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ResourcesVisa & Immigration LawUS Immigration LawTravelling to the USA on a Tourist Visa While a K-3 Visa Application Is Pending

Travelling to the USA on a Tourist Visa While a K-3 Visa Application Is Pending

As the title of this video suggests we're discussing tourist visas and K-3 marriage visas. 

What are we talking about specifically? Well there are circumstances where a given individual will have been previously issued a B-1/B-2 tourist visa on a previous instance under previous circumstances in order to travel into the United States as a non-immigrant and then intervening circumstances may have arisen which result in a marriage to an American citizen and in those intervening circumstances, basically while a K -3 petition is being processed, the couple may ask the question of themselves, "Well maybe I want to return to the United States on a tourist visa in order to interact with my spouse, briefly take a brief vacation, perhaps a business meeting may be in order”.’ All kinds of reasons may come up with respect to utilizing a tourist visa while a K-3 application is pending but the question is often times is that a good idea? Well let me first of all preface the rest of this video by stating that it will heavily depend on the circumstances of a given case. But that being said, one needs to understand that a K- 3 Visa has in a way what is called a dual intent visa but definitely has immigrant intentions inherent in it and B-1/B-2 tourist visa is inherently a non-immigrant visa and it is for tourism only. Now how these two interact in a given couple's situation is going to be very situationally dependent and I don't mean to be overly vague in this video but what people need to understand is they cannot travel into the United States using a tourist visa if they have any kind of immigrant intent. That being said, ones immigrant intent is dictated by the circumstances of that given trip, so you could have a situation where one may be traveling into the United States on a tourist visa with the full intention of briefly being in the US, leaving and coming back abroad to go ahead and process through the K -3 visa application through a US Embassy, for example the US Embassy here in Bangkok, Thailand.

So the thing to take away from this video is if in doubt, or really anybody watching this video that has this issue, it is probably a good idea to contact a legal professional and really suss out where exactly the individual stands with respect to these intention issues and also understand the risks inherent upon possibly traveling to the United States and being turned away on the grounds that the individual is an intending immigrant without proper documentation. One does not want to go to the United States sort of unwittingly, to be turned away. It is costly, time-consuming, and difficult to deal with; and stressful for that matter.

So the thing to take away from this video is, those who are in this sort of predicament where a tourist visa has already been issued under different circumstances but now intervening facts have created an application for a K-3 visa which is pending, it may be a good idea again to contact a legal professional to go ahead and ascertain exactly how ones situation falls in order to best understand how best to proceed with respect to traveling to and from the United States.