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K-1 Fiancée Visa Waivers for Multiple Filings

Transcript of the above video:

In this video today as the title suggests, we are talking about the K-1 fiancée visa and specifically we are going to be talking about those individuals who have multiple prior filings of K-1s specifically.

Pursuant to provisions of statutes such as the International Marriage Brokers Regulation Act etc. there are restrictions now on the number of K-1s that can be filed for without first obtaining a waiver based on those multiple filings. Some backstory here. In the past, and at this point at the time of the filming of this video in 2018, it’s the rather distant past, or the more distant past, you had situations where you would have people who basically would just bring a lot of girlfriends to the United States, and primarily these were used for female fiancée’s of American citizens and one of the reasons for this, is first of all there was his quirky situation prior to what was called the life Act where US marriage visas for US. citizens  were like time consuming to process while fiancée visas  we're relatively quick, they processed relatively quickly, for whatever reason  it was just sort of the, for lack of a better term, bureaucratic inertia  associated with the processing of those different kinds of cases that resulted in one set going quicker and another set not going quicker. I suspect part of it had to do with the fact that immigration visas based on marriage, just across the board, there's a larger number than generally then there are fiancée’s and that is because you've not only got marriages of US citizens marrying foreign individuals, but you've also got lawful permanent residents  who are marrying foreign individual's and you've got derivative cases based on those as well so it's a larger pile of cases to deal with on the marriage side that it is on the fiancée side but that being said moving on with respect with respect to multiple filing waivers. At the time and I can vaguely remember in my younger days there was like 60 minutes or 20/20 story talking about individuals who were, basically had brought I think in one case a dozen fiancée’s over to the United States and it turned out they didn't have the intention to marry and they would go back home to ever there from and it was pretty clear that it was basically being used sort of as an expedited route to I guess just getting girlfriends into the United States without the intention of marriage so it seemed like they were those who were sort of abusing the system and didn't really intend to get married at the time they were in the United States. This came about sort of at the same time that there were issues with respect to so-called marriage brokers. In the era of social media, marriage brokering is not something we see so much on quite as grand a scale as it once existed, but there was a time where they were firms and organizations and individuals who specialized in acting as basically match-makers between foreign females and in this case American males. And as part and parcel of their service often times, they would assist in the processing of K1 visas, whether they were entitled to or not pursuant to US Law is sort of another issue but often times this sort of system would run part and parcel with what was being viewed as a system that was coming under a level of abuse. So as a result of that, the International Marriage Brokers Regulation Act came along and basically stipulated that in cases where there's an individual who's filed for one or more K-1s within a certain period of time prior to the filing of a current petition, a waiver needs to be sought and an explanation for the multiple findings need to be made and once an explanation is given, it's up to the officer in charge of adjudicating the case to make a determination whether or not the waiver should be granted for purposes of granting the K1.

There is a special provision with respect to K1 with respect to multi filings for those who are filing for the same individual; and this does happen. An individual will, a couple, will file for a K-1, the foreign fiancée will get to the United States and a family emergency would occur; someone will get very ill in the family or something with respect to a job situation pops up, or in other cases the American counterpart will go ahead and get a job abroad. I've seen this happen before too where the couple get to the United States and 1 month in of their cohabitation, the American counterpart, prospective spouse, receives a job offer to move overseas and they say “well let's not get married just yet let's move to this new location, make sure everybody is comfortable, and then we'll get married at that time”. In those circumstances, where say a family emergency or something comes up, a multiple filer waiver for a second K-1, let's say they try to use the K-1 again to come back to the United States with the genuine intention of getting married on that trip, yes there's still a waiver issue but that being said, with respect to multiple K-1s for the same person, so long as a good explanation can be given, a valid explanation with respect to why a marriage didn't occur on the first trip, as long as an explanation on that can be given, generally speaking a waiver is going to be issued. That being said, there is an issue of staleness with respect to multiple filings with K-1s. If one filed for a K-1 back in the 1990s and never filed for another K1 and is now turning around and filing for a new one based on he or she has met someone new, yes that prior K-1 that goes so far back that's not really so much the issue. What I think it was designed for, specifically individuals who are abusing the system bringing multiple individuals into the United States on K-1 fiancée visas and just using them for temporary stays and the system was just being abused and so they created a situation where "look you need to go ahead and show a genuine reason why you didn't get married on the last case and why you're looking for a new one now".