A CR1/IR1 visa can help an individual sponsor their foreign spouse to come to the US. The sponsor must be a US citizen or permanent resident and the couple must be lawfully married and provide a valid marriage license.
This subject is asked about on the SF-86, and Tonny, a user on the ClearanceJobsBlog, was concerned they answered section 20B incorrectly:
Need some clarification on section 20B – Foreign Business, Professional Activities, and Foreign Government Contacts”. The question was “Sponsorship of a Foreign National:
Have you in the last seven (7) years sponsored any foreign national to come to the U.S. as a student, for work, or for permanent residence?”Back in 2015 I signed and filled the required paperwork to sponsor my wife at the time for permanent residence. Since that was more than 7 years ago and we are no longer married my answer was no. Did I do the right thing, or would that be something I need to fix?
This specific situation would be outside of the scope of what the SF-86 was asking…depending on the type of visa they acquired and when the couple split.
CR1 (or Conditional Resident) visas are given to applicants who have been married to a U.S. citizen for less than two years. These visas are granted on a “conditional” basis. Two years after they arrive in the United States, the beneficiary and their U.S. citizen spouse must apply to remove the conditions, at which point they will receive an updated 10-year permanent resident card. If this is the original poster’s situation, removing the conditions would have fallen in the last seven years. If they split before needing to remove the conditions, they would not have to report.
If the original poster was married to the foreign national for more than two years, they would have obtained an IR1 (or Immediate Relative) visa. In this situation, the IR1 holder wouldn’t have to remove conditions and would have had ten years before they would need to renew their permanent resident card.
For current clearance holders or those who are interested in filling out the SF-86 soon, Marko Hakamma notes on another thread that, “sponsoring a foreign national (especially one from a designated country) for entry into the US is definitely an issue for someone who has TS/SCI access.”
Consider what type of support you’re providing by sponsoring a foreign national, what the rest of your “whole person” may look like in relation to the adjudicative guidelines (i.e., do you also travel OCONUS frequently, have overseas bank accounts, etc.), and report this kind of sponsorship to your security officer if you move forward with it as a current clearance holder.
