Getting Married on the US Virgin Islands Question

[TheLoft]

I am a Canadian current in the US as a tourist. Prior to the last entry as a tourist, I was living in the US under an H1B, and had planned on moving back to Canada. During this visit to get ready to move, my US boyfriend proposed. From reading other threads here, I've learned that it's best to remain in the US, get married, file for AOS and AP. Since, leaving the country would mean that we need to file for K1 and remain separate for many months.

We plan to get married in 3 months and had very much wanted a beach wedding in the Caribbean.

My questions are:

1. Given that I cannot leave the US and my tourist status, can we go and get married in the US Virgin Islands or Puerto Rico? Will this be treated as if we got married in any US mainland cities?

2. I've heard that USVI is considered a port of entry and one will need to go through immigration when coming back to the US mainland. Does going through this POE count as "entering the country"? Since I wouldn't want to enter into the country after we just got married without the proper visas.


Has anyone actually done this? Or have been through immigration at USVI? If so, do they actually stamp your passport when entering through the USVI?

We realize that Hawaii is an more prudent option since it is a US state, but we really would like to find out about USVI and Puerto Rico before crossing these options out.

Thank you in advanced for your help! Or any light you can shed on the matter.

[Reba]

Why not just get married where you live now?

[kevinlg]

Not sure if this makes sense.
You can do the wedding/ honeymoon in Virgin island.
And come back to US as a tourist then officially get married.

[Reba]

married is married, no matter where it happens unless its officiated by someone not licensed to marry people.

[Steven]

This is a good question, I have some long lost family that live on the USVI I was thinking of tracking down and I wondered how it works. The flights from Florida come from Miami, and Fort Lauderdale is usually used for domestic flights as there is virtually no USCIS presence there.

That seems to imply some sort of immigration procedure even though it's a domestic arrival, you could check with American Airlines.

One idea might be to phone up the hotel you're thinking of going to and posing the question, the staff there must have done it. Really all you need is someone from USVI who's visited the mainland recently.

This website appears to say that if you arrive from the US mainland, there is no inspection, but if you're on the way there, there is: http://www.usvi.net/us-ins/body_index.html