Integrity Legal - Law Firm in Bangkok | Bangkok Lawyer | Legal Services Thailand Back to
Integrity Legal

Legal Services & Resources 

Up to date legal information pertaining to Thai, American, & International Law.

Contact us: +66 2-266 3698

info@integrity-legal.com

ResourcesVisa & Immigration LawUS Immigration LawK-1 Fiancée Visa Exceptions to the Meeting Requirement

K-1 Fiancée Visa Exceptions to the Meeting Requirement

Transcript of the above video:

As the title of this video suggests, we are discussing the K-1 fiancée visa and specifically we are discussing the meeting requirements and the exception thereto.

There is another video on this channel which specifically discusses the meeting the requirements, drills down into that in a little bit further detail but in this video we are discussing the exceptions. So to understand the exceptions you at least have got to understand the generalities of the rule. Basically, in order to file for a K-1 fiancée visa, or at least to be approved on a petition for a K-1 fiancée visa, the couple in question, the American citizen and their foreign fiancée need to have met, physically in person within the two years preceding the filing of the petition for the K-1 fiancée benefit. So what are we talking about? They literally have to have met in person, seen each other physically in person, prior to having filed the petition for those benefits.

That being said there are exceptions. Certain religious groups have arranged marriages where they do not, the bride and groom do not meet each other prior to the actual wedding and prior to being wed and in those circumstances USCIS does understand that and there are certain ways in which to go ahead and get the meeting requirement waived. That being said, getting a waiver of the meeting requirement is extremely difficult.

Another one may possibly be physical disability. I have dealt with a case personally where it was a disabled American Veteran, and he was highly disabled; quadriplegic in fact and as a result, that individual just simply could not make the trek to meet his fiancée outside of the United States and as she was unable to get into the United States, a physical meeting was simply impossible. So in that circumstance, the issues were explained and USCIS did make an exception to the meeting requirement based on that good cause and the showing of that good cause.

That being said, it should not be assumed that the waiver of the meeting requirement is in any way easy. In fact in almost every circumstance where I have ever seen a waiver, there were substantial, substantial circumstances that overcame a very large presumptive threshold in favor of the meeting requirement. Like I said somebody who literally, physically could not meet their fiancée overseas or in circumstances involving a very, very clear and very, very strong religious element which precluded meeting prior to the filing of the fiancée visa or prior to ever meeting each other again and ultimately getting married. The threshold is very high to overcome this. The evidentiary documentation in these cases looks like a phone book. It is a lot of evidence to prove up the reason why an exception should be made to the meeting requirement because I think the Ina, the Immigration Nationality Act, and the Immigration Officers associated with adjudicating these cases take the position that, look you have got to be genuine in your intentions and one really good indicator of genuineness is having taken the opportunity to in fact meet each other.

So again the thing to take away from this is there are exceptions to the meeting requirement but they are rather few and far between and it should not be assumed in most routine cases that one is going to go ahead and be able to get an exception to the meeting requirement in a K-1 fiancée visa context.