I have written a lot of articles about immigration issues and processes for U.S. Citizens who are engaged to or married to foreign nationals. I was reviewing the articles on my site the other day and it occurred to me that the majority of the articles I have written are intended for international couples who have already decided to get engaged, married, and live their lives together in the U.S. And in most cases, these articles assume that my audience has already decided which immigration process to pursue.

Members of the American Immigration Lawyers Assocation, or AILA, recently reported some outstanding statistics about denial rates for visas to the U.S. In fiscal year 2009. The Department of State (the government agency responsible for adjudicating visa applications) denied and returned over 54,000 visa applications to the USCIS for revocation. Although no case specific date was presented, AILA experts believe that a majority of these denials were marriage-based immigrant visa petitions or fiance visa petitions.

The USCIS recently reported that it is experiencing processing delays of up to 8 weeks for lawful permanent resident cards. The delay is reportedly the result of an upgrade to USCIS card production equipment.

As a general rule, persons who entered the United States illegally (i.e. snuck across the border or otherwise entered without inspection by an immigration official) are not entitled to apply for lawful permanent residency in the U.S. by utilizing the adjustment of status process. As a result there are many undocumented and unlawful immigrants who are in the U.S. and despite being married to a U.S. Citizen have very few good options for legalizing their status. This is because of a law known as the 3/10 year bar that provides that anyone who enters the U.S.