Thread: My Friend Wants to Bring His Thai Girl To America

I was going to post this is the VISA forum, but there were only things about VISAs for Thailand (that I saw).

A friend of mine wants to bring his Thai gf to America and get married. He does not want to wait six months to a year to get a fiance VISA. He is going to get her a tourist VISA with an invitaton letter and then marry her when she arrives in America. He thinks she can just stay and he can get her a green card since they are married.

Is that true?

^ wouldnt think so....

The refused me to get in, back in 1998.. What a bunch of cow-boys...

He is wondering if she can stay in the states with no problem.

Get over the tourist visa hurdle first

My guess is it can be done. Would likely require a visit to a regional INS office (not a happy place) to adjust/extend her visa. Green cards take considerably longer than 3-4 months now. My wife's took 9 months in '05, but we were applying from Japan.

I am not a lawyer, and I don't play one on tv..., but:

Immig. rules have severly tightened w.r.t. young unmarried Asian women coming to US for non-work/non-school reasons, sponsored by unmarried US citizen. To the Immig. authorities, this smells like an attempt to bypass the fiance rules (at best), or pimping at worst.

While many citizens do marry tourists, Immig will need convincing that the marraige was not planned before her arrival, AND why she should be allowed to stay in the US pending approval of green card.

Quite a few within the Silicon Valley Indian community recently face this problem, and most of them end up with the new bride having to return to India to wait for the greencard.

As another poster wisely stated, the tourist visa will be a hurdle in itself. The fact that the sponsor is unmarried male and already knows the girl will be likely to be judged as "marraige intended". Unless the girl is an educated, degreed professional with a work history, Immig will (correctly?) assume she is being invited for bonking at best and prostitution at worst.

Amongst the Indian community, if the girl IS a degreed professional, that is viewed by Immig as an arranged marraige.

If your friend's girl has a degree/profession, see if there is a business conference in the US she could attend. This would make the tourist visa easier since the conference could sponsor her, but the duration of the trip would be shorter. If there are mutliple conferences she could attend, Immig might allow a longer-duration visa, especially if the conferences are within a a few weeks of each other.

Assuming she gets a tourist visa, comes to US, and gets married, the next hurdle will be convicing Immig why she should remain in the US pending greencard. Becoming a full-time student used to be a common tactic, but Immig has tightened up now.

Being disabled or getting pregnant might work, but pregnancy should only occur because both parties are kind, loving, responsible adults who want to start a family (or if the condom broke).

In essence, the Immig viewpoint is: If you married her here because you want to be together forever, then a year apart while she waits in Thailand for greencard is no big deal.

Not that this matters, but I have a few friends (Indian and Taiwanese) who are in unhappy marraiges, and have wished that it hadn't been so easy years ago for the new wife to stay. The feeling was that if the wife had to go back to her country for a while, both parties would/might have realized that they were not compatible.

correct, and even being married for 2 years prior to filing for an entry visa was a slow sumbitch back in 96/97 too, and was not a cinch, even with a born abroad citizen kid in tow, easy for the kid, not for the beaner mom, with good reason,,them greasy bitches...
but she worked an illegal entry visa, they found out it was a fraud visa for a fraud [Bigamy] and have not been able to get her out yet,even with over $20,000 ER hospital med bills, fraud drawing of years of parental support money from SSA for kid, Smuggleing in an existing mex. national kid of 7 years old at time of entry and sending to California public school system from 2nd grade to collage today at taxpayers expence.

so ya just takes ya chances, and gets what ya gets,, both Brit and USA are purely fucked with the low life human refuse now already, so if you are human, pack up and get the fuck out and let the garbage have it, it is to fucked for salvation now anyway..Lets just go where they left and see if we can salvage anything..

Under current immigration regs, I doubt that the marriage in U.S. could be processed into a green card without the bride having to return and re-enter. Green cards are taking an average of 18 months to process now (this just announced this week), and I can believe it based on our experience in getting our daughter-in-law's green card after she came in on a fiance visa last year. The process was excruciatingly slow, bureaucratic, and frustrating.

Good luck, but I'm betting your friend would be safer going with a Thai wedding, fiance visa, and civil ceremony in the U.S.

Why doesn't your friend come to Thailand, get a quickie marriage at the Embassy here? Then he'll be married. Immediately apply for a visa at the embassy based on mariage.