How does a US petitioner immigrating to the beneficiary's country affect the CR1 process?

[LaJumpa 40]

Hey everyone!

 

I have a purely hypothetical situation here and I just wondered if anyone can share some knowledge.

 

My wife (USC) and I (UKC) married earlier this year whilst I was staying on an ESTA. I returned to the UK shortly after the wedding and we filed the i-130 online which is now at Nebraska, we're still at NOA1.

 

My wife is travelling to the UK for a few months soon. Im sure most of you can imagine, the separation across the ocean has been real tricky so we're maximising our time together. 

 

Now here's where the hypothetical comes in.

 

If my wife decides she wants to stay in the UK longer and we decide to apply for a UK family spousal visa, how would that affect our ongoing CR1 petition with UCSIS? 

 

Would we need to withdraw our i-130 and resubmit a new one again once we're ready to go back?

If she keeps our current residence in the US, would that matter? 

 

Its something we've discussed, but as it stands we're more than comfortable staying put with the i-130 in motion. We're just curious to know how much potential chaos we would be looking at if she decided to stay in the UK.

 

Thanks! 

[Dashinka 24,579]

It would depend on how long you would plan to stay in the UK, if just a year or so, you can probably stall your US spousal visa at the NVC stage, but if you are talking two plus years, it may be better to withdraw the current application and re-file it 18-24 months before you plan to move back to the US.  If you were to decide to stay in the UK, she does not have to maintain a US residence, but she would have to show intent to re-establish domicile if and when you plan to move back to the US, so having a house is good for that.  She would have to continue to pay US income taxes as well.

 

As an addition, you only just filed the I130, so you are looking at 14-20 months or so anyway before the CR1/IR1 happens.

 

Good Luck!

Edited April 22, 2022 by Dashinka

[saksnoot 31]

The only real impact in terms of your case and approval would be on the I-864 domicile requirement. What I’ve heard from lawyers and in our case, London is pretty willing to accept an intent to re-establish domicile from the US citizen petitioner fairly readily for spouse cases, unless they suspect fraud otherwise. The general principle is that the UK isn’t high fraud to begin with, so in cases without red flags, it’s really unlikely the beneficiary would move to the US without the petitioner.
 

As with anything though, officers have discretion, so you’ll want to make sure you have plenty of evidence of maintaining ties to the US and/or re-establishing ties nearer the interview.

[powerpuff 6,723]

~~ Topic moved from IR1/CR1 Progress Reports to Process ~~