Moving back to the U.S. with German spouse in tow

I just read a thread where this German woman wrote how much hassle it was to emigrate to the US after marrying a US citizen. All my friends tell me "get married in the US. It's so much easier", but we assume too that we would come back to Germany to live and avoid all the bureaucracy of getting hitched in D-land. Seems pretty simple to get your marriage recognized here.

But what about those who decide to move back to the US & both wanna work (of course). It seems so much easier to get your non-EU spouse to get permits to live & work in Germany (assuming one partner is German or from the EU), but in the US? Is it really not that straightforward.

Crawlie did just this, didn't he? He never made it sound that hard and he certainly said nothing about it costing too much money!

I can't speak for Crawlie but from some of his posts I got the opposite impression, especially about the procedure taking an awfully long time.

I have done both of these procedures, and they were relatively trouble-free, with relatively being the operative word. On the US side, I went to a local library and read up on what to do. It is a lot of paperwork, and you have to pay attention to detail. I would suggest having the EU citizen travel to the US as a visa waiver entrant, then get married. It will save you the trouble of getting your marriage certificate translated when you apply for a change of status, which the law permits you to do. Do this as soon as possible after getting married, which you should also do soon after traveling to the US. Make sure your EU significant other their birth certificate and, if applicable, any divorce certificates, and name change court orders done in Apostil (not sure where you would do that in DE). If you can show that you can support your new spouse and have proof of a shared life, you should not have a problem at the green card interview as long as there is not a huge age gap and lack of a common language. It is generally a simpler process on the German side to apply for residency, and I believe that's because a non-EU spouse of a German citizen with an Aufenthaltserlaubnis is still at the low end of the totem pole in terms of access to the job market, whereas once you have applied for permanent residency in the US, the foreign spouse of a US citizen will have access to any job that does not require US citizenship.

The procedure only took 8-9 months from start to finish which was not too bad really. The thing that annoyed me was dealing with Homeland Security, which, in my opinion, is the most disorganised group of idiots I have ever dealt with. They turn the simplest of tasks into an absolute nightmare.

We got married outside of the US and applied for a change of status when I arrived. Although the website says that it is possible it is apparently not and I should have been refused entry. So, basically whatever you do, ensure you apply for a status change before entering the States.

If you get married in the States though, surely then you can change your status? If you got married beforehand, and then wanted to change your status, I could see the problem, because you kind of lied to them coming in. But if your status actually changed while you were there, surely the right thing to do would be to change your status?

is this some sort of annoucement Elf??? did I miss a thread??

by the way, I heard something about them changing the application process at the end of last year - I have 2 friends that got married in Italy 3 years ago. His green card took about 6 months).

Nah. They did not change it. They just made it more expensive

interesting, because my friends were *told* that things got fcked up because the process changed mid-application. not they weren't suspicious of the crack (literally) company lawyers.

Any good links to explain the process?

My best friend from HS intends on marrying a girl from Peru this august...and thinks it'll be easy to get her a green card. I'm thinking he better re-think this.

ha ha no, but this happens quite a lot! just getting info for all those out there who need it

Probably, the easiest thing you can do is hire a lawyer. It will cost you a couple of grand but it will ensure you have ALL of the insider facts as well as tricks to speed things along. You will also not have the worry regarding whether you have filled out forms correctly, which we had after the first set got returned to us because we did not answer all of the questions on it. The form CLEARLY stated - "Only answer those questions applicable to you"..

So that brings us back to USCIS just re-defining the word random

ah, yes, the infamous "n/a". i got used to do this, being a military kid and all. i even do this in germany.