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As the title of this video suggests, we are discussing Immigrant Spouse Visas. That is the CR-1 or the IR-1 Visa and in this case, I am going to discuss it in the context of the spouse of a US citizen although you could be talking about this effectively for spouses of Lawful Permanent Residents in the US. The vast majority of cases I deal with here in Bangkok involve spouses of American citizens.

What are we talking about here with respect to Visa validity? Well unfortunately, sometimes a Visa will get issued for whatever reason, circumstances, that it will only have a validity of a few weeks. A lot of factors can go into this and sometimes it can happen in an unforeseen way. I have had this get dropped on folks' heads in the past where all documentation seems to be in order and perfectly valid and the Visa was only issued for a couple of weeks. I saw this some time ago and more recently I have seen it and it brings up the question and people especially in the present times, it is really unfortunate people are stuck between a rock and a hard place. "Do we use the Visa? What do we do? We may only have a few days, a week or something to use this Visa. What do we do?" Well depending on the circumstances, it may be possible to deal with getting a new one issued with an extended validity. That said, whenever you can avoid trying to get something reissued you probably want to; it has been my experience. I have dealt with trying to get visas reissued in both the K-1 and an Immigrant Visa context. It is not an overly fun experience nor has it in my experience been particularly straightforward; it is rather cumbersome to say the least. 

The question is though, in an Immigrant context it is not like the K-1 where you have to arrive on a K-1 and then remain in order to adjust to Lawful Permanent Residence. With an Immigrant Visa, the stamp on arrival is an I-551 stamp. You arrive and you are granted your Lawful Permanent Residence at that time so travel shortly thereafter isn't a big deal. You are a resident at that point. In a lot of these cases I see where, look the validity window just is what it is, a lot of folks just bite the bullet and frankly it is not a fun experience but they just say "Okay fine. I will get on a plane; I will enter the United States; I will vest for lack of a better term, I will attach my Lawful Permanent Residence and then make my decision as to what I want to do from there. Sometimes folks will leave shortly thereafter and come back abroad briefly to get their affairs back in order before returning to the United States permanently. Again, it is all circumstantially dependent. Long story short, if you have got a short validity on a Visa depending on your circumstances, you may have some options but generally speaking you want to get your Residence attached if you will, early and often.