to this brutal, gruesome process to make it even more painful for yourself. If you can take 5 days off that will make it 9 with the weekends. You will have 6 days for the wedding (not engagement) and I think that would be enough. Go and do the formal official work in these 6 days and then you will do the formal one when it's convenient for both of you. The marriage certificate from Dhaka will be of current date so you can start the application. I am not familiar with Buddhist wedding do can't say what other documents are created out of matrimony. In that 6 days you should be able to get official translation from marriage register office and other docs that you will need. Kick off your process now and continue to collect evidences of your wedding. Pictures, phone bills, chat log and etc. if you send her money (if you do for any reason) copy of those receipts and etc., all may add value to your case.

Like I said be as proactive as possible. When you apply you should have or star working on documents that you will need for NVC. That will be the key of getting out of jam along with some luck.

[NikLR 13,220]

why the heck not get married in Italy! People have destination weddings all the time!

[Ryan H 3,790]

It's all matter of raising suspicion on your marriage and intent. USCIS, NVC, Embassy will want to make sure they are avoiding sham marriages. Getting married in Italy may sound sexy but will raise questions. The question would be obvious why you two got married in Italy and not in your native country? Even if someone raises a question or askes for further RFE, guess what? That round trip communication will take months. Your core objective would be to avoid any uncertainty or challenges throughout this process.

The immigration process is beauracratic, time consuming and painful. You don't want to add fuel to this brutal, gruesome process to make it even more painful for yourself. If you can take 5 days off that will make it 9 with the weekends. You will have 6 days for the wedding (not engagement) and I think that would be enough. Go and do the formal official work in these 6 days and then you will do the formal one when it's convenient for both of you. The marriage certificate from Dhaka will be of current date so you can start the application. I am not familiar with Buddhist wedding do can't say what other documents are created out of matrimony. In that 6 days you should be able to get official translation from marriage register office and other docs that you will need. Kick off your process now and continue to collect evidences of your wedding. Pictures, phone bills, chat log and etc. if you send her money (if you do for any reason) copy of those receipts and etc., all may add value to your case.

Like I said be as proactive as possible. When you apply you should have or star working on documents that you will need for NVC. That will be the key of getting out of jam along with some luck.

You are unnecessarily scaring the OP about getting married in Italia. Destination weddings happen all the time, if the OP wishes to have their official wedding in Italia, then that in of itself will not be an issue. USCIS will not send an RFE asking why. A CO may or may not ask about it at interview time and if asked, simply answer. Not complicated at all.

[hellraiser 42]

Guys I am not asking anyone to take a backseat. All I wanted is to find out is the OP's priorities. If someone wants, they are entitled to get married on top of Mount Everest or even on the moon. I thought the priority of OP is to bring his wife on time. Getting married in Italy may (MAY) sound sexy but the spouse will face interview where? If in her native country, you may not have much idea on the embassy over there. Also documents that are specific to countries will be easier to manage from home country.

And I was merely suggesting of doing to official/govt. formalities earlier and then do whatever OP wants. He can go and have wedding party in Italy, Timbuktu or Siberia. I may sound conservative....

[dhman2006 0]

So I was thinking about doing the wedding in Italy, have our marriage certificate issued by a Italian consulate / religious institution, and applying for CR-1 for my wife.

Now, the question is will that really complicate the overall situation. If my paperwork (marriage certificate, clergies testament etc) will be in Italian / from Italy will the CO in Bangladesh be suspicious? I'd think there'll be less suspicion since there's a lower chance of fake papers from Italy than Bangladesh.

[hellraiser 42]

You can certainly do that. If someone asks you why did you get married in Italy? If you have a satisfactory answer, you should go for it. U.S. embassy in Dhaka may want to verify your docs too. Anyway, it's purely up to your level of comfort :-)

[Hypnos 6,576]

"Because we wanted to".

[NickD 202]

Do not quite recall the requirements to get married in Italy, but know if you are not a citizen of that country, can be a very long wait. In Las Vegas, can get married in five minutes. Live in Wisconsin and required by our state law to apply for a marriage license here, we had to wait another two weeks before we could get married.

We spent our honeymoon filling out immigrations forms, that I-693 was a killer trying to find a USCIS approved doctor with a reasonable appointment date and wouldn't rob us to death, had both a mom with a daughter. Found one 300 miles away, was well worth the trip. Also sent in a lot more money for EAD cards, interview dates were over a year, and can't do anything until they got those cards with probationary SS cards.

But once received notice from the USCIS are applications were received and initially approved, they were free to stay here. So this was one less worry.

We skipped on those travel documents that you need to return to this country after you left it. Didn't want to return to their home country, and with foreign passports, practically needed a visa for any other country to travel to. But once they received their EAD cards, could apply for a state photo ID and were free to travel anywhere in the USA.

The biggest shock to me is after sending tons of proof, all those translations, medical records, etc. At our interview were only issued conditional green cards. That was the worse part of our journey, major delays, even had to make infopass appointments to get I-551 stamps in their current valid foreign passports. And try to explain this to any school or employee, or even the DMV.

But time passes by and it all becomes history. Major site to get unto is the DOS site, a different government agency than the USCIS. They explain all the details in dealing with some odd 200 different countries. And all countries have different agreements.