Hello my Expat Friends! Hope you're all having an enjoyable start to the summer (I think we skipped Spring here )

Here is our story and I'm hoping someone can offer some advice. I've been reading and reading and reading over the past couple of days but haven't found what I'm looking for - please help?

My fiance is a UK citizen, living in Norfolk England and I am a UK citizen with a US citizenship application pending. I have a little boy who was born in the US but is eligible for UK citizenship through me, I am his sole custodian and he has no ties to his father.

My father has recently taken ill and so we will be packing up and heading over to the UK for a while but can't until the end of the year due to commitments with my lease, work, etc. My fiance is scheduled to come over here on July 25th and we're exploring the possibilities of doing so on a B2 Visa so at the end of it, we can all head across the Atlantic together and don't have to suffer through anymore long seperations in the mean time. Are B2's hard to come by? He's going to submit his application today so it should surely by approved by the end of July, right?? What will have to prove in terms of what he'll be doing, finances, etc in order for him to be eligible to stay the full 6 months?

My bigger question is, do we get married here in the US or in the UK? We want to come back here in 2-3 years. If I'm residing in the UK and we marry in the UK, can we still get a spouse visa for him to move here with us when we come back or do I have to come back here and apply for it and wait through yet another stupidly long seperation? OR do we wait to marry until we're ready to move back and go through all the fiance visa stuff?

Thanks for reading, I would really appreciate your help!

STOP!

Woah, why???

A B2 application will take you backwards, not forwards. Call him now and tell him not to apply.

Okay, will do but can you help me understand why? I thought it would be good? Do you know about the rest of my questions too?

I'm freaking out now! LOL Why would it take us backward? Especially if we're not applying for an immigrant visa right away?

It most probably will be denied. Then he'll have a red flag against his immigration record for life.

I'm sure there will be lots of further comment about the rest of your questions but be warned that there is no straightforward answer to your dilemma. But I haven't finished my second pot of coffee over here in AZ and, consequently, thought it better to head off the obvious imminent mistake before it happened.

Haha I appreciate that, thank you . We don't have a K visa pending so why would his B2 be denied?

Bs are generally only issued to UKCs under a limited set of circumstances since they are expected to use the VWP. You don't mention any of those common circumstances: criminal or health history, snow-birding retiree, long-term partner of non-immigrant visa holder, prospective student, etc.

It is quite straightforward, actually.

Junior needs a UK passport and preferably a UK consular registration of birth. Start those now.

Move to the UK for your 2 or 3 years, and periodically check the time lines for an IR1/CR1 immigrant visa. At the moment with DCF, it's running around 6 months. Add 3 months to this figure and put your initial petition in at, in this case, nine months before you wish to set sail for the New World. You can marry at any time beforehand, but if you manage to make it at least 2 years before he arrives, you've saved yourself a set of paperwork down the road.

Realize none of this will make sense, yet. Keep reading and studying the forum and attached wiki, then come back to it.

Having a K visa or Immigrant Visa in the works doesn't matter. What matters is that if he's eligible to use the VWP, it will be next to impossible to get a B2 approved. If he's denied the B2, he has to declare it on ESTA, which makes it difficult to then get ESTA approved to travel on the VWP.

He should just use the VWP to come visit you for less than 90 days.

As for the rest of your questions, it doesn't really matter where you get married, you can choose either country. Since you're a UKC, you shouldn't have any problem marrying in the UK. Or, you can get married in the USA while he's here on the VWP. Your choice.

If Direct Consular Filing (DCF) is available 2 - 3 years from now, when you guys want to immigrate to the USA, then yes, you can apply from the UK for his Immigrant Visa. If it's not available anymore, you can still do an Immigrant Visa, you just have to send the I-130 to the USA. I wouldn't worry too much about that now, you have several years before you want to immigrate to the USA.

However, at this moment, my biggest question is...what about your pending USC application? How far along are you? Will you be a USC by the time you move over to the UK at the end of the year?

Keep in mind that as a USC, you will still need to file a US tax return (if you earn enough income) even if you live abroad.

Rene

They have no reason to grant him a B2 if he can just use the VWP instead.

Crisis averted! Thanks everyone!

One other question - is there a hard line that he has to be out of the country for 90 days before he can come back in for 90 days? We're lucky in the sense that neither of us have "traditional" jobs so he can manage his company from anywhere. This makes being away that much harder I think because there's no "real" reason to stay in the UK (except for immigration laws ).

No, there is no "hard line". The longer the gap between visits, the more chance of being successful on the next VWP visit. It's all up to the POE officer whether to let him in or not, on each VWP visit. He may not LIVE in the USA as a visitor, and back to back visits makes it seem he's trying to live in the USA without the proper visa or status.

I don't know what it takes for him to manage his company, but you know he cannot work while he is in the USA as a visitor, right? Not even for the company back home. The visit really truly needs to be a visit. The fact that he can work from his company from anywhere, works against him.

Rene