Hello everybody.
My name is Jacob Sapochnick and I'm an Immigration Attorney based in San Diego, California.
In this video, I'll cover one of the most complex areas of immigration law and as the
the waivers of grounds of inadmissibility.
In this video, we'll talk about specifically about the I-601 Waiver that is a very powerful
waiver that can wauve grounds of unlawful presence, or certain criminal activity as
well as misrepresentation and fraud.
So essentially, how do we go about applying for the I-601 waiver?
First of all, there has to be a qualifying relative.
Who is a qualifying relative in the I-601 waiver cases.
Typically it's a…a legal permanent resident or citizen spouse or a parent.
So, it is very important to connect a qualifying relative that will be the focus of our waiver
because if there isn't qualifying relative by law, then we don't have a waiver and that
case would not be possible.
So, the only other exception to a qualifying relative that is not a parent or a spouse
is when we're trying to waive certain criminal acts.
And in those cases, we can use a child who is a U.S. citizen.
But typical qualifying relative will be an LPR or U.S. citizen that is a spouse or a
parent.
What is the standard of I-601 waiver?
The legal standard is extreme hardship and this is a term that is very, very confusing
because people are not really clear about it and we have a lot of people that come to
us when they try to do those waivers on their own or they had other attorneys that are not
familiar with the process and it is really important to meet that standard extreme hardship.
What is extreme hardship?
Extreme hardship is not hardship to the immigrant, the person that is currently barred from the
United States.
It is extreme hardship to the U.S. citizen qualifying relative this case, a parent or
a spouse.
What are some of the things that the U.S. government are looking at when they determined
those waivers?
So we have things like family ties in the, in…in the U.S. or in the foreign country.
If the U.S. citizen, spouse or parent has been live in the U.S. for many, many years,
they have strong roots here.
Uprooting them from here is going to cause them extreme hardship cause they don't know
anybody in a foreign country.
They can't work in the foreign country.
They're going to be lost because they don't speak the language.
This could be considered extreme hardship.
Another factor for extreme hardship are medical and psychological conditions.
So if the U.S. citizens, parent or spouse having a serious medical condition like for
example, cancer or muscle dystrophy or serious depression, those are conditions that can
only be treated in the United States because they're currently been already treated by
a physician here, having them leave the U.S. will cause extreme hardship resulting in serious
pain, even the death if they are not able to get their treatment.
In other factor is that if the U.S. citizen spouse or parent, you already have a very,
very important job here.
Maybe they are managers in the company.
If they leave that position, their career will be devastated and pretty much good and
finished.
If they have a business here, then many other people depend on.
Like let's say if it's a spouse that has their own business and now have her elderly parents,
depending on that income.
If that person must depart from the United States, it's going to cause extreme hardship
to them and their family that is left behind.
So those are some of the factors that they're looking and it's more than just regular inconvenience
or if I leave, then I don't like to live in that foreign country because I don't like
it.
It has to be extreme hardship.
Maybe it's a country that has a very severe contract conditions like war, like Somalia
or, or in El Salvador where they have gangs fighting each other.
So, things like that that we can…let's put it in the case to show that country conditions
make it so difficult, almost impossible for that U.S. citizen qualifying relative to move
and therefore it's going to result in extreme hardship.
And in those cases, if we can demonstrate those factors, the government will take it
into consideration and approve the waiver.
There are a lot of factors that are also discretionary.
Therefore, these waiver packages that we put together have a lot of exhibits.
We have…we used for a doctors, psychiatrist that will prepare certain reports.
Country condition experts that will put some reports to show why this particular qualifying
relative will suffer if they are to go to this foreign country.
We use exhibits.
We use affidavits in a certain way that will make it easier for the adjudicating officer
to approve that 601 waiver case.
05:09 Now remember, those waivers being created in the law for particular reason because once
a person is barred and they've done their time abroad, there has to be a way to bring
them back if they meet those waiver requirements.
There are many, many waivers out there.
In this particular video, we mentioned the 601 way…waiver that there, there are waivers
like the 608(a) which are specifically for unlawful presence.
There are waivers, like the 212(d)(3) for people that are non-immigrants.
There is the I-212 waiver, therefore people that have been removed.
Then I tried to come back and we'll do more videos about those specific waivers.
But in this waiver, I was trying to cover this 601 extreme hardship waiver and hopefully
give you a little bit of a glimpse into what it is.
We have more articles on our website that will focus on that.
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For weekly videos that we'll cover, the other waivers and many, many other topics in immigration
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Thanks for watching and we'll see you on our next video.