In this video, we’ll talk about the implications of accepting unlawful employment while in
the United States, how can it impact your future green card or your status in the US?
Watch this video and learn more. So in this video, we'll talk about adjusting status after
unlawful employment and we get a lot of questions, and people are really worried about this.
But before we talk about this, I want to ask you to please subscribe to our channel click
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version videos of what we do here on YouTube. Let's dive in right into this video. So, unlawful
employment. What is unlawful employment first. So, unlawful employment is any person who
accepts employment outside of their authorization. So if you don't have a visa to work, if you
are here on a tourist visa or a student visa, and you perform any kind of employment, which
is outside of your visa, you're unauthorized to take employment. In some cases, even unpaid
employment could be considered as unauthorized. There is a whole definition in the INA, Immigration
Nationality Act of what is unlawful unauthorized employment. It could be employment that happened
before your last entry maybe years ago. It’s employment that you've taken before you file
for Adjustment of Status before you got your work permit. All these things are considered
to be unauthorized employment, and it can impact a person's ability to adjust status.
Right now, there are a lot of people who go through interviews as they go to get their
Green Card through employment. I-140 is filed and approved an adjustment of status and many
of those cases, people either get denied or put on hold, because they find unauthorized
employment in the history of the applicant, either it shows on their tax returns, or they
verbally admitted, or they find out in another way that their person accepted employment
while they were not supposed to be working, they were not authorized. But what happens
when you are in fact, deemed to be unlawfully employed or have some unlawful employment
history in your record? There are certain exceptions to the rule. If you have an immediate
relative who is filing for adjustment. So if you marry a US citizen, your spouse, if
you have a child who is a US citizen, so you're a parent of a US citizen, or if you have a
child under 21. Those are the exceptions. We call this the immediate relative exception
to the rule. So if that person… if you worked without authorization and then you marry a
US citizen, for example, at that point that will be waived at the interview. Another exception
is if you are a beneficiary of Violence Against Women Act a VAWA recipient, those can also
be exempt from the unlawful authorized employment and still be able to adjust their status.
Certain physicians and their families who are immigrating are also exempt from this.
Certain US service members who are in the military and they're in the process of getting
their Adjustment of Status are also exempt from the unauthorized employment rule. So
again, typically, people who are caught or deemed working without authorization will
have difficulty to adjust their status unless they fall within the exception, which we mentioned.
Immediate relatives, spouse, or parent of a US citizen, or a child under 21, and recipient
of the Violence Against Women Act approvals, and certain Armed Forces military personnel
who are going through the immigration process. Those are exceptions. And so again, if you
have issues with unlawful employment, there are things you can do to rectify it even while
you're here before adjusting your status. It is important to consult with an experienced
immigration attorney to determine when employment was unauthorized, if it was unauthorized and
then make a decision how to approach this particular case. Hopefully, this was helpful.
Make sure you leave me a comment, ask a question. Happy to answer. And let us know what other
videos you'd like for us to make for you. Thanks for watching, and we'll see you at
our next video.