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After waiting years, your I-601A Application for Provisional Unlawful Presence Waiver was approved. Congratulations. And now it’s time to travel outside the US, apply for and receive an immigrant visa, and return to the US with a clean slate, right? Well, not necessarily… Not if ill-intentioned or overzealous consular officers have anything to do with it. There is a popular misconception that if you have an approved I-601A, USCIS has reviewed the entirety of your immigration history and forgiven any violations. That is wrong. USCIS has only considered your unlawful presence violation and found extreme hardship to your qualifying relative. But do you remember that visa that you applied for 25 years ago? And that you later used that visa to enter and remain in the US? The consular officer has not forgotten. Now, in such situations, these officers are increasingly entering permanent bars for a Section 212(a)(6)(C)(i) willful, material…

Fair is fair, right? Consular officers can and do impose permanent bars for an alleged misrepresentation in a visa application form or entry to the United States from 5, 10, 20, 25 years ago. For example, we have seen some crazy decisions at visa interviews based on a supposed misrepresentation made to an airport inspector decades ago about their true intent — triggered by application of the so-called 90-day rule. But on the flip side, did you know that there are no time limitations on when you may challenge a consular visa decision to permanently bar you from the United States? If the visa decision made to permanently bar you for a misrepresentation, alien smuggling, or conviction of a crime of moral turpitude was made last week, last year, last decade, or even 35 years ago and it was wrong then, it is wrong — and continues to wreak havoc…

The beauty of obtaining a nonimmigrant waiver? That once you receive one, going forward, you will almost automatically receive the second one, and the third one, and the fourth one…. But the trick is — obtaining that first one… The nonimmigrant waiver process is rather straightforward. For most applicants of the nonimmigrant waiver (also known as a Section 212(d)(3)(A) or Hranka waiver), there is no application form and there is no filing fee; you simply request the waiver at the visa interview. If the consular officer recommends the waiver, then Customs and Border Protection will usually agree with the recommendation and grant the waiver. The consul will then issue a visa with a waiver annotation. So how to obtain that elusive consular recommendation? Well, if the applicant is applying for a B visitor visa or a F student visa, he/she must overcome his/her 214(b) burden first before the consul will…

The Department of Homeland Security’s Secretary has the authority to grant parole into the United States for foreign individuals in urgent medical or humanitarian situations or during emergencies. Humanitarian Parole is typically considered a final opportunity for entry into the US for individuals who do not qualify for a visa through standard means. The evaluation process for these requests is rigorous, with approximately three-quarters of humanitarian parole applications rejected. It is granted on a case-by-case basis and should not be used to bypass regular visa procedures or applications for refugee status. To illustrate the various situations in which humanitarian parole may be used, below we can provide a few case studies from our own experience. For example, after an encounter at the airport in the US, one client was paroled into the United States for one month. But he was not given a copy of his Record of Sworn Statement…

A FOIA request can be extremely helpful to find out what information a government agency has; to clarify dates; and to “re-construct” a file in a case where documents were lost or misplaced. Such a request can be critical to overcome a finding of inadmissibility in visa cases, in particular, such as accusations of misrepresentations, alien smuggling and unlawful presence. All agencies of the Executive Branch of the United States Government are required to disclose records upon receiving a written request for them, except for those records protected from disclosure by exemptions (e.g., law enforcement, security, and privacy reasons). As a general rule, the Government does not charge fees for conducting the search, although it reserves the right to do so. What makes the FOIA process challenging is that there is no central office which processes FOIA requests for all federal agencies. Therefore, it is necessary to determine which agency…