K-3 Visa Cambodia

The forthcoming piece is written in an attempt to provide illumination about the American K-3 visa process and the implications of the administrative closing of K-3 visa applications.

The K-3 visa process was, at one time, a widely shared experience among those US Citizens wishing to bring their Cambodian spouse back to the United States. That being said, this method has fallen into increasing disuse as relatively recent changes to policies at the National Visa Center (NVC) have resulted in substantially lower numbers of K-3 visa applications being processed. One upshot of this state of affairs is that more Cambodian-American couples are likely to be compelled to apply for American Immigrant visa benefits for visas such as the CR-1 visa and the IR-1 visa.

In the past, the agency now commonly referred to as the United States Citizenship and Immigration Service (USCIS) had a significant backlog of Immigrant visa petitions for the spouses of American Citizens. This situation lead to the United States Congress and President William Jefferson Clinton enacting and executing the so-called "Life Act" which created the K-3 and K-4 visa categories (the K4 visa, like the K2 visa, is a derivative travel document designed for the children of K3 visa seekers). In order to ultimately obtain a US K-3 visa, the American Citizen spouse was required to submit a supplemental K-3 application after the submission of a classic Immigrant visa petition. At the time of its inception the K3 visa was considered to be a significant benefit for the spouses of American Citizens as classic Immigrant visa petitions were taking as long as 3 years to simply receive USCIS adjudication which does not include the Consular Processing phase of the US visa process. The K-3 visa could generally be obtained in approximately 8 months, assuming petition and application approval and no unforeseen delays or legal grounds of inadmissibility.

At the time of this writing, the United States Citizenship and Immigration Service (USCIS) has drastically cut their backlog of non-adjudicated I-130 petitions which lead to a situation where the American State Department's National Visa Center (NVC) was receiving approved Immigrant visa petitions either before or at the same time as approved K-3 supplemental petitions. It would appear that officials at NVC decided to "administratively close" K-3 visa applications if the approved Immigrant visa petition arrived at NVC at the same time or before the K-3 supplemental counterpart. This may be attributed to the fact that the K-3 visa petition and application are somewhat redundant in situations where the I-130 has already received USCIS approval. Furthermore, those Cambodian spouses of American Citizens entering the United States on a CR-1 visa or an IR-1 visa (the Immigrant spouse visa categories promulgated pursuant to an approved I-130 petition and subsequent immigrant visa application approval) will be granted Conditional or Unconditional Lawful Permanent Residence upon admission into the USA. Thus, those admitted to the United States on an Immigrant visa are not required to adjust their status to permanent residence while a K-3 visa entrants would still be required to either Consular Process their immigrant visa application or file for an adjustment of status in the USA which can be a rather slow and costly procedure.


------

Benjamin Hart is an American attorney. He is also the Managing Director of Integrity Legal (Thailand) Co. Ltd. and the International Director of White & Hart Ltd. Contact: 1-877-231-7533, +66(0)2-266-3698, or info@integrity-legal.com. See them on the World Wide Web at:
CR1 Visa Cambodia
or
K1 Visa Cambodia
.