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Basevi

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  • Gender
    Female
  • City
    Springfield
  • State
    Missouri

Immigration Info

  • Immigration Status
    Adjustment of Status (approved)
  • Place benefits filed at
    Local Office
  • Local Office
    Kansas City MO
  • Country
    Peru

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  1. Hi! Thought I'd chime in - hopefully this is helpful. Sorry it's long. My (now) husband is a Peruvian citizen, but was on a 2-year work permit in Spain when we applied for his K1 visa. We went through the whole process in Spain and it wasn't an issue at all (I don't even remember ever being asked about his residency status in Spain). So a work permit should count as residency, even if it is only for a year -- just expect that you may need to be able to renew that permit in case the backlog makes the wait really long. (Example - We applied for K1 in August of 2020 and due to the pandemic backlog didn't get the interview in at the consulate in Spain until August 2021 - a year of time rather than the pre-pandemic expected 5-7months.) I've also seen people go through this process while on student visas. I'm guessing it would also be okay on other visas that are not tourist visas or extended tourist visas. For example, Spain has a visa type that is basically "I have enough money in my bank account that I want to come and live in Spain for a year -- I won't work or study, I will just spend my money and live in Spain." It's called a Non-Lucrative Visa. Before deciding to live together in the US, we looked at what it would take to get me (US citizen) permanently in Spain --- this Non-Lucrative Visa was an option that would have counted towards years legally lived in Spain, which would have counted as years towards getting Spanish citizenship. Since that visa type would have been considered "resident of Spain" enough to count towards citizenship there, I'd say it would have been good enough to count for residency for a US K1 or CR1 visa application. So something like that could be an option for her, I've seen it offered in other countries too. From what I've seen, having a visa good for at least a year counts as you residing legally in that country (I wouldn't risk anything under a year). In fact, once you are on any of those visas in Spain (even a year long student visa), you are required by law to apply for Empadronmiento, which is legally registering the address that you live at with the Spanish government -- so if you are looking at the Netherlands, or any other country, see if they have something similar - she'll for sure be considered enough of a resident if she has a document like that. To clarify, I've been using Spain as an example, just to give an idea of what you can be looking for in other countries. In short, my recommendation: Get a work permit, student visa, non-lucrative visa, or something similar in a third party country - she shouldn't have a problem with those. Just don't send her somewhere on a tourist visa and have her renew it a bunch of times, that won't count as residency. Hope that helped and wishing you both all the best!! PS - We have lawyers and prior to doing the K1 visa, they recommended we meet up and get married in Turkey (due to the travel restrictions of summer 2020, and me being a US citizen and him a Schengen resident) - they had multiple clients that had done that in order to apply for CR1. We didn't do it because there were too many risks involved at the time. Mentioning because Turkey could be a good marriage destination option that it sounds like you're already considering. There are multiple companies that specifically help foreigners get legally married there.
  2. I attended my fiancé's K1 visa interview at the beginning of this month, though it was in Spain not Sierra Leone. I brought my US passport with me and they let me in with him. I stayed in the seating area while he did the admin things, then we waited together. After he was called up, he told the interviewer that I was there and asked if he wanted to see me. He said, "Sure, bring her up!" and then ended up keeping me up there during the whole interview, addressing the rest of his questions to both of us. It ended up being a really nice experience and our interview was shorter possibly because of it. I'm not sure if that'll happen in your interview and I'm not familiar with how things work in Sierra Leone, but if the embassy said you could go, I'd go for it! If you're worried, you can always print that email out and take it with you, so you can show it to anyone you may need to. Best of luck with his interview!
  3. Hi @therek! We actually just got our packet 3 from the embassy in Madrid today, so thought I'd pop in and reply here. First off, we received it by email -- it specifically was e-mailed to me (the US citizen) instead of my fiancé for some reason, so make sure you're both on the lookout! The email will be arriving from "ivmadrid", so make sure it doesn't go to your spam or something. In the meantime, I 100% agree with the advice given by @JulijaKC ! Here's a basic list of what the embassy said you'll need to mail them for step 1 of packet 3, so I'd start getting that together while you wait (they'll have more details in the packet): 1. DS-160 (this is done online, we finished ours before we even got the packet) 2. Copy of biographic page of Passport 3. Birth Certificate (original and one copy) 4. Divorce and Death Certificates (original and one copy) (if applicable) 5. Police Certificates (original) -- from all countries the foreign fiancé has resided in for 6 months or more since the age of 16 -- the Spanish one is the "Certificado de Antecedentes Penales" - it says the current residence one must be no older than 1 year; we've gotten/are getting new ones for each country just to be safe 6. Court and Prison Records (original and one copy) (if applicable) 7. Military Records (original and one copy) (if applicable) 8. One photograph (a passport photo) 9. Evidence of Financial Support (I-134 form and associated things -- there are forums with more details about this on here ) 10. Translations (original and copy) -- they say here that you only need translations of any documents that aren't in English or Spanish, but we're going to get the Spanish documents translated into English just in case Then you take all of that and mail it to them by physical mail. Afterwards, they say they'll contact you to let you know you can schedule an interview appointment. Then you pay the application fee, schedule your interview, and schedule and do your medical. They also tell you what docs to bring to your interview. Yea, so in short, hold tight, wait for the e-mail, and get those docs mentioned above prepped. Feel free to message me if I can help with any questions and good luck! ❤️
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