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ResourcesVisa & Immigration LawUS Immigration LawHow Often Should I Meet my Fiancée Before Seeking a K-1 Visa?

How Often Should I Meet my Fiancée Before Seeking a K-1 Visa?

Transcript of the above video:

As the title of this video suggests, we are discussing the K-1 fiancée visa; we are specifically discussing the issue of the meeting requirement associated with the K-1.  

For those who are there other videos on this channel. You can basically use the search function on our channel to go ahead and search "K-1 Fiancée Visa: Meeting Requirement", and you will get a couple of videos that go into relative detail on that as well as exceptions associated therewith.  

To provide a brief overview, essentially statutorily under the Immigration Nationality Act, those that are seeking a K-1 fiancée visa for a non-American fiancée, need to have met that fiancée at least once, physically in person, within two years of filing for that type of visa benefit.  There are exceptions to this.  There are certain religious situations that may arise where meeting is not going to be possible.  There are also health situations where it is simply not possible for the couple to have met in person prior to applying for the petition. But that being said those exceptions are quite few and far between. I have been doing this for over 10 years and it is very rare.  In fact I can count it on less than the fingers on my hands where I dealt with cases where the couple was unable to meet and in those circumstances where they were not able to meet, the evidentiary burden was quite heavy with respect to proving up the reason why it was not possible for the couple of me.  But suffice it to say, you effectively need to have met in person at least one time within the two years prior to filing for a K-1 fiancée visa.

That being said, I get this question rather frequently from people saying,  "I understand we have got to meet at least once.  Is there some optimal amount of meetings that are going to be better with respect to the K-1?" My answer to that is "well it's all circumstantially dependent.” Obviously, the more the better. There is no hard-and-fast rule with respect to proving up the underlying relationship associated with a K-1 fiancée visa.  But that being said, essentially K-1s, the more the better obviously but there and there is no magic number. 

So the thing to take away from this video is "yeah, there is no magic number", and the other thing to take away from this video is "yeah, you probably do need to go ahead and meet at least once",  and more and more especially in light of the fact that USCIS has changed the rules with respect to a denial insofar as they no longer have to issue a Request for Evidence before denying a K-1 fiancée visa application, it's really, really important to deal with that meeting requirement stuff at the time of the initial filing.  For that reason, it is probably a very good idea to retain the assistance of a legal professional in order to help you and your fiancée go ahead and file a strong visa application or visa petition from the outset so as to forestall the possibility of denial or try to forestall the possibility of denial in a USCIS adjudication.