Hello,
I'm an Egyptian living in Brussels on a B work permit (still waiting for the carte A!). My girlfriend is Egyptian-American (currently in the US), so she can spend up to 90 days in Belgium without requiring a visa. We will get married in the coming months, and we wanted to know what's the best, fastest way for us to settle down in Belgium. We're currently looking into a few options:
Option 1: we get married in Egypt, and I go back to Belgium alone and file for a dependent visa for her.
Option 2: we get married in Egypt, and we both go back, and file for her residence based on our marriage.
Option 3: she visits me here and we get married and register the marriage here, and then file for her residence based on the marriage.
Option 4: she wanted to get a master's degree, and we thought we could apply for a student visa for her. To be honest this is not the best option for us, because we'd like to take our time to prepare for her studies (financially and otherwise), but it's still an option.
Option 5: applying for a student visa based on language courses (fr or nl), which is also something she's interested in. The condition here is for her to study at least 12 hours/week for a whole school year, but I didn't find any programs that fit this criteria (if you have any recommendations, I'd really appreciate it).
Our preference is to marry in Egypt, but we also don't want to stay apart for too long.
My questions now are:
1. What's the fastest way among all the options I mentioned (and any other options there might be)? What are the average processing times, and under what conditions would the processing time be subject to extensions?
2. If my girlfriend comes here after our marriage, and then files for residence, can she stay here longer than 3 months? In other words, does the declaration d'arrivee or any of the annexes applicable to our case give her residence until the application is processed?
3. My girlfriend has a daughter from a previous marriage; what implications, if any, would that have on the whole process?
I know the situation is complicated and there's too many things to consider, but any help will be truly greatly appreciated. Thank you very much in advance.
Family reunion
Hello,
Option 3 is the one. You just both need to go to city hall for requesting which document you have to provide. Once the marriage is registered by the administrative services of the Belgian city where you reside, you will have the freedom to finalize the paperwork without any problem.
The only real problem could come from the child. Next if your "fiancée" has full custody of the child or not. For if it is not in this case, the Belgian state will ask for a document from the biological father authorizing the permanent residence of the child in Belgium.
Thank you very much phipiemar! So you mean that she can stay in Belgium (even if longer than 90 days) while the application is being processed?
We're in the process of obtaining the father's authorization (plus translation, legalizing, etc.), so I believe this should be OK. If you believe anything else is required here, please do let me know.
I truly appreciate your reply; if you, or anyone else, have any other advice, I would be very grateful for the help.
If somebody knows whether my girlfriend can stay while the application is processed, I would greatly appreciate any information. We also wanted to know whether she can travel if she needs to?
Any more input would be much appreciated.
Usually, an extension of 3 months is accepted without problem. Your girlgriend and you just need to go to city hall for asking the short term visa prolongation.
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