I should add, if this waiting period is not desirable she probably can apply for a visitor visa and shouldn’t have any issues getting it since she is in good standings with the U.S. and didn’t violate her previous Visa limitations. Once she is here, and after 3 months (this period of time is pretty important) then you can apply for marriage, and she will be able to stay in the states until she is approved for a green card, which will allow her to stay permanently.
Now, the trick with this is that when she applies for her visitor visa she has to state her intentions for visiting. Obviously if she intended to get married, then her intentions weren’t to just visit. So you can’t put down to get married because then you will be directed to get a K-1 Visa instead. So, you do not want any signs that her intention was to get married when she applied for the visitor visa. So in other words, it was a recent decision you made with no knowledge prior to her visiting. This is why the 3 months is important because they assume that’s enough time to decide you want to get married without previous intentions. So you know, don’t go reserving any dinner Halls 8 months in advance or buy a white dress and stuff it in her suit case for when she comes over. Stuff like that, customs will send her right back onto the plane she came over on.
Typically there are no problems with doing it like this, and if there are they still will not deny her a green card to stay permanently. But the less hassle the better.
So once she gets here, step one will be applying for the green card, and that takes about 3 months. Then you have to wait about 3 years before she can apply for citizenship, and there will be another interview etc etc. I wouldn’t worry too much, people scam the government all the time just to get people over here with no intentions of having a real marriage. So if its legit it will be obvious and you will have few problems.