Which visa to apply for?

[Blackstone 0]

I am a natural born American. I got married in Morocco about 10 yrs ago. My wife and I have a son who is 6. They both reside in Morocco. My son was issued a US passport. Neither have been to the USA as I have been working in Kuwait for some years.

Question: should I apply for a tourist visa at the embassy for her or should I apply for immigration? I'm seeking the fastest way to get my wife to the US.

[slycordinator 6]

If you want her to visit America and head back to her country with a known time when she will head back, then tourist is right. If you want her to live with you in America, you'll have to get a spousal visa.

[Unlockable 7,318]

Tourist visa is not for immigrating to the US.

 

Apply for spousal visa. Review the guides on the process. Will likely take a year. When dealing with immigration, nothing is really "fast".

[Blackstone 0]

Anyway to get her here to visit in the meantime?

[SaRy 73]

Visiting on a tourist visa while having a pending immigrant visa is kinda frowned upon by the US authorities, so her tourist visa would either be rejected or your spousal visa (CR1 I believe) would run the risk of being rejected too. The reason being that there are risks of fraud. Some visitors use their tourist visa to "immigrate" so they just overstay and live in clandestinity.

 

I'm not saying your wife will do the same, far from that, but just explaining that you could lose the chance of a permanent stay because of a short stay (she will have to prove that she has all the reasons to return to Morocco at the end of her visit, which will be very difficult knowing that her husband and her child are both with in the US).

 

In my opinion, just bite the bullet and file for the spousal visa. It will take a bit long, but in the end it'll be worth the trouble when your family is reunited for good.

[NikLR 13,232]

It's not so much that visiting is frowned upon, I visited 3 times easily. It's that tourist visas for spouses of USC are very hard to get even before starting the immigration path.  Wife has a USC son and a USC husband, which is far too much intent to immigrate for this lady.  

[SaRy 73]

You're from Canada and they're from Morocco, just like me. Unfortunately, Morocco is one of the "high fraud risk" countries where visa applications are filtered more strictly.

 

But the part you mentioned about spousal visas is on point.