Hello, my partner and I are looking to start the process of immigration into the United States.
As a bit of a background, I (US Citizen) and my partner (China Citizen) have been in a relationship for about 4 years. We spent about 6 months together when he was studying abroad in America, and since then we have met in person around 3 times (Dec 2018, June 2019, Dec 2019), and we do have travel tickets, etc that can verify the times we met. We are also gay. We looked at our options, and it appears between the K1 and the CR1, most people recommend proceeding with the CR1 Visa. However, upon doing further research, my partner and I had some questions regarding the process.
Our biggest problem right now would be our inability to meet up with one another physically. Due to his work policies and China's current COVID regulations, he cannot easily exit the country. I thought about visiting him in China, but China has still not opened its borders for tourists, and (probably) will not in the foreseeable future due to its strict no-covid-policy. In addition, even if I were to visit him in China, our marriage could not be performed there. I know that we can technically get married in another country, but again, he cannot leave the country.
As a solution, my partner and I explored the Utah Zoom marriage, as it seems like this would be a convenient way for us to get married. However, I do understand that after the Utah marriage, we would have to consummate the marriage prior to submitting the I-130 by meeting up in person, which would again, be rather difficult. The last time we met was in December 2019 (essentially right before COVID), which I know would not qualify for consummation, but I was wondering if there have been exceptions to the consummate/meeting physically rule due to extenuating circumstances. If anyone has any other suggestions as well or believes that the Utah Zoom marriage is not recommended, I would be greatly appreciative to hear of them.
Second, my partner is technically a part of the CCP. He joined when he was in undergrad as it would help open doors for better job opportunities. Besides the annual fees (which I believe is handled by the company he is working in), he doesn't really do much else with the CCP. I know that members of the CCP face difficulty in immigrating to the United States, so I was wondering if anyone had any suggestions or experience with that. In addition, since I have heard that the Utah Zoom Marriage can be seen unfavorably by the immigration officers, I was worried that the combination of CCP membership + Zoom marriage would be largely detrimental to the success of our application.
Last question, would it be best for my partner and I to look for an immigration lawyer to help with our case, seeing as it might be more complicated, or would it be something we could take care of ourselves?
Thank you so much for the help, we greatly appreciate it!
Miriam07
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1:11 am May 19, 2022
