manny68

Hello everybody,

bear with me, I'm new to this.... I've been reading up on the possible visas on the Internet, and I think I understood it now

The only thing that's still very confusing for me is those timelines, so I wonder if somebody could help me with this question:

judging from the information about processing times that we all have now, which way would be faster for us: getting married and going the K3 route, or using a K1 and then getting married? (We would be going through Nebraska Service Center). I know that no one can really estimate it precisely, just the way it is looking right now... we are still in decision process, and of course we wanna take our chances at spending as little time apart as possible...

Thanks in advance for replies, and good luck to everybody on the board!
manny68

lpdiver

Have you investigated DCF. Since you state that time is your determining factor. Is it available for your country for a non resident

manny68

DCF is not possible in that country, unfortunately! That would be great, of course *sigh*

So that leaves us with K1 or K3. We had originally opted for K1, but now that we read the tales about waiting times at NSC getting longer and longer, we are wondering if K3 might not be faster?

lpdiver

I can commisurate. I missed DCF in Colombia by 11 days. In my case it was a toss up as to which would be faster and unfortunately can only be answered by in hind sight by actually choosing one and doing it. I choose k-3 because I wanted to meet her family. Also it is not clearly stated anywhere as policy; but, the tone I got was that spouses are given preferential treatment sometimes at some locations.

jeffreyhy

manny,

Since you say that you have the information about processing times, I would suggest that you sit down with a piece of paper and a calendar. Make 2 columns, with the 1st entry in each column being today's date.

Now list in sequential order the steps required for a K1 visa in one column and the steps required for a K3 visa in the other. Estimate the date by which each step might be accomplished using your knowledge of processing times and the calendar.

Which column has the earliest date for the visa?

If you want to get high tech, and play with variations on the processing times, use a spreadsheet on your computer rather than the paper to lay out your timelines.

manny68

... exactly where it gets confusing to me, Jeff....

sorry again for asking questions that might seem stupid to people who are more used to juggling timelines, form numbers and such, but... is it right that in the case of K3, we would have to send in I130 to NSC right after the wedding, and then wait for NOA1 and then send I129F off to MSC? And where can I find the processing times for MSC (I looked at several website, but only found times for the other service centers, or very outdated MSC ones...)