Transcript of the above video:

As the title of this video suggests, we are discussing the, well basically all the major family-based visas for spouses or fiancés of American citizens: that is the K-1 Visa, the K-3 Visa, the CR-1 Visa and the IR-1 Visa. For those who are unaware, the K-1 Visa is a Fiancé Visa, the K-3 Visa is a Non-Immigrant Spouse Visa. It is not in wide usage but I always discuss it when I discuss both the CR-1 and the IR-1 Visas which are sort of standard Immigrant Spouse Visas. So what am I talking about with regard to this video and marriage? Covid really threw us for a loop. I'm still dealing with COVID backlog cases and look, to the clients out there that are watching this video, that are still slogging through the mud, I get it, I understand your frustration. We are doing the best we can. Unfortunately the system was not optimal before this all went down and it certainly is not optimal now. I do think they are in good faith trying to move cases through but it ain't going great, I mean it could go a lot faster in my opinion. 

That said, the question posed by this video is 'when should we opt to marry?' It depends a lot, it depends a lot on your circumstances. And I bring up COVID because it had such a weird impact on these cases. I know people that really wanted to get married years ago but they filed a K-1 Fiancé Visa thinking it would be faster and under the circumstances generally speaking would be faster. COVID hits, then you had administrative interventions into the overall system; people are still waiting around and they would really prefer to be married. The big thing to take away from this video is it is really not a great way to do things to go ahead and make life decisions around Immigration protocols. If you want to be married, you just really want to be married, your Immigration status kind of shouldn't come into play on that. Now people always ask 'well what is faster? Is it faster to get a K-1, is it faster to get an Immigrant Spouse Visa?" Generally speaking, definitely in the past I would have said, just off the top of my head oftentimes I would say 'oh it is always going to be faster to get a Fiancé Visa.' That has changed a little bit here recently. The processing times have kind of moved together a lot more. That being said, there are certain things that you don't have to deal with in a Fiancé Visa case that you do have to deal with in an Immigrant Spouse Visa case that make the overall case harder to deal with most notably dealing with National Visa Center which in my opinion is a bureaucratic quagmire. 

Leaving that aside, again the decision regarding marriage, it should be your decision based on what you feel like for your life and your lifestyle and how you feel about your partner. That should be something personally made and then your Immigration decisions should flow therefrom; that's how I look at it. Again, maybe look at the totality of things, contact a legal professional, gain some insight and guidance into timing and things of that nature but at the end of the day, your personal decision should be made based on what you want to do with your personal life and should have less to do with protocols that are going to be maintained by an Immigration apparatus.