K-3 MARRIAGE VISA PROCESSING CHANGE

Effectively February 1, 2010, the processing of the K-3 marriage-based visa is changed. If the U.S. State Department National Visa Center (NVC) receives the approved K-3 visa petition and the underlying I-130 immigrant visa petition filed by the same petitioner from the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) at the same time, the NVC will administratively close the nonimmigrant K visa petition and continue to process the immigrant visa petition only.

Background
A United States Citizen, after marrying a foreign national, may file petitions for his or her spouse to come to the United States so that they may live as husband and wife. If the foreign spouse lives outside of the United States, there are usually two ways to bring the spouse here. First, the United States citizen may file an immigrant petition for his spouse by using the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services Form I-130. Upon approval of the petition, the case will be sent to the National Visa Center in Missouri for further processing. Original documents such as birth certificates need to be presented along with financial support affidavits and documents. Secondly, the petitioner may also choose to file a K petition so that his spouse may come to the United States faster while the immigrant case is pending. This K visa should not be confused with the K-1 fiancée visa, which is designed for unmarried fiancées or fiancés of United States Citizens to travel to the U.S. to get married. For married couples, the K-3 visa should be used. One of the reasons to use the K-3 visa is for the processing time, which is usually a lot faster than the immigrant petition. It has been the practice of the NVC to process both petitions. The foreign spouse may choose to use the K-3 visa to travel to the U.S. first and complete the immigration process here, or to wait for the immigrant visa to be approved and enter the U.S. as legal resident.

Changes of Policy at the National Visa Center
Recently, the NVC announced that in situations where the U.S. Citizen and Immigration Services (USCIS) has approved both the immigrant visa petition and the K-3 petition and forwarded both files to the NVC, the NVC will no longer process both petitions. Instead, the NVC will “administratively close” the K-3 petition and continues to process the Immigrant Visa petition. What it means is that the K-3 file will be closed and placed on the shelf temporarily. If the processing of the immigrant visa for the parties is successful at the end, the K-3 case will no longer be used. The NVC will contact the petitioner and you with instructions for processing their immigrant visa. However, if the NVC does not receive both I-130 petition and the I-129F K-3 petition simultaneously, the NVC will continue to process the K-3 petition by sending it to the embassy or consulate in the country where the marriage took place. If the marriage took place in the United States, the NVC will forwarded the petition to the embassy or consulate that issues visas in the foreigner’s country of nationality.

Conclusion
It appears that the change is to avoid duplicated processing on the government side. By processing only one petition, both time and resources can be saved. However, it is unclear how much impact this change will have on the total processing time. Would it be faster or slower for married couples to be re-united in the U.S. Most U.S. consulate offices especially the busier ones process the K-3 a lot faster than the immigrant visa. It is hoped that consulate processing of the immigration visa will now speed up given that the consulate officers should now have few number of K-3 petitions to process.