I am a UK expat and have lived in the US for 4 years using my green card. During this time I married a fellow Brit who was staying in the US on an F1 student visa. I will be applying for citizenship soon, since I believe as soon as I am a citizen my husband can get a green card. My question is; does being married to a non-US citizen affect my citizenship application? Can they refuse me citizenship, since granting me citizenship basically automatically grants my partner a green card? Could it possibly make the process slower?
I'm not an immigration attorney but you might want to go talk with one about this - would probably just take an hour or so and could set your mind at rest.
It certainly seems a very good question. Is your husband still on F1 visa right now?
You'll have to list your marriage details on your N-400 application so your situation will be very apparent to BCIS. Will it affect your application? I would guess "yes" but not necessarily with a negative outcome.
Could it slow it down? Maybe but there is a seven month backlog anyway (at least with my local office) so unless you are in a massive hurry, it is still reasonable.
The long and the short of dealing with BCIS, in terms of marriage, is to have good documentation. I'd start making a collection of things that prove and document your valid marriage, such as photos, letters, travel tickets, joint bills, rental agreements, mortgages, loan documents, bank statements, tax returns etc.
With a "scrapbook" like that, I pretty much waltzed through my Green Card application, even though I got red-flagged because my US citizen wife filed for divorce a few weeks before my provisional permanent resident status expired. Because I could prove that I'd not married to circumvent US immigration law, it was a given that my application would be approved and I'm now just a month or two away from US citizenship.
Anyway, I'd probably confer with an immigration expert to be sure - I did hire an attorney myself when things looked complicated but in hindsight, I should probably have just seen them for an hour and got a checklist of what I needed to do - I could have done almost all of it myself and saved a lot of money.
Good luck with it all!
I'm not an immigration attorney either. However there a couple of things that come to mind.
Your's and your husband's situations are separate at this point.
Your marriage will be apparent on your citizenship application, but it is more likely to be a problem for your husband. He does not automatically get a green card by virtue of your marriage. He becomes elligible to apply, but he will haev to show that the marriage and your subsequent application for citizenship are not a device to get him a green card.
Both of you should follow Pilgrim's advice and build up a file of 'evidence' to show that your marriage is genuine.
You should also speak to an attorney, but, agian, Pilgrim's advice is sound. Attorneys are expensive, see if you can get one to give you an hour or so of advice and then attempt the process yourself.
I am not an immigration lawyer either, but I was under the impression that you can file for a greencard for your spouse even if you are not a us citizen (as a green card holder yourself--as long as you didn't get your green card through marriage to a US Citizen that was terminated less than five years ago--unless you can provide adequate evidence that the first marriage was legit.) You would have to file the I-130 and I-485. If you look at the instructions for both these forms, it appears that your husband would be able to file off your green card.
Shouldn't affect your citizenship status, but will probably affect his. For him to become a permanent resident there are strict regulations, he will probably have to do what I did and file an Adjustment of Status which I did after marrying a US citizen. Then you have 2 options. He either leaves the country and waits for the process to complete, or he stays in the country pending his Adjustment of Status Application and must not leave until the process is complete.
The Adjustment of Status can only be made to certain visas, for example if he was here on the Visa Waiver program it would be much more difficult then if he were here on a work or student visa.
Whatever you decide to do, I echo what everyone here has said. Speak to an immigration Attorney, I hired one for my case and it still took 3 years to get a green card.