Extend Visa Expiration Date

[JM101 14]

Due to unforeseen circumstances, my wife and I may need to extend our initial arrival to the USA. Her CR1 visa expires in February 2017 and we may need to extend a few months further before we can actually travel to the USA.

Obviously we don’t want to have to go through the whole process again, nor pay for a complete new Visa.

Any suggestions on how to extend the expiration date?

JM101

[Penguin_ie 5,984]

You can contact the US embassy BEFORE the visa expires, and ask for it to be re-issued, giving you another 6 months. You will need to pay for another medical, and sometimes, for another interview. This is not guaranteed, especially if you do not have very good reasons for the extension (I've seen it happen because kids wanted to finish the school year, or elderly parents were terminally ill). If you don;t want to do that, another option may be to travel to the USA for a few weeks to activate the visa, and then return to the Phils for a while; as long as you return for less than 6 months, you should be fine.