“How much money do I need to sponsor my fiancé to the USA?” is one of the most researched questions on Google. The easiest way to understand the answer to this question is to know what is required for each stage of the fiancé visa process. The fiancé visa process can broken down into three stages.

In the first stage of the case, you have to prove to the U.S. government that you are in a bona fide relationship with your fiancé. You must also prove that you plan to marry your fiancé within 90 days of his/her arrival to the U.S. For this stage of the case, you must file an I-129F petition for your fiancé, with United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS). You do not need to prove your income just yet. If you do not make the minimum income, you have months to get your finances in order.

Total Cost for Stage 1 of the Fiancé Visa Process

• I-129F Petition Filing Fee = $675
• Attorney’s fees = $1,500

It will take approximately 8-12 months for the government to make a decision on the petition. If USCIS approves your petition, it will be valid for four months. USCIS will send your approved petition to the National Visa Center (NVC) which will route it to the U.S consulate or embassy where your fiancé will attend his or her interview. So far, you should be getting an understanding of “how much money do I need to sponsor my fiancé to the USA?”

In the second stage of the fiancé visa process, the National Visa Center will notify you that it is in possession of the file with the approved petition. It will assign a case number to the petition and then your foreign fiancé can begin the visa application process. During this stage you may be required to prove that you can financially support your fiancé. If your fiancé is financially secure he or she may be able to use his or her income or assets without needing yours. The immigration officer may ask for form I-134 Declaration of Financial Support at the interview. A copy of your most recent tax return and current paystubs should be sufficient evidence that you can support your fiancé. You need to keep your fiancé at 100% above the federal poverty guidelines, during this stage.  You can rely of form I-864P  listed below for the minimum income requirements in 2024.

Total Cost for Stage 2 of the Fiancé Visa Process

• DS-160 visa application = $265
• Medical Examination = $100 (varies by country)
• Police Certificate = $20 (varies by country)
• Attorney’s fees = $1,500

This stage of the process will take between 1-2 months depending on the availability of visa appointments at the U.S. consulate/ embassy.

After your fiancé arrives in the USA and you are married, it is time to apply for permanent residence. During this stage of the case, your foreign-born spouse must file form I-485. He/she may also simultaneously file an application for employment authorization. There is usually a decision on the employment application months before there is a decision on the adjustment of status application. If the employment authorization application is approved, your spouse may be able to get a job and help pay some of the immigration fees or contribute financially to the household. You are required to file form I-864 at this stage and prove that you have sufficient income to keep your spouse above 125% of the federal poverty guidelines listed in form I-864P above.

Total cost for stage 3 of the fiancé visa process without an interview

• I-485 Application to Adjust Status = $1,440
• I-765 Application for Employment Authorization = $520
• Attorney’s fees = $3,000

The processing time for the employment authorization application is approximately 6 months while a decision on the adjustment of status application may take approximately 12-18 months.

An experienced immigration attorney can save you time and prevent costly mistakes. The attorney may even save your relationship because if the process is taking too long your foreign fiancé may get frustrated and end the relationship.

Anyone can print immigration forms from the internet and mail it in, however it is not the US government’s job to check if you have done it right. When you file your application, the government simply takes you filing fee and mails you a receipt notice. No one checks if you have made a mistake at the time of filing. It will be months before an immigration officer looks at your application and makes a decision. If you have not proved your case, you will receive a denial notice. Sometimes the officer may issue a Request for Evidence (RFE) and give you a chance to correct errors but receiving an RFE is not guaranteed.

Hiring a qualified immigration attorney early in the process can set up you application for success. Going it alone during the immigration process causes unnecessary anxiety, especially if you have never filed for a fiancé before. It doesn’t have to be this way.

Attorney, Cheryl Fletcher

Experienced Immigration Attorney

“Can you marry someone else on a fiancé visa?” is not the question that you should be thinking about at the time of your engagement. Undeniably, things do not always go as planned. Consequently, you may find yourself in a situation where you are contemplating marrying someone else.

The sole purpose of the fiancé visa is to enter the United States to marry a specific person, within 90 days of entry. You must intend to marry the K-1 petitioner. If however, you entered the United States on a K-1 visa and you realize that marrying your fiancé would not be the right decision, you are not without options.

Usually, the K-1 fiancé visa is valid for six months. However, after you enter the U.S., you can stay in valid K-1 status for a maximum of 90 days. You cannot extend your status nor switch to another immigration category. You have 90-days to get married, under U.S. immigration law, . If within the 90-day period, you decide not to go through with the marriage, you can leave the U.S. There is no penalty for doing so. You will begin to accrue unlawful presence if you remain in the United States beyond 90 days. Consequently, if you spend more than 180 days, but less than one year, after your I-94 expires, you are barred from re-entering the United States, for three years. Furthermore, you will be barred for ten years, if you stay for more than one year.

Once you overstay, you can be deported. If you encounter Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents, you may be detained and issued a Notice to Appear in immigration court. You should not be looking to marry someone else to save you from immigration consequences. However, if you genuinely fall in love with someone and the relationship is heading towards marriage, you can win your immigration case.

However, you will not be eligible to adjust status in the United States, if you marry someone other than your K-1 sponsor. Instead, you can pursue a green card through consular processing. This means that you will have to attend the immigration interview outside the U.S.

After the wedding to your second fiancé, he or she should file an I-130 petition. This petition is to establish the validity of the marriage. If United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) approves your I-130 petition, the agency will send your file to the National Visa Center (NVC). The NVC then assigns a case number and routes you file to the appropriate United States embassy or consulate.

You will not be entitled to a work permit while the I-130 application is pending. This does not change even after it is approved. It takes about six (6) months for USCIS to make a decision on your I-130 petition.

Subsequently, once the NVC has received your file and you have paid the appropriate fees, you should apply for a I-601A Provisional Waiver of Unlawful Presence. This is for you to be able to re-enter the U.S. after your interview. You must prove that you have a qualifying relative who will suffer extreme hardship if the waiver is not granted. It is very important that you do not leave the U.S. without the waiver, otherwise you could be stuck outside of the country.

Assuming that the waiver is approved, the U.S. embassy or consulate will schedule an interview for you to attend. This will depend on whether an immigrant visa is available for you. If your spouse is a U.S. citizen, the visa is available immediately. If your spouse is a U.S. permanent resident, you will have to wait for a visa to be available. The U.S. Visa Bulletin illustrates visa availability based on your category and country of chargeability.

Thereafter, if all goes well at the interview and the immigration officer approves your application, the Department of State will issue a machine-readable immigrant visa (MRIV). Usually, the visa states: “UPON ENDORSEMENT SERVES AS TEMPORARY I-551 EVIDENCING PERMANENT RESIDENCE FOR 1 YEAR.” This visa will allow you to return to the United States, as a lawful permanent resident.

Filing any immigration application with the U.S. government is a legal task. You may be able to find the forms online and it will give you a false sense of security that you know what you’re doing. You usually realize that you don’t know what you’re doing after you have filed the application and wasted many months or even years waiting, only for USCIS to deny your case.

My name is Cheryl Fletcher and I have been practicing immigration law in all 50 U.S. states, since 2015. In consultations with potential clients, I am frequently asked, “Can you marry someone else on a fiancé visa?” I take the time to explain the options and the risks. I also create a personal legal strategy to help you win your green card case. If you’d like a personal evaluation, please click the orange button below. I’m excited to meet you.

K1 visa cost is an important factor to consider, as your relationship blossoms into an engagement. Understanding the fees involved and knowing the due date can help you to plan better. The fiancé visa immigration process has multiple stages. You pay the immigration fees at the time that you are in a particular stage of the case.

Petition for Alien Fiancé

The first step is to file an I-129F Petition for Alien Fiancé with United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (“USCIS”). The point of the I-129F petition is to let USCIS know of your intentions to marry your foreign-born fiancé.

Before you file the I-129F form, check your eligibility. You and your fiancé should meet in person, no more than 2 years before you file the petition. If it would be extremely difficult for you to meet your fiancé you may qualify for a waiver. Similarly, if the meeting is offensive to your fiancés cultural practices, you should request a waiver. The in-person meeting will usually cost you airfare, hotel or Air BnB accommodations, meals and entertainment, and other travel related expenses. Although these expenses are incidental to your marriage plans, it is a part of the K1 visa cost that you cannot ignore.

The I-129f petition filing fee is $535. This is what the U.S. government charges you to consider your case and to make a decision.

You are not required to hire an attorney to help you with the case, however, a qualified immigration attorney can improve your chances of success. The road to getting a K1 visa is filled with challenges and uncertainity. Even though there are instructions online to help guide you through the process, there is no “question and answer session” with USCIS to help you figure out what exactly you need to do. If you make a mistake, USCIS can keep your filing fee and you would have wasted many months waiting for a denial on a deficient application. Things can get even worse because your fiancé may get upset with you and call off the engagement, due to your mistake.

The right attorney can make the process as seamless as possible. You can feel confident that your application is properly filed when you utilize the services of an experienced immigration attorney. Attorney’s fees for this first stage range from $1,500 to $3,000. Once you pay your attorney and the government, it will be months before you have any further K-1 visa costs. You should expect to wait 6-8 months for a decision on the I-129f petition. You will have plenty of time to save for stage two of the K-1 visa process.

If the I-129f petition is approved, it will be valid for four months. Also, the U.S. embassy or consulate may revalidate an expired approved petition. USCIS will then send the file to the National Visa Center (NVC), in New Hampshire. It takes about four to six weeks after USCIS approves the I-129 petition for the case to move to the NVC. The NVC will assign a case number to your fiancés file and route it to the appropriate U.S. embassy or consulate. It will take a few weeks for the file to get to the right U.S. embassy or consulate.

DS-160 Visa Application Form

The next step is for your fiancé to apply for the actual K1 visa. This process starts with an online DS-160 Nonimmigrant Visa Application form. The form requests information about his or her biography, travel, family, education and training, U.S. visa application history, social media accounts, health history, criminal history, finances, and contact details. There is no filing fee for form DS-160 but there is a K1 visa fee of $265, which must be paid before your fiancé can schedule a visa interview appointment. There are many options to pay the fee. This will depend on the designated U.S. embassy or consulate’s procedures. Options may include cash payment at a pre-approved bank in the foreign country or online processing.

If you are using the services of an immigration attorney to assist you with this part of the process, you should expect to pay between $1,500 and $3,000.

K1 visa cost is not limited to government fees and attorney’s fees. Your fiancé will be required to undergo a medical examination. In addition he or she must obtain and submit police certificates from all countries where he or she has lived, for at least six months, from the age of 16. Furthermore, he or she must also submit police certificates from any country where he or she has been arrested, for any reason, regardless of how long he or she has lived there. There are costs associated with obtaining these documents.

Once the embassy or consulate receives the file from the NVC, about 2 weeks later, your fiancé will receive a letter with instructions on scheduling the medical examination and interview. After the medical examination is completed and your fiancé has all the required documents he or she should schedule an interview. Your fiancé may be able to chose the date that he or she would like to attend. It is not necessary for you to go. The K1 visa cost will increase if you decide to make international travel plans. After the interview, if your fiancé is successful, he or she should receive the k1 visa within a few weeks.

The K-1 visa is valid for a maximum of 6 months. You and your fiancé will need to make travel plans for his how her arrival to the U.S.

After reading this article, you should have a better understanding of K1 visa cost and the immigration process. My name is Cheryl Fletcher and I have been an immigration attorney, since 2015. I regularly help U.S. citizens bring foreign brides and grooms to the U.S.

It can be confusing when you try to decide which attorney is best for you. You may look at a few websites or read something on the internet. You may even see several billboards on your way to work. All of that is marketing and none of it helps you answer the important question, “can I trust this attorney to help me with my immigration case?” My clients tell me that they picked me from many choices because of my experience, track record, Google reviews, recommendations from friends and family and transparent pricing. These are all good reasons. However, each time a client chooses me to spearhead their immigration journey, what I cherish the most is that I have answered that big question loudly.

I am passionate about immigration law and care deeply about my clients. I would like the opportunity to work with you. If you would like to get in touch with me, please click the orange button above, call us at: 561-507-5772 or fill in the contact form on the website: http://www. lawyerfletcher.com and we will call you right away.

Adjustment of status after K1 visa is the very next step in the immigration process, after your marriage in the United States. Although it is a relatively straightforward process, it does not happen automatically. Accordingly, you must file form I-485 Application to Register Permanent Residence or Adjust Status with the relevant evidence and government filing fees.

Most people can find this form online, fill it in and mail it to United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (“USCIS”). However, if the case were that easy, there would be no need for immigration attorneys. Cases are won or lost based on evidence. An experienced immigration attorney knows how to properly prepare your case and present it in such a way that you are likely to win. Basically, the adjustment of status form is currently 20 pages long. It seeks answers to questions about you, the foreign-born spouse. The first few pages of this form asks for basic information about you, such as your full name, height and weight, date of birth, entries to the United States, address history, names of your children and your employment history. Certainly, this is information that most people already know or can find out quickly without much assistance. However, the middle and latter parts of the form are more complicated, depending on your background and life history.

Even though you were issued a K1 visa and you are married to a United States citizen, you may be inadmissible, under U.S. immigration law because of certain life events. If so, this means that you are unable to get a green card. Generally, some examples of issues that may prevent you from adjusting status are, your criminal history, your intentions to engage in unlawful activity in the U.S., relying on the U.S. government for public assistance such as food stamps and welfare benefits to meet your basic needs, if you entered the U.S. illegally at any time in your life, or if you were previously deported from the United States. Also, if you plan to practice polygamy, which is having more than one wife or husband at the same time, then you will not be able to get approval for adjustment of status after K1.

Explicitly, U.S. immigration law requires a medical examination as part of your adjustment of status application. Further, you may have taken this examination in your home country and you do not need to repeat it, if you file your I-485 Adjustment of Status application, within one year of your arrival to the U.S.

Generally, as part of the medical examination, a qualified immigration doctor will check whether your immunizations are up to date. Moreover, take your immunization record from your home country, with you to the doctor’s appointment, to help you save on fees for vaccinations because your doctor will not have to repeat injections that you got previously.

During the medical examination, the doctor will run tests for these diseases: tuberculosis, syphilis, gonorrhea, leprosy and physical or mental disorders, associated with harmful behavior. Markedly, drug or alcohol abuse problems are problematic and the doctor will make a note of it on your medical record. Moreover, the immigration officer reviewing your case will use this information to approve or deny your case.

In essence, if you have any of the diseases or other inadmissibility issues mentioned before, in some cases, all is not lost. All things considered, you may qualify for an I-601 waiver to forgive you for problems with your application.

This is probably the number one question that adjustment of status applicants ask as they go through the U.S. immigration process. Applications for adjustment of status are processed by the government and needless to say, the process is not quick. Furthermore, average cases take 6-9 months, depending on the immigration officers’ caseload. In contrast, other cases take years to get an interview. Sometimes even after attending an interview, the immigration officer may take months to make a decision. Undeniably, this usually results in frustration while you are waiting. Fortunately, you can work and travel while you are waiting, if you apply for a work permit and a travel document. The wait time for a work permit is usually shorter than that of an adjustment of status application.

In particular, carefully document that you and your spouse were married in good faith and the marriage was not entered into for immigration purposes. Firstly, you and your spouse must have intended to establish a life together when you got married. Secondly, you must provide sufficient evidence to show that your marriage is real. You may prove this by having a joint lease, if you are renting an apartment, or a copy of the deed if you are a homeowner.

Additionally, joint bank accounts and utility bills are strong evidence of a bona fide marriage. Similarly, pictures of the two of you together at family events are also good evidence of a real marriage. Sometimes, it is hard to get your spouse added to the electric, water or cable bill because he/she does not have a social security number. Regardless, add your spouse to whatever bills you can. Simultaneously, life insurance and health insurance are also forms of evidence that can be used to strengthen your case.

Immigration law seems deceptively simple because the forms are available online with instructions. Thus, many people believe that they can read the instructions, fill in the forms and voilà, the case is approved. I have been practicing immigration law since 2015, and I’ve been through hundreds of cases and it is never that simple.

When you apply for adjustment of status after K1, this is a legal undertaking. Moreover, the immigration officer will be reviewing your application to determine whether to approve or deny your case. Evidently, the government is not going to teach you how to properly file your application. Consequently, if you made mistakes, they will not correct it. They will simply deny your case and move on to the next one.

My name is Cheryl Fletcher and I am an experienced immigration attorney. I practice regularly before USCIS and I have won hundreds of green cards for K1 adjustment of status clients. I am not the cheapest lawyer in town. My fees are reasonable and are based on my years of practice and the results that I can get for my clients. If you would like a personal evaluation of your case, please feel free to book a consultation with me. I will take the time, to explain your rights, and help you understand the best strategy to help you achieve your green card.