There Is A Class Of People Who Can Potentially Stay In The United States For The Entire Process

Video Transcribed: I am Immigration Attorney Ted Hasse and I work at Wirth Law Office, and I am here to answer your immigration questions. I want to talk about how folks can go from an undocumented status to getting legal status in the United States when they’re already in the United States. If you have questions on your immigration matter, feel free to give us a call, 918-932-2800. With regard to this issue, we get a lot of calls about this, folks trying to straighten out their status, and something I find frequently is that they sort of have partial information. They know that as a general rule, if you are here illegally, if you have an undocumented status, it is almost certain that you’re going to have to leave the United States, go to a consulate or embassy in your home country, and seek to get readmitted.

Now there are exceptions to that, but there’s one important piece that people don’t seem to be aware of. First of all, if you are here without documentation for more than a year, then officially under U.S. immigration law, you’re deemed to be inadmissible to the United States for 10 years. Now there can be a waiver of that, and certainly people who are undocumented before they leave the country and seek to get readmitted want to see if there can be a waiver, and they want to find out before they depart the country. There is a process for seeking a waiver of inadmissibility for having been here in violation of U.S. immigration law. That process is well established, something we help people with. It’s something that can be done. It’s not particularly easy, but it can be handled before leaving the country and going for a consular interview.

Now there is a class of people who can potentially stay in the United States for the entire process, never have to leave the country when they’re seeking a readjustment of their status, and those people are individuals who are here, do not have a lawful status, but arrived initially on some sort of visa. These are people who did not cross a border. These are people who, well, they may have crossed the border, but they came with a visa in the first place. They overstayed the visa, and they’re still here. Those individuals not only can at the outset seek a waiver of inadmissibility so that they can clear up their status, but even after that, they’re not needing to go back to their home country to go through the consular interview process.

If you have questions, give us a call, 918-932-2800.