Confusion, Misperceptions and Differentiations between K3 Spousal Visa and I-130 Marriage Visa

What is a marriage visa? What is a K-3 Spousal visa? Is there a difference?

Simply enough, a marriage visa is an immigrant visa that allows the spouse of a U.S. citizen to enter the United States to live here on a permanent basis. It is also wildly popular as an I-130 and IR-1 but at the end of the day, they all mean the same thing. The process starts here in America with the U.S. citizen spouse; he/she has to file a petition with the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. A marriage visa can be processed in one of two ways; if the foreign national spouse is in the United States on a valid visa, then the marriage visa petition can be filed concurrently with an application to adjust status. If the foreign national spouse is outside of the United States, the marriage visa petition is filed alone and the adjustment process is done overseas in what is called consular processing. Either way, the process can take anywhere from six to nine months. There have been instances in the past where the processing of the I-130 would take more than five months. This delay in processing affected those couples who were proceeding with consular processing. Therefore, Congress introduced and put to use the K-3 visa category. A K-3 visa is a non-immigrant visa category allowing foreign national spouses’ who already had a marriage visa petition filed on their behalf to travel to America and wait of the processing here. This category was introduced for the sole purpose of bringing married couples close together. It is not an alternative to filing a marriage visa petition. In fact, an applicant cannot qualify for a K-3 spousal visa unless an I-130 marriage visa petition has been filed first. The spouse can enter America on a K-3 and remain here until the I-130 is finished processing. Once the I-130 is approved, the spouse then has to file for an adjustment of status. It used to be that K-3 visas were processed faster than I-130 and therefore were more preferable. But now, the processing time for both types of visa is approximately the same time making the K-3 obsolete. It is cost prohibitive to file for both an I-130 and K-3 especially when they are both taking the same amount of time to be approved. If an I-130 is approved before a K-3, the U.S. Consulate will not go forward with the K-3 and will continue on to process the marriage visa.