US-DK

Just so you know, immigrant visas for beneficiaries from Denmark (as well as Norway and Sweden) are now all handled by the immigrant visa unit at the Embassy in Stockholm. You may want to direct your inquires to the IV unit there. However, what Penguin said still applies, it will depend on how helpful they want to be.

Source: US Embassy in Copenhagen - Important News regarding Immigrant Visas

Thank you. I already got a reply from the embassy in Denmark saying just that. I wrote the embassy in Sweden, and got a pdf with some information, but untimately they can't say until the time of a formal interview.

It shouldn't complicate her naturalisation. If the marriage happens after her interview, she will need to bring the marriage cert to the oath ceremony.

You can get married anywhere where it is legal to get married- justice of the peace, registry office, church....

Okay. Thank you again so much!!

You can get married wherever you want- for example you could get married in the USA while you are on a visa waiver visit, as long as you leave when your 90 days are up. Or get married in your home country, or yet a third country (Carribean or whatever). As soon as you are married, she can petition for you- even while she is a greencard holder (in which case she'd upgrade the petition once she becomes a citizen).

You would need solid evidence that your income will continue in the USA. This may be difficult unless you are doing an intra-company transfer; for example, freelancers often have problems proving their income will continue, or self-employed that their income is stable. Again, your local embassy (depending on how helpful they want to be) can advice if your income is deemed ok/ sufficient.

Thank you so much for your help. I've already e-mail the US embassy in Denmark, so hopefully they will be able to answer that question for me. I guess my main concern is that if we get married, while she's applying for her naturalization, it might complicate things.

I find all this information very confusing, so thank goodness for this site Anyway... so we can just go to anyone who can marry us, and get married? Or does it need to be a specific place or type of place? I mean there's no doubt that's what we want to do, we're just trying to do it by the book, so we don't complicate things more than they are.

With a K1 that will probably be a problem, but check with your embassy. It's the USC who is the visa sponsor and is supposed to be able to support you. With a CR-1, the foreign beneficiary's income can be counted, if it continues from the same source once immigrated. The income level for two (assuming no kids or other dependants) is just under $19'000.

Oh and I'm a bit above the $19000/year.

With a K1 that will probably be a problem, but check with your embassy. It's the USC who is the visa sponsor and is supposed to be able to support you. With a CR-1, the foreign beneficiary's income can be counted, if it continues from the same source once immigrated. The income level for two (assuming no kids or other dependants) is just under $19'000.

Okay so a CR-1 might be a better option instead of the K-1. The difference seems to be that we will have to get married before that then, which makes this the right forum to ask the next question in

So once she becomes a US citizen, how do we get married then, so we can apply for the CR-1?

To prove she makes enough money to support you.

Oh. Well I've actually been taking care of the both of us for a while now. I don't have a lot, but I get a small but steady income regardless of where in the world I live. Shouldn't that be enough?

Sure, as long as she has a stable job and a few months' paystubs by interview, that should be fine.

What does she need that for?

She doesn't need to be in the country, but she should have someone check her mail in case there is an RFE (request for evidence) or something. Also, if she stays abroad with you, you will probably need a co-sponsor. Also, your timeline estimate on the K1 visa is a bit optimistic; while 6 months is possible, 8-10 months is more common.

Since you decided to go the K1 (fiance visa) route, I recommend you ask further questions in a new thread in the K1 forum.

Thank you very much. I will ask all further questions in the right forum. Just one last thing... I just need a co-sponsor if she stays abroad with me right? The plan is for us to live together in the US as soon as we can, so out of the 8-10 months for the K-1, she would probably only stay in Denmark for 3, and then me in the US for a month at some point too.

Once she is a citizen, she can go abroad for as long as she wants.

Even while waiting for the K-1? She doesn't need to be in the country for anything after she sends the application?

Hi. So we're finally applying for her naturalization. After that the plan is for her to apply for a K-1 visa for me, so we can be together in the US. Is it correct that the estimated processing time for her naturalization is 5-6 months, and after that 5-7 months for the K-1 visa?

While applying for the K-1 visa, as far as I can tell, I can still use the VWP, but can she leave the US after applying for the K-1? So at least then we could be together in Denmark for around 3 months while waiting for the K-1 visa?

Look... Bob... things are very tense and hard here these days, and I am truly sorry if I offended you in any way. It was absolutely not my intention, and I appreciate all your help. You just hit me in a incredibly soar spot, and it affected me deeply. It wasn't fair to take it out on you. I'm sorry.

Seriously!?!?

What are you getting so touchy about?

You have enjoyed a luxury that many on VJ simply don't have, access to VWP so that you could visit your SO in the US. You have overused it and were warned to chill out for a while.

After I married my wife I wasn't able to be in her physical presence for 10 months! It was difficult on us but we made it.

Nobody (especially me) is telling you what to do with your life and I also fail to see where anyone is judging your personal life either. You are young and impatient, that's a fact based on your posts. I have simply said you will survive the wait to which you cried about the seperation will probably kill your relationship. I speak from experience, been there done that kind of experience not "read it on the internet" experience (which is ironically how I'm sharing said experience with you). Even at the ripe old age of 41 I'm impatient (just not nearly as much as I was in my twenties).

The bottom line here is that you can't easily visit in person with her for a period of 4 to 6 months and that's if she files for naturalization yesterday. The more time you spend whining about in on the internet the longer it will take.

Trust me on how small of a problem this is. In life you may experience things that are much harder to overcome, financial & personal hardships that will push you beyond your limits. I've been in situations where I didn't know if I would even have a tomorrow let alone where I'd live or what I'd eat (to no fault of my own). All of the sudden something can just blindside you on a sleepy Tuesday afternoon and everything you knew is gone, that's a big problem.

If the relationship is strong and the love is true then it will find a way to reach across the vast expanse and fill both of your hearts. Even though you'll long for the physical touch you will cope with it and keep contact until the day you can again stand at each other's side. If for some reason the relationship can't survive this rough patch then you are better off without it.

10 minutes after my wife walked through the doors at the airport all of the pain from the previous 10 months apart was gone! In the 18 months since we've had our ups & downs but we are still here and I honestly believe that 10 months strengthened our relatonship in ways local couples can never understand. No matter how angry either of us gets we each know the other will always return...

When you read my posts, take what you want from them and ignore the rest...

I was starting to write a reply to your message, but I don't see the point. Like I said, I really appreciate the help everyone here has been so kind to give me, but I just won't accept anyone presenting their assumptions as facts. That's it. I'm sorry you got offended by this, but please take a step back, and stay out of this thread if you can't extend me that courtesy.

If your relatonship really truly can't survive this minor hiccup then maybe it's for the better as life will throw a lot bigger obsticles at you...

I do understand, and I really appreciate all the help. But the truth is that you are in no position to say what is a minor hiccup for us. You can only assume, and assumption is rarely a good thing, especially when judging other peoples personal lives. I would appreciate it if you would refrain from doing so. If nothing else because it's not a nice human quality to tell others what to do with their lives, and what is a big or a small thing, especially when you have absolutely no idea what you are talking about, when you don't know the first thing about those people. Thank you.

Yeah that's what I though. You can't really blame them for keeping a tight security with everything going on in the world, it's just sad that it has to be like this. There's basically no way for us to see each other, before she gets her passport or her naturalization, and at the point, with our current situation, I doubt there will be an "us" which makes me incredibly sad.

Oh and one other thing... USCIS suggested that she file G-884 form to get the missing paperwork. I haven't been able to find any processing time for that, or if it might even help. Any inputs?

I'm wondering if during my last entry into the US, where the officer told me that I might not be let into the US again, if I went for 3 months on the VWP, if that is registered in the system somewhere? Or if all they note in the system is "accepted" or "rejected"?

K. Thank you. I really appreciate it!

If anyone else has any suggestions, please let me know. Thanks.

Yeah and the re-entry wont really work anyway since she needs a valid passport to get into another country as far as I know. What about giving USCIS the old A-number? Maybe they can pull some kind of paperwork she can use for the Korean passport? Another option is that she gets started on the N-400, and then a month after I take a chance and hope they'll let me into the country for 2 months.

I wish it was that simple. Like Einstein said: "Time is relative".

Forget the FOIA request. Those can take years. She doesn't need it.

The N-400 is the form she needs to file. The N-600 is for people who have a claim to US citizenship, and need a document to prove it.

Here are the VJ guides for naturalization:

http://www.visajourney.com/forums/index.php?autocom=custom&page=naturalization_guide

Okay cool. Thank you. The N-400 it is.

If you've already been admonished about misusing the VWP then you'll probably be denied entry if you try to use it again anytime soon. Next time maybe she should come visit you.

Yeah that was the whole plan. She would come to Denmark when she got her new passport, which should have been in about a month. But then that plan got shot down when she was denied a new Korean passport because she didn't have the proper documents tying her from her old Korean name she had as a baby in her old Korean passport, to her current name that she has on her Driver's License, Permanent Resident Card, and Social Security. So unless we find someway to get some paperwork so she can get a new passport, we can't see each other for another 6+ months or however long that takes, and we've already been apart for the last 3 months. That's why it was so important that she got here soon.

Oh and I have thought about going to the US to help her get all this done, but I'm not sure they are going to let me in again. I went 3 times last year (1+2+4 weeks) and then I also went there from 1st December (2010) to 28th February (2011) which is about 3 months. Upon that entry, the customs agent warned me that the VWP is for vacation only, and what I was doing wasn't considered vacation anymore, so I shouldn't expect being able to do that again. Even a shorter trip is risky I feel

Thank you so much for all your replies! I've been looking at the N-400 and the N-600, and can't really figure out which one to go with, but it seems you agree on the N-400? Would she still need to apply for the FOIA first?

I doubt she is a US citizen already. Her adoptive parents never did anything for it, and after she turned 18, she found out that she could have gotten it pretty easily if they had just applied for it. We just got her green card replaces a month ago. So I doubt she is a citizen, but how can we find out? And even though it's important to get her naturalization started, things are just a way right now, where we just want her to come to Denmark for 2-3 months, and then get it started when she comes back to the US. So the question is, how do we get the needed paperwork. Oh and her parents has NO paperwork like that we can use

Using the A-Number she should be able to get copies of her Immigration File. If she was adopted by US Citizens then she may (should) have claim to US Citizenship.

Where would we call to get such copies? She should have gotten a US Citizenship, if her adoptive parents hadn't been on drugs all her childhood, and in general just terrible parents. We are looking into getting her US Citizenship application started on of these days when we get the $680 it costs to apply, but we haven't seen each other in 3 months, and was counting on her being able to go to Denmark for 3 months when she got her new Korean passport. I wonder if we can start the US Citizenship process with our current documents?! Although the absolute best thing would be to find a way to get her a new Korean Passport very soon.

She also has her Social Security card!

I found the copy of the receipt. It's for an I-90 form costing $130 back on 06/05/03. It states her old and new name, a number starting with "A" followed by 8 other numbers, and it's from INS District Office, El Paso, TX.