hi everyone this is Joseph Tsang today we'll be talking about a 601A waiver story now this
is exciting because it's actually one of the most difficult 601a cases that we've done a 601a waiver
is a waiver for the unlawful presence basically if you have unlawful presence in the u.s you're
illegal in the u.s the u.s government is going to forgive that and so obviously it's very very
difficult to get one of these approved in order to get it approved you need to prove that if the U.S.
government does not grant this waiver if the U.S. government deports the unlawful person it will
cause extreme hardship on one of the qualifying us citizens or lawful permanent residents right
so the the public policy is that the us government wants to protect its own people and if deporting
some certain individual will cause an extreme hardship on its own citizen well then why just
why not just forgive that person and protect the u.s citizen or lawful permanent resident in this
case right so in this instance our client crossed the border long long time ago and has been here
illegally ever since he was small married to a u.s citizen and now if he was to be deported it
would cause extreme hardship to his wife now that is the baseline extreme hardship waiver
application now if you search that up on online every website will just show how difficult it is
to get one of these approved you need medical hardship you need emotional hardship you need
financial hardship you need spiritual hardship you need marital hardship all these things and
you need documentation to prove that if one party has cancer and you need to take care of them
if you're the sole breadwinner and everybody's dependent on you know you need really strong fact
pattern in this case it was super hard because they're young they just got married no kids
and they're both relatively impoverished um and so if they were to be deported well
what's the big deal just find another guy probably find a better guy right i mean there's so many
things that the officer can think about to reject this particular case and we really had to dig in
in the strategy to find to make the the case come alive so normally we just do one strategy session
for a couple hours bring the family and friends in everybody drinks coffee eats crackers and try to
figure out what the strategy is to tell the story but in this case we had to do a couple sessions
because it was just so difficult i think what's the most beautiful thing about this case is that
as we started preparing it so many things came to light and even though they were just
recently married they had a 10-year dating history ever since they were young lovers
and the relationship remained so strong so many friends and family came to to write for them
it's not because they didn't want kids or they don't have kids but it's because she has a medical
condition so that she cannot have kids and we discovered that kind of steering our second
or third strategy session and that's actually very devastating to a woman the psychology of
it all and they've they are the godparents to so many children so it's not that they
they don't have any kids we have to use all these other things to kind of supplement it to show that
how great of a person they are what's fantastic is also he's a great athlete he's a star soccer
player on his team gets tons of reportings about that and we actually got one of the coaches to
write a letter recommendation saying without him the team wouldn't achieve the success that it has
kind of borrowing from the extraordinary ability visa category showing how great somebody is but we
were you were able to just kind of put everything together so the officer can really look at
this young couple who doesn't really make a lot both are kind of in the retail service industry
no kids and why why don't you just go home just go back to Mexico and start a new life there but they
were really able to show that they're totally interwoven into the American fabric and they
actually make America very very good and we're really able to paint the picture that without
him the wife would just completely fall apart it was a very difficult case we spent extra amount of
time on it put it together filed and without a request for evidence the case was approved
one of the most beautiful things is in the first strategy session i always ask
what's your Disney story you know are you Aladdin or are you Princess Leia how did you two meet
why are you guys in love why is your marriage so successful and really writing that kind of
narrative out showing how that they are a role model in their community it's actually very
beautiful i know very proud and very happy about the success story if any of you have any questions
about it feel free to reach out to us happy to talk to you about it thank you take care bye you