Transcript of the above video: 

As the title of this video suggests, we are asking, "why does the K-3 Marriage Visa even exist?" People will often contact me and, you know the colloquial term oftentimes especially for people who do their own research on the internet regarding US Immigration, the colloquial term for a Marriage Visa seems to be the K-3, when in reality, the standard Marriage Visa based on the I-130 form, is the CR-1 or the IR-1, the Immediate Relative category. Then when people talk to me, they ask me well there's this K-3 category, what is it? 

Well one, it's a Non-immigrant Visa, so it's similar to the K-1 Visa insofar as it does not confer Green Card status at entry. Then people ask me, "well what's the point of this?" It was actually invented under the Clinton Administration pursuant to the Life Act wherein it was decided, at that time it took like 4 to 6 months to process a Fiancé Visa but the back log on Immigrant Spousal Visas was like 3 or 4 years in some cases. I even talked to practitioners who were practicing at that time, who told me they would advise people to get divorced, apply for a Fiancé Visa and remarry Stateside; it was actually faster to do that. As a result, Congress - at the time probably a pretty good idea - under the Life Act created the K-3 category where they basically said, look we're going to create a Non-immigrant Visa for folks married to American citizens and we will process it through the same “line” if you will as the K-1, because the K-1's backlog was so low. That processed for a while. Then about 10-12 years ago, we saw a pretty massive change to the overall process associated with the K-3, wherein they decided to do what was called Administrative Closure at the National Visa Center. 

What are we talking about when we talk about the National Visa Center? Well National Visa Center acts as a kind of a clearing house between Department of Homeland Security and Department of State and when they intake cases from petitions processed by the Department of Homeland Security, they forward them on to relevant Embassies or Consulates. What started happening was the process of getting the underlying I-130, the underlying Marriage Visa petition, began to speed up and we finally saw a situation where sometimes it would even move faster than the K-3 or it would move at roughly the same time. At that point, National Visa Center decided administratively, the K-3 is effectively no longer fit to purpose, and we are going to administratively close those cases where the underlying Immigrant petition has been processed. In theory, you could still see a K-3 process these days; as a practical matter I personally have not seen one processed in quite a number of years. 

That being said, it does remain an option and as the Trump Administration goes along, I could see scenarios arise where perhaps a K-3 petition - a supplemental petition - might be useful, again depending on the underlying circumstances in a given case.