Visa question--US husband, Indian wife. We live in the UK and want to visit my home?

Question

I'm having trouble finding out if she can get a special visa to visit the US whenever she wants. We got married in India and live in the UK. We only travel to the USA to visit my family. I am able to get a PIO card for India, which lets me pretty much become an Indian citizen (minus voting and a few other things.) Is there any similiar item for the USA?

Its quite a hassle and expensive to get her a tourist visa each time we want to visit my parents. Is there some easier way?

Thank you

Answer 1

Beyond filing for an Immigrate visa, which will take about 8-12 months, even less if you qualify for DCF in London, but this is only a route you want to take if you both should decide to immigrate permanently to the U.S. since she will have to remain in the U.S. at least 6 months of the year to keep her residency.

Other than that, she will have to apply for a tourist visa each time she visits. If you are she or you both have indefinite leave to remain in the U.K. then you could look at the requirements for her to become a naturalized British citizen, if she so wishes, they would then enable her to use the visa waiver program. Which is a program where no visa is requirement for citizens of certain countries to visit the U.S. for a maximum period of 90 days per visit.

The links below are for the immigrate (IR-1) route, DCF filing in London and Naturalization in the U.K.

Answer 2

Its quite a hassle and expensive to get her a tourist visa each time we want to visit my parents. Is there some easier way?  

NOT unless you live in USA and apply for her to get a green card, and then after the green card, it takes a few years to become a citizen. (and if she becomes a citizen she loses Indian citizenship.

if she chooses to stay with the green card - so she keeps indian citizenship - then she cannot stay outside  of USA for more than 6 months in a year - and if she does this  too often, her green card gets cancelled.

Basically, NO, there is no other way - she must continue applying for tourist visas because you choose to not LIVE in USA.