If you have been in the United States for less than six months and you have not married, you can consider leaving and applying for a K-1 fiancé visa to return. Stay over six months, however, and this option disappears. You will need a waiver (official government forgiveness) of your illegal stay in order to return before three or ten years are up. These waivers are not available to fiancés—as opposed to spouses—of U.S. citizens.

Assuming you haven’t stayed six months illegally, your planned marriage to a U.S. citizen should qualify you for a fiancé visa. (See Chapter 2, Section B, for the eligibility requirements.) A fiancé visa will allow you to enter the United States, marry within 90 days, and apply for your green card in the United States. Your unmarried children under age 21 will be eligible to accompany you.

There are no quotas or limits on the number of people who can obtain fiancé visas and subsequent green cards through marriage to a U.S. citizen. A fiancé visa usually takes at least six months to obtain.

a. For U.S. Marriage Only

A K-1 fiancé visa gives you no choice but to hold your marriage ceremony in the United States. Couples often ask whether their overseas marriage really counts, or wonder why they can’t just get married for a second time after entering on a fiancé visa. Unfortunately, once you’re legally married, no matter where the marriage occurred, you no longer qualify for a K-1 fiancé visa and you must apply for U.S. residency as the spouse of a U.S. citizen.

You should also know about an alternative visa, call the K-3 visa, available to already-married couples. The K-3 visa is a special form of fiancé visa, which allows a married immigrant to enter the United States as a temporary nonimmigrant, and then complete a green card application process after arriving in the United States. For more information on K-3 fiancé visas, see Chapter 7.

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Wedding ceremonies that don’t result in legally binding marriages won’t stand in your way. If you don’t feel right leaving home unmarried, see if you can arrange for a religious or other ceremony that will not be legally recognized or registered in your country. USCIS does not recognize these as valid marriages. You will need to have a legal marriage in the United States once you get here.

b. The Green Card Application Will Be Separate

Fiancés wishing to live in the United States will need to marry and apply for their green card during the 90 days they are allowed to stay in the United States on their fiancé visa, using a procedure called adjustment of status. This application procedure usually takes between five months and a year to complete and involves even more paperwork than the fiancé visa.