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I have a 10 year tourist visa for the US and have been back and forth to the US for some years now visiting my partners family, she is American by birth. We decided to get married after being together for 3 years.

Our intention is to go to the US in the summer, get married and celebrate with her family, and then come back to my home country where we both currently live permanently.

My question is, can we get married on the tourist visa if our intention is to return to our current country of residence?

I’ve had my own business for a long time here as well as other assets that can easily be proven to show that our intention is to return home, my partner has a job here and we stay together in an apartment that we rent and have a lease for, so lots of information to provide to the customs agent on arrival to show our intent is to marry and then leave to come back home.

Furthermore, we might decide to apply for a green card for myself in a few years time, but for this trip we have no intention of getting married and staying in the US and applying.

If anyone has some experience with this is would be greatly appreciated - thanks.

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  • related travel.stackexchange.com/questions/19600/…
    – Dirty-flow
    Commented Mar 20, 2019 at 9:38
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    @Dirty-flow it's similar but it doesn't really answer my question. I'm really looking to find out if it's frowned upon or not, I don't think anyone can stop us from getting married in the US, but I would like to let the customs agent know at the border that we intend to get married but return home, and hoping he doesn't turn us around because it's not allowed. So I want to make sure I have sufficient documentation to prove I will go back home and also avoid getting a flag next to my name for not being forthcoming with my intentions if that makes sense :)
    – kingmilo
    Commented Mar 20, 2019 at 9:42

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That’s exactly what I did in 2001. While I could have used the VWP I got a B1/B2 visa (to reduce the risk of being turned away on a whim by a border official, making the intention to marry and leave the US clear in the application) and got married in the US to an American citizen. We went to the U.K. a couple of weeks later where we’ve been living since, with trips to the US every couple of years.

I don’t know if the situation has changed at all in the past 18 years, but it worked then.

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  • That’s a great answer, thank you. I would say that the only differences I would have are that I already have a visa so I cannot out an application through stating my intentions. Secondly, we eventually do plan to move there and wonder if it will have any affect on that.
    – kingmilo
    Commented Mar 21, 2019 at 3:22

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