freedom of movement

[lane]

I'm having trouble finding information on a specific aspect of the marriage/visa process, namely restrictions on one's freedom of movement. That is, ability to live in the US or China or a third country at different stages of the process. Let me explain my circumstances and goals.

My fiancee and I are ready to get married. I already got my Certificate of Marriagability last month in Shanghai. (She is Chinese and I am American.) I have been living in China for the last two and a half years, and my visa (as well as my contract at work, and our apartment lease) expires in about nine months, in October 2012. Our goal is to go back to the USA together, ideally sometime around then -- not before my contract expires, and hopefully in time for Christmas.

We don't necessarily want to live in the USA permanently starting with this visit, but I definitely want to take her there for at least some amount of time, to see my hometown, meet my friends and family, etc., and hopefully spend Christmas together with my family. After that, we don't have a firm plan yet. We could stay and live in the US, but we're considering living in another country, neither the US nor China, for a year or two before we settle down. (I figure I could teach English just about anywhere.)

I've been trying to do research online about marriage and US visas and all of that, and it just seems like there are so many different approaches (K-1, K-3, DCF, ...?) which take different amounts of time, cost different amounts of money, have different requirements, etc., so my question is basically which approach is best. But of course "best" means different things to different people in different situations and with different priorities.

Most of the advice that I can find online seems to be written with the expectation that the two partners are not in the same country, and they are oriented towards how to bring (her) to the US to be with (me). But in our case, we are already in the same country, so our goal is not exactly to be together as soon as possible, because we are already together (though at the same time we don't want to have to be separated for a long time either). I could always stay in China longer, renew my visa and keep working, but I think we'll be ready to move on by then, and I'd like to take her back to meet my family at Christmas.

One of my concerns is that applying for a resident visa might require her to stay in the US for a certain period of time and prevent our plans to live abroad; is that true? But of course trying to get her a tourist visa seems silly since she's not going as a tourist; she's going as my wife (or fiancee, if that is better in some way; we could wait to get married later in the US instead of getting married in China). And if we just did a tourist visa, of course, then we'd have to do the whole visa application process over again when it came time to go back to the US again. Ideally, we could just do this visa for her one time, and allow her to come and go as she pleases -- but I don't know if it works like that. But that's what I'm looking for.

I think I count as a resident in China (I'm here on a work visa and a residence permit) so DCF should be an option, is that right? Is that best? It looks like that may be the quickest.

Basically I want to find the option that will give us the most flexibility in terms of where we need to be and for how long. I can't really find any information about this issue. So my question is, basically, what would be the restrictions (if any) on where we could live or travel to, and for how long, with each of the different approaches? Which would give us more flexibility to plan our schedule? i.e. the ability to go to the US when we want to (that is, between October and December of this year) instead of having to wait longer for paperwork to process or something, or on the contrary having to leave China sooner because her visa is ready and is only valid for a short time, or whatever -- and on the other end, once the visa is processed and accepted and we are in the US, then being able to leave the US (if we decide we want to) instead of having to stay there for two years or something like that to meet some permanent-resident requirement or whatever. These are the kinds of requirements and regulations that I'm not finding much info about. So if anybody knows the answers, or can direct me to a good resource (either a post here on CFL or a government website or anything), that would be most helpful. I'm not really in a financial position to be hiring lawyers or anything, and it seems like all this info should be available somewhere.

[TLB]

Hi Lane and welcome!

 

This is one of those bureaucratic boondoggles we Americans so love to hate. You have a lot of questions in your post, and those with more experience and wisdom than I will soon begin giving you very valuable information I'm sure.

 

What we need is some sort of new visa that's neither "temporary visitor" nor "permanent resident", or else the "perm resident" rerequirements need to relax. As I understand it, your wife would need to spend roughly half her time in the US to stay away from the possibility of having her immigrant visa rescinded. This is not exact (as in 6 months out of every year) and you could probably swing being away entirely for a year or two with good reason, but at some point the gov't is going to ask whether she's really a "permanent resident" of the US (and that's the only visa she can probably get).

 

My wife and I are in a similar situation; she joined me here in October; I probably will retire next year and we haven't decided what we want to do or where we want to live. The original plan was for us to spend half a year in the US and half in China for as long as we could stand the travel back and forth.

 

I don't know that I've shed any light, but welcome anyway, and there'll be others with more specific ideas and suggestions coming soon!

 

Tim

[Randy W]

Nobody (or visa) REQUIRES you to live or be ANYWHERE - the catch is that you MAY be found to have ABANDONED a green card if she CHOOSES to not live in the U.S. The green card will allow travel between the U.S. and other countries, but expects that she will RESIDE in the U.S.

 

It sounds to me is that your best plan for now is to go ahead and apply DCF after getting married - she should have the visa in hand in time for the Christmas holiday. She has six months to use the visa, come to the U.S., and pick up her green card - the timing will most likely work out just fine. At some point in the next few years, she will need to decide whether to try to maintain a U.S. residence, or to abandon the green card and live somewhere.

 

You may find that U.S. citizenship (after 3 years residence) would ultimately give her the flexibility you want, since visas to China are much easier to come by.