Looks like you were working on a application just now. Applicants typically only require one service at a time. Because your friend referred you, your application with Boundless is discounted. Get started today. Apply now. Learn what we do for you. If you are a U. S citizen and your spouse entered illegally Your spouse may be able apply for a green card—but he or she must leave the United States in order to do so.
Couples in this situation generally need to do the following: Submit Form I to U. If your I is approved generally about months , you will typically get a notification from the National Visa Center asking you to submit the immigrant visa application and pay the immigrant visa fee. If you are a green card holder and your spouse is undocumented Spouses of U.
However, there are two key differences: The process takes longer for spouses of green card holders, because they have to wait for a visa to become available. It takes approximately 18 months longer before they are able to apply for an immigrant visa with the National Visa Center, which they must do before applying for a waiver. Until recently, spouses of green card holders were not able to get waivers if they were subject to the three- or ten-year reentry bars due to unlawful presence in the United States.
If it was before when the law changed, and your spouse never left the United States, the five-year bar to reentry will have run. Your spouse can thus proceed to apply for the unlawful presence waiver.
If the in absentia removal order is after then the law provides a five-year bar to reentry that starts to run when your spouse leaves the United States. We have a guide to the I waiver. But, besides requesting the waiver you must also show that your spouse had reasonable cause for failing to show up for the removal hearing. The reasonable cause requirement is just part of the application, not a separate form.
You may file the I waiver with the I waiver. Depending upon which immigration court that in absentia removal order is out of, we can help with this service of reopening the old order.
The last problem that may affect your spouse, and is a problem for some illegal immigrants here in the United States has two possible components. Your spouse may have a criminal conviction that makes your spouse inadmissible to the United States.
Alternatively, your spouse may have either committed immigration fraud or made a material misrepresentation to the immigration authorities. Both these problems cause your spouse to be inadmissible, ineligible for a green card.
To address either of these grounds of inadmissibility, your spouse must request a waiver. While your spouse makes the application, the standard is whether he or she has a qualifying relative, a US citizen spouse or US citizen children and whether these qualified relatives would suffer extreme hardship. Just like the IA, extreme hardship is difficult to show and will differ for different people.
If you read over this guide to marrying an illegal immigrant, you can see that our immigration attorney is very familiar with the types of immigration problems affecting them and possibly preventing he or her from receiving lawful permanent resident status in the United States. Usually, the best way to proceed if you are marrying an illegal immigrant is to get a consultation with us, an immigration attorney, for you and your spouse to understand your particular circumstances.
We will analyze your situation and advise on the best way to go. Montana State Bar. Marrying an Illegal Immigrant: An Overview These are people, usually from Mexico, who enter the United States without an immigration officer inspecting him or her. Only One Way to a Green Card If you have looked at articles on green cards based on marriage, you are aware that there are two ways to get a green card for your spouse.
Immigration Resource Guide When you marry an illegal immigrant, otherwise known as undocumented immigrants, you never have option one.
Consular Processing: The Only Option Without adjustment of status, the only option for your spouse is that he or she leaves the country. Before , this ban-and-waiver process was a truly cruel catch, because an undocumented person could only apply for a waiver after they had left the country, been barred, and were living outside United States.
That meant that an undocumented person who wanted to apply for legal status through marriage would have had to leave the country before knowing whether they would be able to return. If the hardship waiver was denied, the undocumented spouse would be stuck outside the US for as much as ten years, separated from his or her family and with few legal options.
President Obama eased that harsh rule a bit in , allowing families to apply for the hardship waiver while the undocumented spouse was still in the US. But that still means that an undocumented spouse must qualify for a hardship waiver if they want to legalize their status through marriage. It also means that there can be no other infractions that bar a green card, such as minor misdemeanor offenses.
No hardship waiver, no ability to return to the US. Furthermore, the denial of a hardship waiver would mean exposure of undocumented status to the US government — something that would leave immigrants feeling very vulnerable in the age of Trump.
This month, five undocumented immigrants who had no criminal record went to a US Citizenship and Immigration Services office in Lawrence, Massachusetts to try and apply for green cards through marriage — and were promptly picked up by immigration enforcement.
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