My K1 Visa experience - Australian Marrying US citizen

[dee4dub 0]

Hi Guys ,

I thought i would share with you all my personal experience with my Journey to the US to marry my US Fiancee. My experience,Like everyone else's, is a little different.

I was sent to the US to work on a 12 month secondment,with a possible 6 month extension (E2 Visa) in July 2013. my E2 visa was valid until october 2015, in this time i met my now fiancee . after meeting her i knew i wanted to stay the extra 6 months to be with her and work, but my employer had other ideas and wanted to send me back to my office in Sydney. reluctantly i had to go back to Sydney in August 2015 so my girlfriend (at the time) advised that she would come back with me to Australia for 3 months on the Esta 3 month visa.... she arrived on september 14 2014. we were staying with my parents to save money as we had decided that we both wanted to live in America (For personal reasons). we had a hard time deciding what visa to go for. As i was wanting to go back to the US i would have to quit my job and that would of voided my E2 working visa as i would no longer be working with the company . so we thought it would be a good idea to apply for the B2 tourism Visa. We had no legal advice and thought that was the best option. So we filed out the DS-160 form and got an interview date for December 1st 2014..

I quit my Job on November 14th 2014 and me and my fiancee went on a 2 week camping trip up the Australian coast to take in all the sites before we went back to America.

i attended my B2 interview on December 1st and to my horror i was denied!!!...the interviewing officer was incedibly rude to me... he asked me the following questions.

1- what is your purpose to go to America - Answer - my girlfriend is Ski instructor and i want to go to spend the ski season with her and travel to see some other states and then return home in about 10 months or so.

2- Have you been to US before? - Answer - Yes

3- What visa did you enter the US on?- Answer - E2 visa

4 - can i see it? - Yes

He then grabbed my passport and looked at the Visa inside (which was still valid) and then walked away for a minute. He returned back to the window and put a big black stamp across the visa and proceeded to tell me that my visa application had been denied.. i asked if i could then enter on the Visa Waiver program and he advised me that i could never apply for the VWP program again!

My fiancee had to return back to the US so we were stuck.. We realized that we wanted to spend the rest of our lives together and thats when we got engaged and started the K1 process...

this time he hired an attorney which i am so glad we did as it sped up the process so much.. i got my police reports back from Australia and the United Kingdom which i had lived for 2 years when i was younger... i was arrested in London in 2008 for Drink driving which i had not declared on any of my other Us visa applications. (i totally forgot about it) so i was extremely worried that the interviewing officer would pick up on this and advise that i had misrepresented my self and deny again.

so to cut this story short we finally got our K1 visa interview date which was April 28 2015. I went to the interview very nervous. the interviewing officer asked the following questions.

1- how did you meet your fiancee?

2- when did you get engaged?

3- what do plan to do for work?

what does my fiancee do for work?

4- where about do you intend to live?

THAT WAS IT!!...... APPROVED!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! all that stress and anxiety for nothing. She did not ask one question about my arrest or previous denial what so ever!!! i could not have been more happy how it went!

i am now writing this from our lounge room in Salt Lake City and we are getting married this Friday!!

i hope our story puts a lot of minds at ease . its perfectly normal to feel nervous. It also made me realise that it can also depend on the interviewing officer that you get on the day and what kind of mood they are in which i think totally sucks because its your life that they have in their hands.

I wish everyone on here good luck on their Journey and may god be with you!

Edited May 26, 2015 by dee4dub

[Russ&Caro 1,548]

Thanks for sharing your story. What I have come to appreciate is that almost nobody has an entirely cut and dried story. We all have little wrinkles in our history that cause us stress and worry during this visa application process.

[dee4dub 0]

no problem at all! i thought i would share it to help put other peoples mind at ease

[dee4dub 0]

i might also add that our whole process only took us 5 months from start to finish. It pays to hire an immigration attorney (if you can afford one)

[dee4dub 0]

feel free to ask me any questions

[Adrii 208]

On 5/27/2015 at 9:14 AM, dee4dub said:

feel free to ask me any questions

 

Edited January 13, 2018 by Adrii

[Adrii 208]

On 5/27/2015 at 9:14 AM, dee4dub said:

feel free to ask me any questions

Thank you so much for sharing your story! 

Im so sorry you went through that horrible experience at the consulate when you applied for your B2 visa. It's awful to think you can get someone having a bad day and they can just turn around and deny someone with no legitimate reason!

So glad that you're now together!

My fiancé and I are in the process of applying for a K1 visa and I'm also Australian. From what we've heard the process is now taking around 12 months from start to finish! Which is crazy!

Im just curious as to how much an attorney set you back and I hope that's not too much of a personal question, if you are happy to answer it and would prefer to in a direct message that would be amazing! 

I was about to apply for a J1 visa before my boyfriend proposed so I have money saved and if hiring an attorney can reduce what appears to be a 12 month wait I'd seriously consider it!