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The K3 & K4 Visa

Please note that the INS (Immigration and Naturalization Service) has been changed to the USCIS (U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services), which is now within the Department of Homeland Security. For the purpose of this website it should be understood that wherever the term "INS" is referenced, we are referring to the former INS which is now the USCIS.

The K3 & K4 Visa
Available to foreign spouses of US citizens and their children, the K3 and K4 visas were created by the Legal Immigration Family Equity Act (LIFE Act of December 21, 2000) as a means of reuniting families who are undergoing an extended period of separation as they initiate the process of immigrating to the United States. As such, the new K3 and K4 visas allows applicants to reside in the US as their permanent resident/immigrant status is processed. Once admitted into the United States, holders of the new K3 and K4 visas are given a non-immigrant status until such time as their permanent status has been approved.

Different from the original K1 and K2 visas, which were designed to allow the alien fiancé and children of an American citizen entry to the United States in order to get married and reside, applicants for a K3 visa must already be married to an American citizen prior to applying. Similar to the original K2 visa, the applicant’s dependent, unmarried children under the age of twenty-one may also apply for a K4 visa.

Processing
In order to reduce the potential length of separation between married spouses, the new K visa procedures ideally allows the US Citizen and foreign spouse to bypass long I-130 petition approval times, as well as visa/affidavit of support processing steps at the National Visa Center; however, the new procedures will unfortunately not decrease the time required to process and issue the new K3 and K4 visas at the US Consulate.

To Be Eligible
Significantly, spouses of US citizens and their children need not apply for a K3 or K4 visa at all and may skip the entire process in favor of directly obtaining their immigrant visa from the Department of State abroad. Intended as a means of expanding the scope of the previous K visa status from the alien fiancé(e)s of US citizens to the alien spouses of US citizens and their children, all applicants for the new K visas must:

Be the spouse of a US citizen;
Have a Form I-130 (Petition for Alien Relative) filed on his/her behalf by his/her U.S. citizen spouse, that is pending;
Have a Form I-129F (Petition for Alien Fiancé(e)) completed and submitted on his/her behalf by his/her U.S. citizen spouse to U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service, P.O. Box 7218, Chicago, IL, 60680-7218.

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