Can a greencard holder sponsor a fiancé to the United States? Hi, I'm Jim Hacking, immigration lawyer practicing law throughout the United States at our offices in St. Louis, Missouri, and San Diego, California. Sometimes people who are not yet citizens contact our office and they want to sponsor their fiancé to come to the United States. And we ask, "Well, what's your immigration status? Are you a US citizen?" And they say, "No, we're a green card holder." Well, in those scenarios, a green card holder is not eligible to sponsor a foreign national for a I-129F, a fiancé visa. So in order to bring a fiancé to the United States, you have to submit form 129F. And form 129F is only available to US citizens. So Congress has not allowed the fiancés of green card holders, the opportunity to come to the United States on a fiancé visa.
So that is not going to work. So what you're going to have to do is either have the green card holder petitioner go overseas and get married in order to be able to file I-130 petition for an alien relative, they're going to have to actually be married. Now with Presidential Proclamation 10014 being struck down by Joe Biden, we're back in business when it comes to the spouses of green card holders being allowed to get visas in the United States. So only other option then of course, would be for the green card holder to wait until they become a citizen to apply for that fiancé visa. So typically in these scenarios, when we have these consults, the lawful permanent resident will go overseas and get married because that's going to be a whole lot faster, especially right now. For most of my career as an immigration lawyer, there was a delay when a green card holder sponsored their spouse in the United States.
But now that delay has gone away at least temporarily. And in theory, at least the spouses of green card holder and the spouse of a US citizen, those cases should take the same amount of processing time. So there's really no reason to wait to get your citizenship. It's probably going to be better for you and for your fiancé for you to simply go overseas and to get married. That's going to be your best bet. So unfortunately the I-129F is not available like I said, for the spouses of green card holders. You probably already knew that, but if you didn't or if you have any questions, give us a call at (314) 961-8200. You can email us at [email protected]. Be sure to join us in our Facebook group, which is called Immigrant Home. If you liked this video, please share it out on social and subscribe to our YouTube channel. And don't forget every Tuesday and Thursday, usually at noon central, you'll find me on our YouTube channel and in our Facebook group answering as many of your immigration related questions as we can. Thanks a lot. Have a great day.
