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A note that it's easy to "overstay" a visa when waiting for a green card interview - the wait times are often in the 6-16 month range, and if you leave the coun
by nxobject 11mo ago
A note that it's easy to "overstay" a visa when waiting for a green card interview - the wait times are often in the 6-16 month range, and if you leave the country you'll be considered to have abandoned your "petition to adjust status". It's a catch-22, and it looks like the only recourse is for an immigration lawyer to file a habeas corpus petition in federal court.
- SilverElfin 11mo agoI remember reading that depending on which country you’re from, the waiting time can be years or even decades. Is that true? If so that’s crazy and cruel.
- someperson 11mo agoCountry of birth does determine the "priority date" waiting list. Specifically for Philippines, Mexico, India and China. Due to demand. Everyone else is in the rest of the world bucket. For those countries (especially India) the wait can be more than a decade. Moving to a points based immigration system without country of birth consideration may one day happen. Depending on what contributes to points it would encourage better English language abilities and skill sets from immigrants (eg winners being China and India, losers being Mexico)
- nxobject 11mo ago> Moving to a points based immigration system without country of birth consideration may one day happen. Anything, honestly, to end the need for informal lawyering that even immigrants with straightforward situations still have to do.
- vkou 11mo agoEven if the system is simple enough to not need a lawyer, you should always use one.
- JuniperMesos 11mo agoOnly if you think it is crazy and cruel to disallow someone from another country to become a legal resident and then eventually a citizen of the US.
- kalkin 11mo agoIn many circumstances - including when that person is married to a US citizen, or when they'll likely be killed on return to their country of birth - it is indeed crazy and cruel. (In more ordinary circumstances it's merely arbitrary and unjust.)
- refurb 11mo agoI wanted to be a citizen of Singapore and was never approved. I agree it was arbitrary and unjust. I deserved to be a citizen.
- kalkin 11mo agoYes, this is by no means only a U.S. problem. Some countries are worse, even where birth rate trends seem like they should make it more obviously self-destructive. A tendency towards xenophobia seems to be an unfortunate human universal, although one we can sometimes overcome.
- closeparen 11mo agoYou are demanding that their American spouse either divorce them or spend the rest of their life in another country. Of course it’s crazy and cruel.
- queenkjuul 11mo agoWhen they're married to an American? When they have kids that are American? It's not crazy nor cruel, to you, to separate a mother from her infant?
- LorenPechtel 11mo agoThe issue is spousal visas. I did not seek to marry a foreigner, our relationship was proximity turning into a whole lot more. We consider it cruel to tear apart couples.
- mock-possum 11mo agoAs ever, the craziness and the cruelty is the point.
- LorenPechtel 11mo agoDepends on the visa category. Family preference visas for siblings can have waiting lists in the decades. But family preference visas for spouses of citizens have no wait list. It's just the system is slow. We went through some of it long ago, her time here threw us into proximity, proximity turned to love. That meant an adjustment of status, her old visa became invalid when we applied, but you have permission to stay while such an application is being processed. A hair under 6 months from application to first interview, a hair under two years before she got conditional permanent residency. (And I think that timing was not a coincidence, they stretched it out to just below the point it wouldn't have been conditional.) I would be terrified to do that under the current administration.
- scheme271 11mo agoThis really depends on your relationship with the other person and your status (e.g. US citizen, permanent resident, etc). Long story short, if you are the spouse or immediate family of an US citizen, there isn't any queue to get permanent resident status aside from whatever time it takes the US government to process the various forms. That time can be substantial, e.g. 2-3 years but it's nothing like the multi-year wait that a spouse of a permanent resident needs to go through just to apply for permanent resident status.
- TriangleEdge 11mo agoThis happened to someone I know. He was working on a TN visa, had his green card approved, and was waiting for an interview. He was not allowed to leave the country, but he lost his job, and had to leave the country because of the 60 days grace period of the visa. Because he left, he lost his green card application. You both: 1. Can't leave the country because of immigration laws. 2. Have to leave the country because of immigration laws.
- someperson 11mo agoA TN visa is explicitly a "non-immigrant visa", there isn't supposed to be a pathway to permanent residency. It's still possible to through an adjustment of status but the hoops around not leaving the country are much more awkward. Because permanent immigration is not the intent of a TN visa, it's a loophole.
- deleted 11mo ago[deleted]
- kaashif 11mo agoYou're phrasing this a bit oddly. There isn't any immigration law saying he cannot leave the country. There is a law saying that if you leave the country you abandon your green card application. Combined with losing his visa and having to leave the country, this just means that the law says if you lose your visa, you lose your green card application too. But you can always legally leave the country forever.
- poplarsol 11mo agoYou absolutely can leave the country. You just aren't entitled to permanent residency as a result.
- mcphage 11mo ago[flagged]
- 11mo ago
- foogazi 11mo ago> It's a catch-22 What do immigration attorneys recommend in this scenario? I don’t get the catch-22, time’s up & you leave Happens to H1Bs all the time
- nxobject 11mo agoThe "overstay" was scare quotes – you're allowed to stay.
- foogazi 11mo agoDo you know what the “overstay” status is called ?
- hn_throwaway_99 11mo agoBut TFA says that it was people exactly in this situation who were apprehended by ICE and then set for deportation proceedings. According to the current administration you are NOT allowed to stay, and that's where the Catch-22 is. The whole thing just further exemplifies the "cruelty is the point" ideal.
- iscoelho 11mo agoYour immigration attorney will advise that you overstay. If you do not, your application will be abandoned.
- quadrium 11mo agoIt's required to overstay, and for the case of student visas, you must abandon the visa when petitioning to adjust status. The terms of the student visa are that you cannot have immigration intentions. When this happens, you're present without a visa, but it's not illegal. You're on a "stay authorized by the attorney general". I'm not sure if that has changed, but the " authorized stay" thing is the defense to being present without a visa. It does make a lot of paperwork more difficult, like getting a drivers license, when as you can't prove status.
- jmyeet 11mo agoThis is false. If you get married as an F1 student, it's completely fine (and encouraged) to continue your studies under your F1 visa while your I130 and I485 are pending. There are differences here if you're marrying a US citizen vs a green card holder. If you marry a green card holder, you must maintain your status until you adjust status with your I485. If you marry a US citizen, being out of status is forgiven. If you discontinue your studies, USCIS (particularly under this administration) might try and argue you obtained your student visa fraudulently to deny your marriage petition. The best thing you can do is complete your studies and then, if applicable, obtain OPT to further maintain status. Any marriage where the immigrant spouse is out of status will be treated with more scrutiny by USCIS.
- nxobject 11mo ago> If you discontinue your studies, USCIS (particularly under this administration) might try and argue you obtained your student visa fraudulently to deny your marriage petition. The best thing you can do is complete your studies and then, if applicable, obtain OPT to further maintain status. There are two things that I'm not sure about: – Is the distinction between studying (regardless of status), vs. being in status vs. having a visa? Because the three are different: you can enter as a student and study, and have your F-1 expire, and still maintain status per SEVIS. – IANAL, but you get an EAD upon petitioning for an AOS – does that prevent you from applying for OPT?
- jmyeet 11mo ago
- crystal_revenge 11mo agoIt's also worth pointing out that the nature of the green card interview is largely up to how the interviewer feels about you. It's a terrifyingly subjective experience. There was an error in my wife's green card application that many people (including myself and our lawyer) should have caught. Our lawyer promised us that during the final interview this could be trivially corrected on the spot. Despite many smiles and laughs during the interview it's clear the interviewer didn't approve of how my current wife and I met (it involved a divorce) and so he decided that he couldn't possibly correct the error during the interview, and that while we passed, we would need to wait nearly a year for the correction. While this was frustrating the interviewer could have just as easily decided, at his discretion, that our marriage was not "real" (despite the fact that the reason for his objection was ample evidence that it was quite real), so it was a pain we had to suffer. I've spent enough time working with petty bureaucrats to know it's better to accept whatever means they try to prove their own power than to fight it.
- jmyeet 11mo agoErrors happens on immigration forms all the time. Many of them aren't a big deal and can be corrected but there's a right and wrong way to do it. Fixable errors include things like failing to mention all your employers that you worked unauthorized or your name having a different spelling in certain cases. Since unauthorized work is forgiven if marrying a US citizen, the omission of employment is a correctable error. The right way to fix this is to type out the questions you want to correct into a document (called an errata sheet) with the corrected answers and to hand that to the visa officer with your ID at the start of the interview. The reason you want to do this is you want a paper record that you volunteered this information. Anything verbal can be argued that you only revealed such information when confronted and that's a problem. So I don't know what your issue was. Errors with a divorce could be as serious as you weren't free to marry because at the time you got married your divorce wasn't finalized and that invalidates your entire petition and there's no correcting that. Another big one is USCIS not believing your divorce is real. this happens if you get divorced in certain countries (eg Ghana, Nigeria) where apparently fradulent divorce decrees are a real problem.
- 11mo ago
- dmitrygr 11mo ago> it's easy to "overstay" a visa Many laws are easy to break.
- 0xy 11mo agoThis is a misrepresentation. Some of these people entered on the K1 which REQUIRES marriage within 3 months. They get married 18 months later and wonder why they're getting deported for a giant visa overstay. It's fraudulent, you enter on a visa, explicitly promise to marry quickly, do not do so and expect no repercussions.
- RemainsOfTheDay 11mo ago[dead]