Transcript of the above video:

As the title of this video suggests, we are asking the question are K-1 visas faster than CR-1 and IR-1 Visas? Now especially with US Immigration, there are those who can say maybe I am a little redundant year to year in some of the topics we talk about. Long story short, things change, so I kind of have to revisit things. That is especially the case here coming off this sort of pandemic stuff where we are talking about the K-1 versus the IR-1 or the CR-1 Visas, the Immigrant Spouse visas. 

In the past, it was pretty easy to say yes K-1's move faster. The downside is you don't enter the United States with an Immigrant Visa and therefore you don't enter in Lawful Permanent Residence status whereas with the IR-1 or CR-1 visa, you enter in Lawful Permanent Resident status to the United States. So the thing to take away from this video is yeah in the past, K-1's were moving quite a bit more quickly than CR-1 or the IR-1. These days it would be negligible to say the least especially when you are talking about moving through USCIS. Unfortunately, the last Administration I don't know if they did it intentionally, it does seem as though they did but I don't really care for our analysis here, basically the things that they did resulted in the K-1 taking a lot longer to process as a practical matter but at the end of the day, I mean things were kind of moving a little bit more quickly. A big difference between the K-1 and the CR-1 is the K-1 does not have to deal directly with the National Visa Center which in my opinion is quite a bureaucratic quagmire. For that reason, generally speaking if it is sort of "six to five and pick 'em if you will" in terms of processing, depending on if the couple wants to get there as quickly as possible, generally it is kind of my instinct to say well the K-1 will probably be faster. It is harder and harder to say that based on the current facts on the ground. I am hoping that changes as we close out 2022 and we are starting to see cases, we are really starting to see a lot of our case load move out and start moving through and I am hoping we will see more of that you know as time moves forward but yeah the analysis on this is going to be difficult. It is going to depend on the circumstances of your case.

To say definitively the K-1s are currently faster than the CR-1s or IR-1s, I don't think you could say that at this point. Could it revert back to the status quo ante? Possibly. I could see a situation where that does occur. Another big thing to keep in mind with the K-1 as opposed to CR-1 or IR-1 is with the K-1 is you just don't have to deal with NVC and that in my opinion is a benefit in its own right.