K1 Visa Nightmare, Need Advice Please!!!!

[ROB1382]

Hello, my name is Rob, and I have a pretty uniquie situation. I will compress a ton of events and information for viewing, any questions just ask and I will provide it.

I met a woman (from the Republic of Georgia) here in the US about 4 years ago. We fell in love and decided to get married. I found out along the way that she was here illegally in 2 fashions: she bribed an American officer in the Tbilisi, Georgia embassy in order to come here; he issued her a fake name and identity and provided her with a visitor visa. She entered the country illegally. She also overstayed her visa by about 6 years (yikes!). After many legal issues in her country because of the fake name on her passport when she re-entered, she is now on probation there. I want to file for a K1 visa. I could also go there, marry her, and try to get a spouse visa. I was told that either way, I am going to have to file a waiver after the K1 in order to get her here. Has anyone ever gone through this? Does anyone know which visa would be better? I need to get her here, I am miserable without her, but this process is going to be tough either way, I know this. Please help me, every lawyer I speak to here in New Jersey is useless and just gives me the quick easy answer of "just file for a K1 and see what happens". HELP PLEASE!

[tony869]

Well all i can say is your screwed and she got blacklisted for what she did and etc!

[wavedom]

Hello, my name is Rob, and I have a pretty uniquie situation. I will compress a ton of events and information for viewing, any questions just ask and I will provide it.

I met a woman (from the Republic of Georgia) here in the US about 4 years ago. We fell in love and decided to get married. I found out along the way that she was here illegally in 2 fashions: she bribed an American officer in the Tbilisi, Georgia embassy in order to come here; he issued her a fake name and identity and provided her with a visitor visa. She entered the country illegally. She also overstayed her visa by about 6 years (yikes!). After many legal issues in her country because of the fake name on her passport when she re-entered, she is now on probation there. I want to file for a K1 visa. I could also go there, marry her, and try to get a spouse visa. I was told that either way, I am going to have to file a waiver after the K1 in order to get her here. Has anyone ever gone through this? Does anyone know which visa would be better? I need to get her here, I am miserable without her, but this process is going to be tough either way, I know this. Please help me, every lawyer I speak to here in New Jersey is useless and just gives me the quick easy answer of "just file for a K1 and see what happens". HELP PLEASE!

Since she broke the rules by overstaying, there are risks involved with both the K1 and CR1 visa. If she is issued a K1 visa, she still has to file for her green card once in the US. Even though the risk of being denied a green card is small once the K1 is issued, there is still a chance that her previous overstays will cause problems. The risk with the CR1 option is that she won’t be issued a visa at all (which obviously can be the case with the K1 as well), and then you’re here in the US and can’t get your spouse into the country. I assume she got the 10 year bar when she left the US due to the 6 years of overstay, so it’s impossible to get away with it without obtaining a waiver. However, it’s not very easy to obtain such a waiver since you have to prove the extreme hardship situation.

There are some things that are a bit confusing though:

- Why did she get a visa using a fake name and not her real name?
- Why did she enter illegally if she had a valid visa?
- The 3 year/10 year bar only applies on the overstay that took place when she was over 18. Is this the case?

[ROB1382]

The reason she used a fake name is because she applied at the US embassy in her nation numerous times, and visited to check the status of her application. After one such visit, a Georgian citizen approached her and said that his "contact" inside (the officer with whom she had been working) was willing to issue her a visa in exchange for $10,000 American. She paid him since this was her only option to get to the US, and she was told after the fact that she was being given this identitiy to use and she was not going to be given a visa in her real name. Maybe this was the way the officer protected himself, because it is a blatant criminal act on the part of the visa recipient (that is just speculation). Essentially she was forced to use the fake name after she paid the $10,000 and that was it...she was given contact information for a person in the US with whom she was going to "visit", visa and paperwork in the fake name, and even a Georgian passport in the fake name.

The only reason that she went back to her country in the first place is that we did not want to get married and have to be worried about getting into trouble because it would have been a marriage under her fake name.

Looking around online, I have seen instances where waivers are offered based on reported and documented fraud in US embassies, but none of these instances are specific enough to even offer a course of action to take in my shoes. I am planning to contact the office of the Inspector General with USCIS/DHS to see if her testimony would help get her a visa but I am sure that this won't happen. I wonder if clinical depression is a means of proving "extreme hardship"? I don't want to play the system, but the reality is that she was left no choice but to come here under the fake name and none of us would have returned home after 6 months only to risk having to pay another $10,000 to get back to the US.

There are thousands of reported cases exactly like hers in her country, so our country must be on to the situation and apparently the officer no longer works in the embassy. I wonder if the government takes this into account, or it is as simple as she F'ed up, no second chance?

[wavedom]

I don’t know enough about the visa fraud situations in Georgia to be able to come up with any useful recommendations. I guess you know more about the situation than I do. The only thing I can say is that hiring a lawyer might be a good idea. From what I’ve heard, it’s far from easy to succeed with the waiver without one. I don’t know where to find a lawyer who has actual experience with cases like yours, but there has to be someone.

[nichole]

What she did worse than overstaying, in my opinion, is commit fraud with the fake passport and visa. Fraud falls into the definition of crimes involving moral turpitude. CIMTs make one inadmissable to the US. And this isn't one of those petty frauds like getting caught with a fake id to buy beer when you were underage 20 years ago. It was big time fraud against US Dept of Homeland Security to enter the US illegally.

[habibi11]

Hello, my name is Rob, and I have a pretty uniquie situation. I will compress a ton of events and information for viewing, any questions just ask and I will provide it.

I met a woman (from the Republic of Georgia) here in the US about 4 years ago. We fell in love and decided to get married. I found out along the way that she was here illegally in 2 fashions: she bribed an American officer in the Tbilisi, Georgia embassy in order to come here; he issued her a fake name and identity and provided her with a visitor visa. She entered the country illegally. She also overstayed her visa by about 6 years (yikes!). After many legal issues in her country because of the fake name on her passport when she re-entered, she is now on probation there. I want to file for a K1 visa. I could also go there, marry her, and try to get a spouse visa. I was told that either way, I am going to have to file a waiver after the K1 in order to get her here. Has anyone ever gone through this? Does anyone know which visa would be better? I need to get her here, I am miserable without her, but this process is going to be tough either way, I know this. Please help me, every lawyer I speak to here in New Jersey is useless and just gives me the quick easy answer of "just file for a K1 and see what happens". HELP PLEASE!

Are you talking with an Immigration Attorney or a regular one....? But you will have a difficult time bc of her false info i had a friend with a similar experience and immigration doesnt take those kind of things lightly
where are you from? my immigration Attorney is a good one and tell you like it is he was a former judge.... he is in Rhode Island

[celiakdc]

No matter what the circumstances, you cannot go straight to the waiver appointment. You have to go through the K-1 filing process even if you know the Visa will be denied. I am having an experience getting my fiance here after being in the states illegally. He will be attending his waiver appointment in 2 weeks. I filed the original petition in October 2011.