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ResourcesVisa & Immigration LawUS Immigration LawUS K-1 Fiancee Visa: What is Advance Parole?

US K-1 Fiancee Visa: What is Advance Parole?

Transcript of the above video:

In this video, I'm going to briefly discuss the issue of so-called advance parole from the United States with respect to the K1 fiancee visa. What are we talking about here? Well specifically, the K1 visa is something of a unique visa insofar as first of all, it's a dual intent visa. So it's issued under the non-immigrant visa category but it maintains an immigrant intent because the older the K1 visa will travel to the United States and within 90 days of their arrival in the United States, they need to marry their fiancee and apply for an adjustment of status to permanent residents in the U.S.A.

Now the world have problems. Life is a complex thing and sometimes what will happen is someone will go to the United States in K1 status and let's say a relative back in Thailand gets it or there's some kind of massive emergency or some requirement that may not even reach quite the level of emergency but simply the fiancee needs to leave the U.S.A. Well the problem with leaving U.S.A. on K1 if one has not adjusted to permanent residence is the fact that by leaving essentially, that visa is dead and one would either need to reapply for a new visa or would have to if the individuals are already married, an entirely new petition may need to be filed with respect to the the applicant. There's a way to deal with this and to forestall this, for lack of better term, cancellation upon exiting the United States and the way that this is often dealt with it's called advance parole. And basically, what happens is the United States government, the immigration authorities, Department of Homeland Security is petitioned and told “Hey look, this individual is in K1 status, they're in the process of adjusting to permanent residence but something has come up and you know they need to leave.”

If advanced parole is and it's not necessarily always approved but if it is approved, then the individual can leave the United States and effectively, their status in the United States is maintained. It's very, very similar in a lot of ways to a re-entry permit both in the United States and in Thailand in the sense that the underlying visa status is, for lack of better term, frozen and that individual can then return on their advance parole documents in order to sort of re-uptake the processing of their case. Failure to get advance parole could have serious implications for a K1 visa holder because it could result in a loss of the visa and in certain instances, the loss of that visa can be rectified somewhat quickly. But in other instances, that may be impossible to rectify the situation especially there have been material changes to the applicant's overall situation. This can have a significant impact on their personal life because again, it could take months more to reprocess a new case and it could have a lot of cost with respect to time and resources.

So if an individual is in the United States on a K1 and it is pending or maybe not yet pending adjustment, it is imperative to do one's research before leaving the United States as doing so could have, for lack of better term, it could have dire consequences in an immigration sentence because it might not be possible to re-enter the United States for significant period of time if further processing of an entire case is necessary.