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Hi,
I'm a British med student and was hoping to avoid visa issues by marrying my (American) boyfriend before applying for residency.
Does anyone have any rough idea (ie months, a year or several years) how far in advance of applying for the match we would need to marry in order for me to be on a green card?? (we'd be living in the UK and I would basically only be entering the US in order to do the residency and then presumably stay afterwards - do you have to have lived in the US for a certain period in order to be green card eligible?).
Also am i correct that if i was able to get the green card this would go some way to reducing the difficulty of matching as a foreign grad (as well as coming from a top UK university)?
Thanks!
Having a green card will certainly help. It takes years to get a GC -- however if you are in the process of applying for a GC you can usually get something called an EAD (Emplyment authorization document) which lets you work wihile the GC is processed.
However: you absolutely, positively, without fail must speak to an immigration lawyer prior to getting married. I cannot stress this enough. The US has a very aggressive process looking for "marriages of convenience". If you get married and trip a warning in this system, you can be deported. This happened to a classmate of mine -- long term BF wasn't a citizen, his parent became severely ill overseas, they got married to "make it easy for him to come back to the US", he left and was prevented from returning for years.