Smaug,
Your third option of marrying here, she returns to China while you two wait for the visa to be approved is not really an option because it is covered by the first option ie;( fiancee visa). The only visa that can be used to obtain that result is the tourist visa. That being said, there is many risks to using the tourist visa for that reason. If she receives a tourist visa to come her and then you two marry, you will now have the pleasure of attempting to convince USCIS that you did not plan this in advance in an attempt to avoid normal processing protocol. If you can not convince them that you did not plan this in advance your wife can be banned from entering the USA for life. I would think real, real hard before attempting this ruse.
Thanks Robertt for your advice. I went and talked to a lawyer, and we are going to use the Fiancé visa path, K-1. She said the same thing you did, regarding marrying her, then naturalizing her as my wife. She said it would probably be fine, but that they might thing we got married JUST to get her here. She advised waiting any additional time and using the K-1 path. She works for a law firm that specializes in this. (I'm lucky to live near Chicago, which has a big Chinese population and its own Chinatown) We'll end up paying a big chunk of money in fees to file the forms, and wait 13 months (that will be hard!) but it seems to be the safest path.
One thing she said was that USCIS keeps charging more and more, saying it is to speed up the system. But then it never speeds up. More gvt corruption, great. This is why we have immigration problems here. Our government has tried to make immigration into a profit center, and it literally costs thousands of dollars to immigrate here. These poor Mexicans can't afford it, so they sneak over, and it gets even harder and slower for the rest of us.
I asked her about my previous marriage, and she said it wouldn't be a problem. As long as we are legally divorced, that's all that matters.
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'had a great time in China, saw some Dragon boat races. Cemented our relationship more.
She's coming here two weeks from tomorrow for two weeks. I'm sure that'll be nice too.
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One quick question for the forum: I see that I'm supposed to document things we've done together. Dinners, local events, etc. How do I do this? For example, I have tickets for us to go to a car race and a classical music concert. But it is just two tickets with my name on it.
If I take a picture of us eating dinner together in my kitchen, how does that prove it was actually in the US? For that matter, how do they know that all of the pictures I provided were not staged within a period of a one day visit?
If I provide letters between us, how do they know we didn't just fabricate them just for the interview?