British Expatriate Network

I know that a lot of Brits co-habit with their partners or get married to Americans and until their visas are issued come in and out of the US on tourist visas. You might be interested in reading this....

My husband brought in a French guy from the company's Paris office about a year ago to work on a project here. He has been living with his girlfriend for a few years and they have a couple of daughters. He was issued an L1 visa and the girls were on L2 visas. Initially his de-facto (common-law) wife was coming in on tourist visas, but after a few months they decided to get married. (I think the wedding took place in France, but I'm not 100% sure of this). Anyway, their children go to the French school in Manhatten and as it was half-term a couple of weeks ago they went back to Paris for a short holiday.

They returned to New York and the husband and girls were admitted....but the immigration officer saw all the visitors stamps in his wife's passport and put her straight back on the Air France flight to return to Paris at her own expense! She had already applied to the US Embassy in Paris for a change of status before heading back to New York but they hadn't yet issued the L2 visa for her.

There were a lot of tears for the French family and lots of communication between the HR's immigration lawyers and the Embassy in Paris, and after a week she managed to get her L2 visa. Her poor husband was trying to do his job and go home early every afternoon to look after his daughters. My husband wouldn't let him book it as leave, but there were sighs of relief all round when Sophie was allowed back in to New York...(my husband sent her a large bouquet of flowers for all the stress she's gone through) razz

So I guess that once you have more than two or three visitor's visas in ones passport, the Immigration Officers get suspicious eek

I'm glad that worked out in the end and quite quickly.

I recall an immigration attorney warning me about leaving the country while my application was processing a few years back - he gave us copies of newspaper articles about a Canadian man working in Portland who was deported very rapidly after he forgot to file a form on time.

I used to work with a guy in the UK who worked over here for a while and had his British girlfriend staying with him as she had a student visa at the time. Anyway, eventually it expired but they didn't think much of it until they went on holiday to the Bahamas a year later - when they flew back into New York, he was allowed back in but she got deported at her own expense - he resigned his job shortly after and headed back to the UK where they got married. Sort of happy ending I suppose.