Abe's INS Fiancée Visa Help Site

Current Processing Times for Marriages Abroad and Fiancée Visas

Since both the Petition for Alien Fiancé and the Petition for Alien Relative start out in the same place, the Service Center processing times can be looked at to give some idea of the time frames that you are looking at. Our experience has been that the Petition for Alien Relative can take more than three to four times as long as the INS fiance visa for the spouse to actually gain admission to the United States.

For example, the INS California Service Center, covering the Western United States, shows a processing time of twenty-nine to thirty days for an INS fiance visa petition with actual completion times usually being quicker than thirty days and eighty-nine to ninety days for an alien relative petition with actual completion usually taking longer than ninety days. This processing time does not take into account any information requests that may be made by the INS during their processing activities. Any information requests will add substantially to these processing time estimates.

The current processing time for a fiancé visa at the Vermont Service Center is fifteen to twenty-one days for an INS fiance visa with actual processing times running toward the low end of the processing times.

As far as INS records that we have experienced, the shortest processing time that we have had from the California Service Center was thirteen days from submission to approval with a consular interview set four weeks later. From Vermont, the shortest processing time was FIVE days with consular interview set five weeks later. There is no guarantee that your case will follow the same schedule. If you plan on ninety to one hundred-twenty days from INS filing to visa issuance, you would be closer to actual times. Some consulates take longer due to demand on the consulate's resources and other localized problems such as a high incidence of fraudulent petitions at the post.

INS Fiancé Visa | Fiancé Visa Articles | Site Map