American Immigration Law is somewhat complicated. One of the murky areas of the Immigration rules involves filing for multiple K1 visas. Many people have filed for one or more K1 visas in the past and become worried that it will detrimentally affect a current application.
One piece of legislation that is particularly important is the International Marriage Broker Regulation Act. This Act states that an American Citizen will only be entitled to apply for a total of two K-1 visas on behalf of a foreign fiancée. This restriction does not mean that the United States Citizen will never be able to file a third petition, only that he or she will need to obtain a waiver from the United States Citizenship and Immigration Service.
In the past an American Citizen could theoretically file an infinite number of K1 visa petitions, but since the passage of the International Marriage Broker Regulation Act, this entitlement has been severely curtailed.
A related question that comes up once this information has been imparted relates to different types of visa petitions. Can I submit an application for a K1 visa on behalf of my fiancee if I have filed for more than one marriage visa in the past? The non-technical reply to this inquiry is: yes. It could be possible to apply for a K1 fiance visa regardless of the fact that the American petitioner has submitted many marriage visa applications in the past. The reason for this is the fact that the International Marriage Broker Regulation Act only deals with K1 fiancee visas. The act does not restrict multiple filings of marriage visa petitions like applications for the CR-1, IR-1, or K-3 visa categories.
With this in mind, it should be noted that even though there is not an explicit restriction on filing multiple marriage visa applications, the United States Citizen petitioner's name might be placed into the multiple filer database. This database tracks those who have submitted more than one petition for United States Immigration benefits. Even though there is no legal prohibition on petitioning for multiple marriage visas, it stands to reason that an American Citizen who has filed for a number of visas will most likely have his or her application placed under increased scrutiny because there could be questions as to the legitimacy of the marriage particularly where the US citizen has a long history of obtaining benefits for foreign spouses. It is probably unlikely that merely having one previous petition on file will greatly decrease the chance of visa approval, but this type of scenario might result in the officer taking a close look at the bona fides of the couple's relationship in order to be certain that the relationship is not a sham.
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This article is written by Ben Hart an American
Immigration Lawyer with Integrity Legal (Thailand) Co. Ltd. Get in touch with Integrity Legal at info@integrity-legal.com or call toll free 1-877-231-7533. See them on the inernet at
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