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As the title of this video suggests, we are discussing a meeting requirement for US Marriage Visas: K-3, CR-1 and IR-1 Visas. For those who are unaware, the K-1 Fiancé Visa does have a meeting requirement. Basically you have to have physically met your fiancé in person within two years of filing a petition for a Fiancé Visa. There are exceptions that rule but the exceptions are pretty difficult to overcome; the threshold is pretty high. Most the time in the vast majority of cases I have ever dealt with, they want folks to have met in person at least once in the two years prior to the filing of the petition. 

Now the question is does this apply to Marriage Visas, and the answer to that is No, although I have had people asking me about virtual marriage which I don't know if there is any of that out there. I haven't dealt with this in person yet or dealt with this myself. I don't really see how, well there are certain jurisdictions that allow distance marriages but there is specific law on that. Long story short, if you are legally married you are probably going to be able to file for one of these types of visas. There may be exceptions to that. For those that are in a situation where you are legally married and you haven't actually met each other, you are probably going to want to contact a legal professional, gain some insight and guidance into how to deal with that.

As far as those who are legally married, and we are starting to see some of these folks, yes they are legally married but they haven't seen each other in a fairly long time because COVID basically got in the way. In a sense it shut down a lot of countries, or I should say the response to COVID shut down a lot of countries; shut down a lot of airlines; made travel very difficult and I have had a lot of people asking me this question. Long story short, if you did meet each other and were in each other's physical presence when you married, you are probably never going to have an issue with respect to any type of physical meeting requirement like the K-1 Visa because those rules simply don't apply in the context of a K-3, CR-1 or IR-1 Visa.