Help with green card process: in between I-539 extension and I-485.
Hello all, thank you in advance for taking the time to read this and respond! I will be calling various attorneys for consultations (I think this may be a good move) but I’m curious to see what you all have to say.
For starters I’m a US citizen, and my wife and I have been together for two years.
Last August, my wife, who was my girlfriend at the time, came to the us and was given an I-94 leave by date of April 1st. On March 5th, we decided to ask for an extension on her B2 visa until August with an I-539 form so that she could spend a bit more time in the US, and meet my family at our family reunion later this year. She’s in bar school in Canada so it was easy to prove her intention to return, and since I have a full-time job I was able to easily provide proof of her financial support while in the country. She has had legal standing in the country ever since while we have waited to hear back.
I proposed in April and while we had talked about getting married for a while, there wasn’t a definitive timeline for doing so. My wife and I just got married in May, and we are considering pushing off her studies for a year in favor of some important career prospects for me here in the US.
I’m aware that to do this would require filing the requisite green card forms before she falls out of the legal status afforded to her via the pending I-539 request, but due to the immigration medical exam times (I-639) I’m worried this may not be possible.
My question: If the I-539 is denied and she no longer has a legal status before we have time to submit the I-130 and I-485, should she leave the country, or is it probable that the brief illegal status will not affect our green card petition too severely?