How can a Green Card holder bring their boyfriend or girlfriend to the United States? Hi, I'm Jim Hacking, immigration lawyer practicing law throughout the United States at our office here in St. Louis, Missouri. Today's question came from one of our YouTube commentors and she wanted to know how can I bring my boyfriend to the United States when I only have a Green Card? Well, there's a problem here. So if you are a U.S. citizen, you can bring your spouse to the United States, or you can bring your fiance to the United States. If you're a Green Card holder, you can only bring your spouse to the United States. You can't bring a fiance to the United States. So, in order for a Green Card holder to bring his or her boyfriend to the United States, they're going to have to meet that boyfriend, or their girlfriend in some third country or in the country where the foreign national beneficiary lives and actually get married.
A Green Card holder is not allowed to file an I-129F. Only U.S. citizens can file a I-129F, which is the application that you file in order to bring your fiance to the United States. So, in this scenario, the person asking this question, if they want to bring their boyfriend to the United States, they're going to have to actually go and get married. I suppose, if the foreign national has some kind of visit visa, they could come to the United States and they could ... if they did get married while they were here, they can't have immigrant intent. They can't be coming to get married, but they could come and if they decide to they could get married, probably the best bet then is to go back home and consular process as the spouse of a Green Card holder. In theory, they could try to adjust here, but that's tricky and you can get into trouble, especially if you had some kind of immigrant intent ahead of time.
So, that part's a little bit risky, but for the most part, the only way it's going to work is if the Green Card holder goes overseas and marries the foreign national. One other thing to think about, is how did the Green Card holder get their Green Card? Now, if they got it through marriage, that's going to open up a whole other can of worms. If they got married and now divorced and they want to sponsor their boyfriend or girlfriend, that's going to bring up a whole other can of worms. So, we might want to wait until the Green Card holder becomes a citizen, or we might want to figure out another way for the couple to be together. But if the Green Card holder who wants to be the petitioner, got their Green Card through marriage, they're going to need to think long and hard about applying for a Green Card for their new spouse.
And that is a topic in a whole other video and a topic that we spend a lot of time talking about here in the office, because Green Card holder marriage-based cases are different. They're harder. And there're more rules than there are for when a U.S. citizen wants to bring over their spouse. Obviously one is that they can't be a fiance, it has to be a spouse. So, hopefully that answers the questions.
Hopefully if you have any questions about getting married or engaged or wanting to bring a loved one in the United States, you can give us a call at (314) 961-8200. You can email us at [email protected]. You can join us in our Facebook group, which is called Immigrant Home. If you liked this video, we ask you please share it out on social and that you subscribe to our YouTube channel so that you get updates whenever we make videos, just like this one. Finally, every Tuesday and Thursday, usually at noon, you'll find me on our YouTube channel and in our Facebook group, answering all of your questions for free for a solid hour. And we'd love to see you there. And finally, don't forget to find us on Instagram hackinglawpracticellc. Thanks a lot. Have a great day.
