Advice for American married to Iranian citizen

[asmpic 0]

Hello everyone, I'm hoping you can help me out with some advice on how best to proceed with the marriage visa.

I'm an American living/working in Switzerland and my wife is an Iranian citizen also living in Switzerland. She moved to Switzerland this past year on a fiance visa and we just got married a few months ago.  

Now, I have plans to move back to the US next year and want to get started on the application process now rather than wait and risk getting the application stuck in admin processing due to the whole travel ban situation. 

 

Do you know if there's any better chances for her visa getting approved sooner because she has been living in Switzerland and not in Iran? Will the application be hard to do at this time because I will not have any thing to prove that I will re-establish residency in the US (i.e. no job offer yet, no lease, etc). 

 

Thanks in advance for all the help!

[fdhs 9]

Starting with the easy part: 

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Will the application be hard to do at this time because I will not have any thing to prove that I will re-establish residency in the US (i.e. no job offer yet, no lease, etc). 

You first have to worry about proving intent to reestablish domicile in the US for the I-864 (affidavit of support), which will be in quite a long time (maybe in 1+ years time). This should give you enough time to take steps to show intent to reestablish domicile. Residing outside the US will not make your application that much more difficult. Since you are both together in Switzerland, it could be viewed as actually helping show you have a bona fide relationship.

 

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Do you know if there's any better chances for her visa getting approved sooner because she has been living in Switzerland and not in Iran?

Well, since the US doesn't have a consulate in Iran, and it does in Switzerland, the process might be a bit easier for you (in that she won't have to travel abroad to a consulate).

 

The main issue is the travel ban. You will have to get a waiver from it. I don't know how easy/likely this is. It looks like this might be the thread for you to find out more from other members about this:

  https://www.visajourney.com/forums/topic/681063-travel-ban-support-group

 

Good luck!

Edited August 14, 2019 by fdhs