You’re an American citizen, and you’ve gone to a foreign country, and you’ve become engaged to someone who’s not a U.S. citizen. How do you allow your fiancé(e)[1] to legally come with you to the U.S.?
You have two options:
1. File a Petition for a fiancé(e) visa, move with your fiancé(e) to the U.S., and then marry your fiancé(e).
You would have to wait until your petition was granted, before you could move with your fiancé(e) to the U.S. However, you would also have to wait until the petition was granted, before you could marry your fiancé(e). You couldn’t marry your fiancé(e) before the petition was granted, because if you married your fiancé(e), he/she would then be your spouse, not your fiancé(e), and so would no longer be eligible for a fiancé(e) visa.
After you file the petition, you might have to wait up to six months to a year (or more) before the petition was granted. The wait time would delay how soon you could move to the U.S., and the wait time would also delay how soon you could get married.
Once you brought your fiancé(e) to the U.S., you would have to marry your fiancé(e) less than 90 days after he/she arrived in the U.S. If your fiancé(e) stayed in the U.S. longer than 90 days before he/she married you, he/she would have overstayed the visa, and would be illegally present in the U.S.
Click here to see how to file a fiancé(e) petition.
2. Marry your fiancé(e), and then file a spousal petition.
If you go this route, there would still be a long wait time (six months to a year or more) before your petition was granted.
Click here to see how to file a spousal petition.
One option here is: after you get married, you can file a spousal petition, and a fiancé(e) petition, at the same time. Then, whichever petition the government granted first, your spouse could come to the U.S. on that petition.
If the government granted your spousal petition first, your spouse would enter the U.S. on the spousal visa. (If the government granted your spousal petition first, the government would, at the same time, deny the fiancé(e) petition, on the grounds that the fiancé(e) petition was no longer necessary.)
If the government granted your fiancé(e) petition first, your spouse would enter the U.S. on the fiancé(e) visa, and then your spouse would wait until the government granted the spousal visa.
Click here to see how to file a fiancé(e) petition, and a spousal petition, at the same time.
[1] NOTE: In English, the term “fiancé” (with one e) refers to a man, and the term “fiancée” (with two e’s) refers to a woman. I have used the term “fiancé(e)” throughout, to refer to both men and women.