Transcript of the above video:

As the title of this video suggests, we are discussing US Tourist Visas and a previously filed K-1. I occasionally get this question and I was hesitant to do a video on this because this kind of thing is very, very fact dependent so I am going to talk about this generally. If you are looking to do this you probably want to contact a legal professional and get some insight and guidance on this because there is a lot going on here. 

So a K-1 Visa is what I call a dual intent Visa. It is technically a Non-Immigrant Visa insofar as it allows the applicant to apply for 90 days as a fiancé of American citizen to travel to the United States specifically for the purpose of getting married within 90 days of arrival and thereby applying for a Green Card thereafter. Now if you don't actually do that and you leave within 90 days it is a Non-immigrant Visa; no harm, no foul. The dual intent aspect of the K-1 is the fact that one can get married and then file for what is called Adjustment of Status in order to gain lawful Permanent Residence in the United States, a Green Card. That is where the Immigrant intent aspect comes from. K-1s are treated for processing purposes like Immigrant Visas so it processes through the Immigrant Visa unit at the US Embassy here in Thailand when we deal with them here in Thailand. For this reason again they are technically Non-immigrant but they have a dual intent aspect so they are Immigrant for all intents and purposes. 

Now the question here is: can I apply for a Tourist Visa after I have applied for one of these? I get this question a lot especially right now with all of this COVID backlog. People want to be with their loved one; they want to be with their fiancé. The problem can be and again this is all going to be very fact dependent, it is going to depend on the specific facts in one's giving case, but the problem here can be that the intent of these two types of travel documents are not in sync. A Tourist Visa one specifically has to have Non-Immigrant intent and that has to be adjudicated pursuant to what is called section 214b of the Immigration and Nationality Act wherein the adjudicator, the Consular Officer must determine that the applicant has strong ties to their home country and, this is key, week ties to the United States. Having a K-1 on file can create something of a conflict with that adjudication. Now again, facts are going to drive the analysis on that. There could be a set of circumstances I can see out there where someone might legitimately need a Tourist Visa notwithstanding the fact they are waiting around for their K-1 Visa and as long as they were to come back from their Tourist Visa and process their K-1 as per the regulations that might not be an issue. Again, you need to be careful with this and more than anything to make sure you don't throw away good money for no good reason, but probably a good idea to contact a legal professional to gain some insight and guidance into how best to proceed.