When someone comes to the U.S. on a K-1 visa, they arrive as non-immigrants. The person MUST go through the adjustment or change of status in order to become an immigrant Permanent Resident. This, is a messy process, often more stressful and involved than doing a visa petition. Those going through a concurrent marriage filing, apply for adjustment of status at the same time as petitioning for immigration.

NOTE - Only the K-1 visa requires the adjustment of status be done in the U.S. after marriage. The K-3 adjustment of status no longer applies since it no longer exists. HOWEVER, it is required for a Concurrent filing service and that is included in that process - BUT it takes place at the visa interview.

Fees and other notes can be found at this link K1.

Persons arriving in the U.S. on visitor, tourist, student and many other kinds of non-immigrant visas are not permitted to change their status to permanent resident unless that person marries inside the U.S. during that visit. See more details on this..

Those arriving on CR-1 (I-130 Relative) visas, are already permanent residents and do not need to change their status.

This information doesn't cover many other situations since we are reserving our practice to Family visas.

If and when approved, the new visa issued is either a CR-1 or IR-1 visa. This is often called a "green card" but is actually a Permanent Resident card. It's a credit card looking form called an I-551 which bears the evidence of being a Permanent Resident of the United States of America. It is NOT citizenship.

Generally an application for a work permit is filed along with the adjustment of status in order to obtain legal employment. This is not required for a CR-1, CF-1 or IR-1 holder. The work permit also allows a person to obtain a Social Security Number, and thus function as any legal American worker.

U.S. Citizenship can be applied for AFTER 3 years of being married to the same person the alien person married the U.S. Citizen visa petitioner (K1, CR-1 Relative or Concurrent filer). All others must wait 5 years after getting Permanent Residence.

The process is not more detailed here because it's quite messy and situation dependent. It also involves a lot of support documents as required "evidence." We handle these cases on a per situation basis.

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