There can be many reasons for a K1 visa denila but there are three things that we commonly see for denials. With the K1 fiancé visa, there are certain requirements that an individual has to meet.
1. Eligibility Requirements
The first basis for denial with K1 fiancé visas is that the person is not eligible. We have seen individuals file their own fiancé visa but they weren’t eligible.
The requirements for the fiancé visa is that you have to be engaged to a United States citizen and you both have to be legally free to marry. That means if you were previously married, those marriages had to end in divorce or death.
Other requirements are you have to have a bonafide relationship based on love and not just to receive an immigration benefit, you’ve met in person within the past two years, and you can’t have other grounds of admissibility.
Eligibility is tricky. There’s the Immigration and Nationality Act which is a huge book of immigration laws and there’s a section that outlines a list of problems a person can have. That’s where a person can have issues where they aren’t going to ever be eligible for an immigration benefit.
There are things called permanent bars and there are also issues that can be overcome with a waiver. If a person had certain immigration violations or criminal history, there could be a waiver. We would see that the fiancé visa would be denied but then the person would have an opportunity to file a waiver. In some cases, there wouldn’t be a waiver.
We’ve seen people who didn’t calculate the date of their last meeting and it had fallen outside of the two years and they weren’t eligible or they filed before they were completely divorced.
2. Lacking in Relationship Evidences
The second reason that a case would be denied is that you didn’t meet your burden of proof. In an immigration case, it is your burden to prove certain things to immigration. Specifically with a fiancé visa, you have to prove that you have met within the past two years before filing the application and that you have a good-faith relationship.
If you don’t submit enough evidence or is not enough to convince the officer looking at your application, then that would be another reason for cases to be denied. We’ve seen individuals that have done their own application and didn’t have enough proof or clear proof of their two-year meeting in-person requirement or they hadn’t accumulated enough evidence of their relationship.
3. Wrong Relationship Evidences
Probably the top reason that we have seen individuals denied for a K1 visa is that you submit evidence that hurts your case.
When our clients provide us with the evidence for their case, we really get to know their personal story. We do that because we have to know intimately about how the couple met, when they met, how their relationship progressed, etc.
We look at all of the evidence they submit and we look at the letters of support specifically that are provided by friends and family to make sure there aren’t contradictions. We have seen many times that family members, even if they have met the person or they think that they remember the right date of when the couple met, there might be contradictions in the information.
Those contradictions might be innocent but you have to be very careful when you’re submitting evidence to immigration that you aren’t submitting evidence that’s hurting your case. You might be submitting letters of support or photos bank statements. All kinds of evidence.
But immigration is not going to quickly look at your photos and statements. They’re really going to look at all of the information.
We have seen individuals or letters of support reference the couple’s wedding and when they were married. Note that if you’re talking about a fiancé visa, you have to be engaged and not yet married. Maybe those were references that you’re married was because you had a celebration but not an actual marriage ceremony.
We’ve seen quite a few times that individuals have submitted evidence that makes immigration have to take longer to review their case because they want to make sure the person didn’t have an actual civil ceremony or a legally binding wedding.
There are certain things that immigration looks for. If there are red flags and contradictions, it can cause delays and denials.
