Getting married for residency.

[lunamea]

My guy and I have actually talked about it so he can get a visa for the US and seeing how he's from Chile he'd have to get permanent residency in Canada before we could get married and I could get a visa for canada so we've decided to wait until we want to get married.

Can't you get married in Chile, then? My brother-in-law and his wife got married in Kosovo (they are both originally from there but his wife has been living in NJ for 10 yrs and is an American citizen) and then applied for the visa. I know this can be hard because you're already legally married but still can't be together until the visa is approved, but it might be easier than first getting permanent residency...

[Riyko]

Can't you get married in Chile, then? My brother-in-law and his wife got married in Kosovo (they are both originally from there but his wife has been living in NJ for 10 yrs and is an American citizen) and then applied for the visa. I know this can be hard because you're already legally married but still can't be together until the visa is approved, but it might be easier than first getting permanent residency...

Yeah we could get married in Chile, but then we'd have to register the marriage in the US and in Canada and even then it isn't guaranteed that the US or Canada would recognize the marriage.

[lpuckett]

Getting married for residency reasons, for the U.S. specifically, is not so easy. It takes 10 months to a year + to actually get the paper work worked out and get the green card to work. It also requires a sponsor with enough income to support themselves and the new resident for up to 10 years. Therefore, "just getting a divorce" if it doesn't work out is more easily said than done because you are responsible for that person for 10 years (financially, if they get into trouble with the law, credit, etc).

I think there are lots of other ways around it, many people can keep getting tourist visas.. and in my case I just have to leave the country every three months and come back in.. its only a 3 hours drive over to Argentina. Working, in this case in the big issue. For me, I will be doing freelance photography, so its not a problem. You can also find things like work holiday visas, or temporary residence visas, sometimes even a fiance visa for 6 months (maybe this could be an alternative to see how things work out).

I hope you all make the right decisions!

[Desya]

We're like amb85; while some people here are saying they wouldn't marry to get their SO residency, my SO and I most certainly would marry as soon as we could but we're just not allowed. We already plan on marrying at some point (assuming it's legal one day) and are unofficially engaged, but would marry now if it were possible too. She is here in the US on a student visa now after being on a dependent one from her dad. Her fam has been here over 10 years and they still don't have green cards due to some fuck ups in the system. Time is really running out because we only have one more year of school left; she will either have to stay in school (which she can't afford) or go back to england for an indeterminate amount of time (where she has little family). So, yes we would marry for sure! lol Even if it would be difficult, it would at least be another option.

We've been talking about our future wedding a lot lately, what colours, where it would be, etc. I can't wait! haha

[garnet]

Residency was certainly a factor in our upcoming July wedding. Rane isn't a student, he didn't qualify for any sort of work visa, so our option was to continue a very unhappy internet relationship, or tackle the fiance visa and get married. If he were American, or could just move here somehow, would the wedding be coming up in July? Who knows. He proposed his first trip to see me. We can't afford to see each other more than once, maybe twice a year. So if the government says get married if you want to be together, done. It's not like it wouldn't have happened anyway, sooner, or later. We don't care if we need to follow their guidelines. The point was to be together. And it worked.

[polkapiggy]

Personally, I would marry alex anyway, so why not get a green card at the same time? It's a win win situation! haha. We're both super excited at the thought of getting married. Obviously not right now! But in a few years time when we have the money and we're both out of college, why not?

But our weddings are going to be expensive. And yes, I just said weddingS! Our initial plan is to actually have two! *fingers crossed* We're going to have one in the UK and one in the US. The reason for this is our families. There are only 15 people in my extended family that I actually know, and alongside family friends there would be no more than 40 people in total, so the wedding in the UK will be quite small, so the cost will be quite low, I'm hopeful for no more than £3000 (about $4500 US dollars) However, the wedding in the US is a different story entirely! Alex has soooooo much family he can't even count them all and it doesn't help that his family seems to be friends with EVERYONE, so it's going to be a rather large affair. It's also going to be megga-weird for me because I will be getting married infront of loads of people that I don't actually know! I'll probably know about 15 out of about 150! And it also doesn't help that everyone in his family is Puerto Rican, so they all speak Spanish, which I don't speak a word of! He's not too great at it either, but hopefully he'll be able to translate for me XD And that wedding will probably cost a LOT but we'll try to cut corners wherever we can and we'll be asking for cash donations instead of presents, because we don't plan on living in the US, so there isn't much point in getting tonnes of presents which we can't bring back to the UK!

It's going to be so weird getting married twice. We probably won't have a honey moon, maybe we'll go camping for a week!

[Swederica]

Obviously there are quite a few years until marriage is really aa reality or something to plan.

But i can see myself getting married for residency. But not only for residency. I must know i want to be with that person my whole life.
I have no intentions of ever getting divorced.
But for now we'll probably do fine with the student visa.
With a bit of luck that could secure a good 4 years, and who knows what we'll plan during that time?

[5000miles]

I keep going back and forth with how I feel about this. On the one hand, I know I'm going to marry him anyway and it's probably the easiest way to get him here. So we should just get married and get him here. No big deal. On the other hand. I don't really want to get married right now. Not because I'm not committed to him, but because I think people should be a little bit older when they get married. Marriage is a big deal. And I've seen lots of marriages fall apart simply because the people weren't ready. So I want to wait a few years (like 3-5) to make sure that I'm ready for marriage. But I definitely DON'T want to wait that long to be with my SO. We need time before we get married to be together CD. I want him to be here for a few years before and spend time with him and live with him and then have him propose on our time, not just because we want to be CD so badly. I don't want our passion for each other to rush us into marriage.

But I really keep going back and forth between the two options. Even if we were to get married so he could move here, it wouldn't be for a couple years probably. So maybe by then I'll feel like I'm ready anyway.

[Silviar]

I read this thread with a great deal of interest; I'm in an international relationship, my boyfriend residing in Australia, and myself in the US. I wanted to add my own response to this.

I WILL NOT marry Obi for the sake of passing over some red tape, even though marriage is the easiest course - especially once I'm 35 and no longer eledgeable for a WHP visa. (And I know I'm lucky to have this option at all because many countries don't).

I guess for some people it would be passing over red tape, but the fact is no matter what visa you do, there's quite a bit of red tape for me & many others. The US is a complete PITA to get into, even if you're getting married, and Australia has strict immigration policies as well. Having looked over all of my visa options, the only one that gets me into Australia semi-easily for long-term is the working holiday visa, and since that only lets me work somewhere for a max of 6 months, it's not very useful if you want to have a real job and a full-time life over there. Getting a work visa is difficult and takes 1-3 years for approval.

Our current plan is to, when we're engaged and ready, lodge our fiancee visa. If we finally reach the 'we need to do this and we're ready, screw the long proper channels', then I'll do the WH visa, we'll get married, and lodge the spouse visa.

I had the same dilemma at first; I couldn't decide if my moving over there and getting married was just to get into the country faster, but then I realized that for us, we want to get married because we want to be husband and wife - to have a life together, complete with a household, children, getting to gripe about doing the laundry. He's my heartmate, and I his. For us, a spiritual marriage and legal marriage aren't the same thing, but each are important for different reasons. And we will have both, although possibly not at the same time depending on money/time logistics.

We could get married and be hasty, but we want to bring the strength of blessing and preparation into moving in together, and so we're working each on our end towards the same goal. I don't feel I have to get married to be with him; I choose to be because I want to be his Mrs.

I think, honestly, that most of the immigration issues/rush to wed are done out of 1) love and 2) money. It's honestly cheaper usually to get into a country through marriage than other options if you're already planning on getting wed down the road. Of course, that doesn't usually take into account the longterm monetary effects if you're not serious about marriage...

[Zephii]

I think that part of the reason I'm so adamant not to marry for residency is because of the stigma that seems to go with it. Everyone I work with are immagrants (as I one day will be too) who had arranged marriages. They tell me their families back home find them husbands in canada, then they move to Canada, and after a few years they sponsor their whole families to follow them. They feel it is their duty to do this even though most of them don't like their job and admit to not really understanding what being "in love" is.

I guess I want him, and everyone else, to know that I had other options...

I don't know I've just gotten off work and it's hard to remember where I was going with this. Everyone's responses were great though, I like getting insights into how people think.

[Silviar]

I think that part of the reason I'm so adamant not to marry for residency is because of the stigma that seems to go with it. Everyone I work with are immagrants (as I one day will be too) who had arranged marriages. They tell me their families back home find them husbands in canada, then they move to Canada, and after a few years they sponsor their whole families to follow them. They feel it is their duty to do this even though most of them don't like their job and admit to not really understanding what being "in love" is.

I guess I want him, and everyone else, to know that I had other options...

I don't know I've just gotten off work and it's hard to remember where I was going with this. Everyone's responses were great though, I like getting insights into how people think.

Question: Are you afraid that no matter what you say, people who hear you married internationally will automatically assume it was for the above reasons? I mean, wanting to marry for love and because it's what you want is certainly more important than what anyone thinks, but maybe part of it is the frustration of knowing what people assume.

Cuz I know that'd piss me off. LOL.

[Sarah M]

matt and i won't be. he's doing a teaching course so he can get points through the australian immigration system. i have a british passport, so i could move there, if i wanted. and then if we are happy enough, we'll consider marriage and where to live. right now, we don='t really need to worry about that.

[Zephii]

Nah. Generally I don't give a rat's arse what people think of me anyway, I think I'm more worried about what I'll think of me. :P

[Silviar]

Nah. Generally I don't give a rat's arse what people think of me anyway, I think I'm more worried about what I'll think of me. :P

As you should. *high five*

[milaya]

Before I met my current boyfriend, I thought of marriage as just a piece of paper, nothing else. (I'm a atheist.) First we both agreed on the "just a piece of paper", but we also knew that if we wanted to live together in Japan in the future, I needed the spouse visa. But shortly after, I started to think differently. I really had the feeling I wanted to be with him, forever and I started to worry if we ever would get engaged, since he wanted to have children and such, but he feared marriage, because he didn't wanted to end up like his parents.

Then when he was here in July, we discussed it again. He told me that he never considered getting married with any of his previous girlfriends, but he wanted to marry me. That's when we decided to get engaged from November and then maybe get married next November. But it doesn't have anything to do with Visa or residency. Since I need to graduate university first here, which gives us 4 more years.

I don't know why I want to marry him, besides the obvious fact, that I love him more than anything in the world. If we were from they same country... maybe marriage would still just be a piece of paper to me. I don't know... Think engagement and marriage put my mind at ease, since we will be in a LDR at least for another 4 years.
There is no doubt that marriage is an important aspect in a LDR. And I think that's okay. People in a LDR are more quickly forced to analyze their relationship. And maybe get married faster... for various reasons.