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With the dramatic upsurge in consular decisions to permanently bar visa applicants from the United States, the question of applying for an immigrant or nonimmigrant waiver has become more and more acute. Many immigration lawyers will advise to just accept the decision, admit that you were wrong, say you are sorry, and apply for the waiver. They say that your chances of receiving the waiver will be increased if you admit your guilt and express remorse, even if you did not do anything wrong. But what if you are not “guilty”? What if you did not commit a material misrepresentation (Section 212(a)(6)(C)(i))? Or engage in alien smuggling (Section 212(a)(6)(E))? Or commit a crime of moral turpitude (Section 212(a)(2)(A)(i)(I))? Should you admit you were wrong? Of course not. There are legal mechanisms to challenge such lifechanging decisions, such as a Request for Reconsideration. Sometimes, the supervisor of the consular officer or…

You have been denied under Section 221(g) of the Immigration and Nationality Act and despaired because the consular officer demanded a document that is unavailable or unobtainable. Although rare, this does happen — perhaps a birth certificate was lost and the archives in a city burned down in a fire, or the birth certificate lists the wrong information. This is what happened to a recent client — whose son was stranded outside the United States for more than two years while he attempted to resolve consular demands to have a local court amend the birth certificate of his son to reflect him as the father. There is hope in such situations. US immigration law anticipates such problems. If a visa applicant can show that there is “actual hardship” in trying to procure the document, not just “normal delay and inconvenience”, then the consular officer is empowered to waive the document…

Interpol conjures up images of a worldwide police tracking down “bad guys” on the run from home country authorities. But Interpol is not a law enforcement agency: it does not issue warrants and does not have the authority to make arrests. While the overwhelming majority of Interpol’s information-sharing capacity is dedicated to tracking down true “bad guys”, many home country governments abuse it. They manipulate Interpol into doing their dirty work, making bogus allegations to locate dissidents, political activists, and whistleblowers. As a result, Interpol issues Red Notices based on bare allegations made by a government — for example, fraud — not evidence, with a view to extraditing that person back to that country. Yet consular, Customs and Border Protection, and Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials erroneously use the Red Notice as shorthand to deny visas, detain individuals at the border, and arrest them inside the United States. It is…

One critical tool in challenging errant visa decisions of consular officers is through the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). While the FOIA process with the Department of State is extremely limited in visa cases, sometimes consular officers rely on inaccurate information contained in US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), Customs and Border Protection (CBP), Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) files or improperly make visa decisions based on materials contained in those files. In such cases, FOIA requests can be extremely helpful. Lawyers can assist in three aspects of Freedom of Information Act requests: 1) properly formulating and lodging requests; 2) filing lawsuits when FOIA processing is delayed; and 3) assisting in appeals of government responses to FOIA requests. The proper formulation of a request can mean the difference between a process that can take 3 months or 12 or more…

This myth has been going around for years — no doubt perpetuated by representatives of 2nd passport programs. A national of Country X has US visa problems — because of a criminal incident 20 years ago making him inadmissible to the US. He decides to obtain a passport from a European Union country by making a very substantial investment. Because he has been told that nationals of his new country are eligible for the Visa Waiver Program (VWP) — a program that allows for travel as a tourist or business visitor to the US for up to 90 days without a visa, with no visa interview required — he is under the impression that he should qualify too. Until he reads the fine print — or consults with a US immigration lawyer. Before boarding a flight to the US without a visa, citizens of VWP countries pre-register with the US…