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Hey, all! Here's the short version. My fiancee (Canadian) is just about ready to move! She's coming to the USA on a K-1 visa. It's (long) driving distance.

I know that she can only cross the border one time with the K-1 visa. But, can I move her stuff over two trips?

Last time I tried to take some of her belongings over the border during a trip home (a few weeks before the K-1 visa was approved), I got held up and eventually turned away, as she was not accompanying her stuff. The border people pulled me into secondary and verified all our info, and one of the last questions they asked me was "so is her visa approved yet?" which suggested to me that that might be a deciding factor in this issue. My answer was no. Ultimately I was told I am not permitted to bring someone's belongings with me over the border unless they are present.

If she is present with me for the first van full of things, we presumably will get through fine. But what about a second trip with just me? Will I be able to cross into the US with a car full of her stuff if she's now legally in the US on her visa?

(To head off the most obvious response questions: I cannot get a larger vehicle than this 9ft moving van in time. We also (I believe) don't have time to arrange a stuff-shipping service such as U-Pack or U-Boxes. If anyone has creative ideas I haven't thought of, they are more than welcome and we are desperate for them! Moving distance example would be Toronto to Boston, about 500mi/800km.)

Just now, dmeister3 said:

Hey hey! So what I can tell you that I know for sure is that I emailed our partner contact for the primary platform we use about the legality of keeping tax information in Europe until AOS was finalized and they pretty much told me its a non issue on their end, but totally up to the government as how they classify it. So...no help at all. We don't have an attorney yet as we've been trying to do it all ourselves, but may consult with one on this issue.

That's helpful! 🙄

I'll keep you in the loop and this thread updated with anything we find or hear. I feel like the letter of the law is so preposterous that determining the spirit of it is the important thing. I can't believe every single couple with a K-1 visa operated as a single-income household for 1.5-11 months!

3 minutes ago, dmeister3 said:

Hi! I'm OP of the other thread. I liked this comment specifically.  Say if it was more "traditional" means of income such as owning rental real estate and you are still a legal resident of THAT country and file taxes in THAT country until you get set up with EAD in the USA.  I feel like both situations are totally grey areas that have not been clearly defined by the government. Otherwise, interest earned in foreign accounts could be considered as income/work.  This entire thing is mind-blowingly confusing and had we known we probably would have went CR1 instead of K1.  Our YouTube channel we outsource the entire editing and uploading content to someone who is in a third completely non-related country and they invoice us monthly, so really we aren't even doing any work in regards to YouTube content, we pay someone to do it for us. Ugh.

Well hey, YouTube buddy! Cool to see you catch the bat signal on this issue. Did you talk to any tax or immigration attorneys about this by chance? Or are you still up in the air like us? We're going to meet with one sometime in November if possible and see what we can find out. If it wouldn't be illegal for me to run the Etsy store for her and collect her adrev, that'd be ideal. We probably would have done the CR-1 as well if the various border closure dramas didn't preclude us from doing so.

Knowing what we do now, it's obviously the slower, but much less headache-inducing option!

EDIT: Changed "precluded us" to "didn't preclude us"

1 hour ago, Boiler said:

Better to go CR1 and avoid the issue.

Even if we're now only an estimated month from NOA2 on a K1? What would the CR1 process be? I run to Canada and marry her, then start the paperwork? I'm unclear on specifically how that'd all work. We never really considered it an option because of the pandemic making the border so onerous to cross. 😔

9 minutes ago, Kor2USA said:

Another member has a similar situation and posted in the Working & Traveling During US Immigration forum. 

Here is the conversation:

 

We've checked out that thread, it's quite good! But there are things it doesn't cover. For example, on YouTube, she's taking ad revenue payments which are effectively royalties for past work. She wouldn't actively be working in the US, unlike this influencer person in the linked thread.

And with Etsy, another of her primary income sources—I could easily run the store unsupervised if she handed me the keys, and she wouldn't lift a finger to work at any point. (I think she'd actually quite enjoy that arrangement!) In such a case, if the funds are still going through her account because of work I do, would that count as "work" on her part? Questions like this are ones not covered or even touched on in the threads I've been able to dig up tonight. I'm praying to find some clarity, so I figured I'd make a thread for us!

Hey, everyone! For starters, thank you all so much for creating and contributing to such a broad and deep repository of knowledge and stories about the various visa processes. It's no exaggeration to say that this forum has been truly life-altering.

So, here's the story! My fiancee is in Canada, I'm in the US. She works as a freelance artist, primarily making her income on shops like Etsy, from YouTube, and through artistic commission work. We don't live together yet, but of course plan to change that when the K-1 is granted.

My question is: Once she crosses into the US on her K-1 Visa, and our 90 day marriage timer starts, does her freelance art qualify as "work"? As in, is she legally disallowed from making any money from art while physically in the US until a Work Permit is granted?

She also receives monthly royalties from YouTube (and other sources) for work she did in the past. Does receiving payments for past work constitute "work" that would require a permit?

My hours of research have been very frustrating and confusing because most people don't have the weirdly specific situation we're in. I was hoping the VJ forums might have some people that could shed light on our problem! Thanks for reading. -Amber