So, you want to travel to the United States, but before you book a flight and pack your bags you know you likely need a proper visa. But which kind is right? Well, it depends… Do you just want to visit and see the sights? Enroll in a university and get a degree? Get a job to advance your career? Live happily-ever-after with your romantic partner? Or maybe something else?
The visa you apply for today can affect your ability to obtain immigration benefits years into the future. If you choose incorrectly, you may be setting yourself up for future complications. The purpose of this blog post is to provide you with a brief overview of the two main categories of travel visas. It is not a comprehensive guide to Visa travel. In the future, we will go into greater detail as to the specifics of the various visas available. For now, let’s start by distinguishing between the two broad categories of visas: immigrant visas and non-immigrant visas.
In theory, non-immigrant visas are visas for people with a non-immigrative intent. This means that they intend to return to their home nation after a certain amount of time to live permanently. Conversely, immigrant visas are designed for people who are traveling to the United States with the goal of living there permanently. In practice, this distinction isn’t always clear.
Question for you: if a foreigner with no connections to the United States wants to come to the United States for the purposes of attending university, graduating, and ultimately working a job in the United States permanently, should that person first get an immigrant visa or a non-immigrant visa? If you answered “immigrant visa,” you’d be wrong. What is correct is not always apparent.
While every immigration situation is a bit different, the likely path of someone in the above situation would be to get a non-immigrant student visa and then upon graduation adjust status either through a spouse or employer. Student visas are by definition nonimmigrant visas because they presume that once the nonimmigrant completes their course of study, he or she will return to the country of their citizenship. In reality, something happens in life and some of those students end up wanting to stay in the United States following graduation, but the federal government sees it differently.
Whether they realize it or not, individuals who apply for nonimmigrant visas are telling the U.S. Federal government that they have no intention of remaining in the U.S. on a permanent basis. This can present a challenge if, after the fact, such individuals then try to get a green card, i.e. petition to become a lawful permanent resident. Failure to designate the proper visa category at the onset of travel can result in a person being denied a green card, such as when a fiancé travels to the United States on a B-1 (tourist visa) to get married.
So who qualifies for an immigrant visa anyway? In short, certain family members of U.S. Citizens and Green Card Holders, fiancés of U.S. Citizens, and certain types of employers and employees. If you or a loved one are thinking of traveling from a foreign nation to the United States, talk to one of the Attorneys at the Tran Law Firm before making arrangements and check in for upcoming new blog posts on this topic!
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