AMU Homeland Security Intelligence Terrorism

Counterterrorism Officials Question 'Fiance Visa' Process in California Shootings

By Anthony Kimery
HSToday

US counterterrorism and FBI officials have raised a host of questions about whether any “red flags” were raised by State Department officials in the processing of the Nonimmigrant Visa for a Fiancé Application Visa – known as a K-1 Visa – which Syed Farook and his Pakistani wife, Tashfeen Malik, had to go through in order for Malik to be allowed into the United States pursuant to the K-1 Visa application and processing process, officials told Homeland Security Today.

Farook and Malik’s paper work for Malik to be given a K-1 Visa are being scrutinized by US counterterrorism officials in the US and Pakistan, federal officials told Homeland Security Today, noting that the examination of these records is being conducted with an eye on “discrepancies in the paperwork, the [required] personal interviews … etc.”

“We’re also looking at flaws in the [K-1] Visa process, and whether there are gaps or loopholes that need to be plugged,” one of the federal counterterrorism officials involved in the investigation told Homeland Security Today on background.

During the past decade, the Department of State has especially rigorously enforced the K-1 visa process in instances in which applicants are Russian, former USSR satellite nation citizens, like from Ukraine, or from certain south and central American nations.

Farook, the San Bernardino, California resident and US citizen who, with his wife, Malik — a native of Pakistan who came to the United States on a K-1 fiancée visa and later became a lawful permanent resident, were killed by law enforcement officials following the couples’ involvement in the apparent jihadi-inspired killings Wednesday in San Bernardino of at least 14 people.

A US citizen, Farook reportedly travelled to Pakistan and returned to the US in July 2014. Under US immigration law, the K-1-visa-holding fiancée of an American citizen is permitted “to travel to the United States and marry his or her US citizen sponsor within 90 days of arrival.”

After the couple married, Malik was given a green card, becoming a lawful, permanent resident.

But the process isn’t that simple for a US citizen to obtain a K-1 Visa for a fiancé; it requires considerable documentation and investigation by both parties in order for this type of Visa to be granted, especially when a US citizen’s fiancé is from a Muslim nation, according to government sources.

Indeed. The fiancé K-1 nonimmigrant Visa for a foreign-citizen fiancé requires the “foreign-citizen fiancé to travel to the United States and marry his or her US citizen sponsor within 90 days of arrival. The foreign-citizen will then apply for adjustment of status to a permanent resident (LPR) with the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS). Because a fiancé visa permits the holder to immigrate to the US and marry a US citizen shortly after arrival in the United States, the fiancé must meet some of the requirements of an immigrant visa.”

Pursuant to US immigration law, a foreign-citizen fiancé of a US citizen is the recipient of an approved Petition for Alien Fiancé under Form I-129F, which is issued a nonimmigrant K-1 visa for travel to the United States in order to marry his or her US citizen fiancé. Both the US citizen and the K-1 visa applicant must have been legally free to marry at the time the petition was filed and must have remained so thereafter. The marriage must be legally possible according to laws of the US state in which the marriage will take place.

Read the full article at HSToday.

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