What do you do if you are not married and you wish to enter and/or follow your boyfriend, girlfriend, fiancéé, partner, other family relationships; who has a long-term temporary visa inside the United States, and you wish to be with them?

For example, your partner has received a three-year visa, they have been promoted at work and transferred to the US branch office. You are both in a long-term committed relationship and you wish to be with them, you don’t want to be separated and do the long-distance thing; they are your whole world.

The classification in this circumstance would be what’s called the household visa. It applies to anybody in any type of a relationship, whether it’s a boyfriend, girlfriend, aunt, uncle, brother, or sister, as long as you are able to show that you are cohabitating. Cohabitating means you reside together. You both share the same residence. For example, you have evidence to show mail is going to the same property with both of your names on it, joint bank accounts etc.

Cohabitation is a huge requirement for the household visa; the officer will not approve your visa without compelling evidence to support this important requirement.
You must also be able to show non-immigrant intent under this visa classification. Although you wish to enter the United States to be with your loved one, for a long period of time temporarily; you have to be able to convince the officer that you will, in fact, return home at the end of your temporary stay with your loved one in the United States. Caro will go through this with you in detail as it can cause issues at interviews if not fully understood, we also have an audio on our website that explains in greater detail.
You cannot just tell an officer, “Well, I’ve sold everything, and I’m going to be there for three years, and I possibly would want to remain there longer.” If that’s the scenario, then you don’t qualify for this visa. You must be able to have evidence to show that you will return to your home country at the end of your period of stay inside the United States, even if that is for three years.
Officers also like to see financial ability, that you have the means to support yourself while you are inside the United States, because you cannot work under a household visa when you are inside the United States. If you want more information on whether you can change over to a different visa classification and/or whether you can work in the United States after being granted a household visa, you can contact our office for a consultation with Caro.