An Immigration Attorney can be a historian at times. Over the years, our office has tracked the fall of the K-3 Visa option.
Unfortunately, this article will cover the “actually issued” K3 Spousal Visas for Fiscal Year 2019 (October 1, 2018 to October 1, 2019), which the numbers may surprise you.
What is the K3 Visa?
The K3 Spousal Visa is very similar to the K1 Fiance Visa. Instead of a fiance relationship, USCIS/NVC/DOS requires a Spousal Relationship or a marriage to already have occurred in order to qualify for this option. The initial purpose of the K3 Visa was to acquire faster processing times of an I-129F Petition, where an I-130 Petition would take a considerable amount of time to process.
However, as processing time sped up for the I-130 and now the I-130 has become electronic filing compatible, the K-3 Spousal Visa may be completely retired.
What are the K3 Visa Statistics?
Every year the US Government publishes the visa statistics. If you were to track the numbers, there were 3,882 K3 Visas issued in 2010. There were 392 K3 Visas issued in 2014.
Now, let’s look at a little more recent history!!! In 2019, only 5 K3 Visas were issued. That is extremely low, could be counted on 1 hand, and it is an indicator that the K-3 Visa is no longer a viable filing option for spouses.
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