Musings on Immigration

Just few days ago, on March 30, 2012, USCIS posted the Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) changing the process for certain inadmissibility waivers in the Federal Register . If you’re interested in reading the entire rule and all the other attachments …here’s the link , enjoy the 60 + pages… So in a nutshell who qualifies and what does the proposed rule say? First of all, the rule applies to certain immediate relatives of U.S. citizens who are eligible for a provisional waiver of the unlawful presence grounds of inadmissibility while they are still residing in the US. The immediate relative must show that being separated from their U.S. citizen spouse or parent would cause that U.S. citizen relative extreme hardship. This proposed rule doesn’t mean that USCIS has lowered or modified their standard of “extreme hardship”? The “extreme hardship” standard remains the same. Ideally, the proposed rule would have created a “one-step” process. Whereby, the I-130, I-601 waiver, I-212 et...

As   reported  extensively over the last two weeks, and in a way that was grossly misunderstood by the average person,  the Obama administration plans to issue a regulation that would address a long-standing problem in immigration law—a Catch 22 created by requiring the spouses and children of U.S. citizens who entered the country unlawfully to depart the U.S. before completing the processing of their application for lawful permanent residence. The trouble is that once they leave the country, they are subject to a   three or ten year bar   for unlawful presence and need a waiver to get   back   into the US earlier than the 3 or 10 year bar would allow.  The new proposal would allow them to submit the waiver application to the USCIS in the United States and receive a decision before departing the U.S., thus reducing the time, anxiety, and sometime danger inherent in waiting abroad for a decision. This Catch-22 is one of the most notorious pro...