K-3 Visa at a Third Country Foreign Post

I've received numerous inquiries over the last few months asking whether the best way to avoid the difficulties with the Guangzhou Consulate is to get married outside China and file for a K-3 visa at the "third country post". The recent email reply I've placed below well encapsulates my view on the subject:

 

Gerry,

I’ve always steered my clients away from the idea of getting married in Hong Kong or Thailand or some other third country as the way to get around the problems with Guangzhou. None of my clients have done it, or will do it, if I have anything to say about it. Now we are hearing about Chinese (PRC) K-3 spouses running into big problems with processing their K-3s in Hong Kong. There are several reasons why processing outside of China is a bad idea. First, as general proposition, consular officers or less likely to approve a visa in circumstances of uncertainty. The foreign 3^rd country consular officer is going to know less about the language, culture, and most importantly, the documents and fraud problem in the home country than the local consular officers do, and thus he or she will tend to err on the side of caution - requesting additional evidence or even returning the file to the USCIS for revocation.

Another thing - whatever you might think of consular officers, they are not fools. They know when someone is “forum shopping” and they may well draw an inference that your case is weak and wouldn’t withstand the scrutiny of the more savvy home country consulate.  Consular officers also do not live in a vacuum in their little foreign posts. They rotate assignments often (and they might be in the home country post next year -  imagine the camaraderie!). Indeed, they tend to be loyal to a fault one to the other. Of course, they know what’s going on in Guangzhou, and are not likely to want to undermine their colleagues (and you can bet they will be in touch with Guangzhou if they start seeing a lot of these cases – what do you think THEY will say? “Oh, go ahead and approve it!”).  If anything they’re likely to believe that the home country consular officers understand the locals better than they do, and therefore they’re likely to be skeptical of the K-3 spouse standing before them.

There are practical difficulties with this strategy, as well. One obvious negative consideration is the cost and expense of getting married outside your fiancee's local environment. Then [fiancée name deleted] will have to travel back to Thailand or Hong Kong at some considerable expense for the K-3 interview. And what happens if she gets a request for additional evidence, and the foreign consulate wants a second interview (not a rare occurrence)? She can be stuck far from home for weeks or months (and your buddy on the web site who talked you into this isn’t going to be footing the bill, you can bet on that!). An even more serious problem is that, under current rules, the pending I-130 petition will also be sent back to join the K-3 petition. In the current environment, betting on the foreign post is betting all of your capital.  You won’t get a second shot at the home country consulate. 

Finally, no one knows what the posts are going to look like in six months. Myself, I’ll take the devil I know over the devil I don’t.

In my mind, this marry in another country idea is a gimmicky solution that appeals to people who want a simple, neat solution to a difficult, complex problem. I’m not saying they are all going to fail, not at all, but on balance my view is that you’re better off going to the home country with a well-prepared case than trying to beat the system with strategies that are more likely to fail than to succeed.