The K1 visa or the US fiancé visa has very qualities that make US citizens choose to use this in bringing their fiancé to the United States. Note that this visa is only for your fiancee.If you need a US Visa for your wife then look at a K3 Visa or a CR1 Visa.
Here are some of the advantages of the K1 Visa:
- It is specially made for the fiancé of US citizens.
- It has relatively shorter processing time.
- The probability of denial is much lower.
- There is a ninety day period to get married.
- Your fiancé can only adjust her status into legal permanent residence when she marries the petitioner.
The last mentioned quality is perhaps the most interesting. In rare cases the alien fiancé decides not to marry the K1 visa petitioner and instead marry another US citizen or legal resident.
This may or may not be tragic for the K1 visa petitioner, but one thing is definite. The holder of the K1 visa may not adjust his or her status while settling in the United States. In this case, he or she has to leave and go back to his or her home country and undertake the ordinary consular processing. This time the visa that he or she may use will already be an IR-1 or CR-1 visa.
This is most likely the reason why many prefer to apply for tourist visa and then marry his or her fiancé in the US. In this case he or she may marry any US citizen or legal permanent resident and adjust status later on. However, this practice is wholly inadvisable. The person will face great difficulty on adjusting his or her status because he or she will need to prove that there was no intention to immigrate initially.