USA Fiance Visa: What happens if I file for more than one?
American Immigration Law is somewhat complicated. One of the murky areas of the Immigration rules involves filing for multiple K1 visas. Many people have filed for one or more K1 visas in the past and become worried that it will detrimentally affect a current application.
One piece of legislation that is particularly important is the International Marriage Broker Regulation Act. This Act states that an American Citizen will only be entitled to apply for a total of two K-1 visas on behalf of a foreign fiancée. This restriction does not mean that the United States Citizen will never be able to file a third petition, only that he or she will need to obtain a waiver from the United States Citizenship and Immigration Service.
There was a time when an American Citizen effectively had the right to file for as many K1 visas as he liked, but due to the passage of the International Marriage Broker Regulation Act this privilege has been greatly constricted.
A follow-up question that often is posed after this information is made available involves other types of visa applications. Is it possible to file for a K1 visa if I have filed for a marriage visa in the past? The non-technical reply to this inquiry is: yes. It may be possible to file for a K1 visa even if the petitioner has filed a large number of marriage visa petitions on behalf of other former spouses. The reason for this is the fact that the International Marriage Broker Regulation Act only deals with K1 fiancee visas. The act does not restrict multiple filings of marriage visa petitions like applications for the CR-1, IR-1, or K-3 visa categories.
This being said, one should keep in mind that although there is no clearly defined restriction on filing for multiple marriage visas, the American's name and personal details might be placed in the multiple filer database. The database keeps records of those who have filed for more than one application for US immigration benefits. Even though there is no legal prohibition on petitioning for multiple marriage visas, it stands to reason that an American Citizen who has filed for a number of visas will most likely have his or her application placed under increased scrutiny because there could be questions as to the legitimacy of the marriage particularly where the US citizen has a long history of obtaining benefits for foreign spouses. It is probably unlikely that merely having one previous petition on file will greatly decrease the chance of visa approval, but this type of scenario might result in the officer taking a close look at the bona fides of the couple's relationship in order to be certain that the relationship is not a sham.
