Originally Posted by
cockpitvisit
Thanks for the laugh
, but the situation is a little more beneficial for the OP. The "normal" way for a U.S. citizen (and citizens of a few other privileged countries as defined in §41 AufenthV) to immigrate to Germany is to come as a visitor and apply for a residence permit from inside Germany. They do not have to cross the German border with the correct immigrant visa, as would be the case in the U.S. So in pre-Covid19 times, this would have worked just fine.
The only question is, whether it still works with covid19-inspired travel restrictions in place.
Coming to the US as a short-term visitor for a social visit doesn’t preclude all possibility to get legitimately married in the US to a US citizen and then remaining in the US while pursuing a change in US immigration status so as to become a legal immigrant to the US. It just more commonly ends up being more costly to do this kind of thing for US residency than it is doing this for EU country residency.