New Proposed Rule Would Decrease Time Abroad for Many Consular Processing Cases

On Friday, Alejandro Mayorkas, the director of United States Citizenship and Immigration Services, announced a proposed rule which could help thousands of families seeking to legalize the immigration status of one of their members.

Currently, if a person present in the United States entered the country without being inspected, she must leave the country in order to gain lawful permanent resident status based on the petition of a spouse or other immediate family member. As soon as they leave the United States, their previous unlawful presence triggers a 3 or 10 year bar to their return. So when they are abroad in their home country, they must file for and obtain a waiver of their unlawful presence bars before they can return. In order to obtain the waiver, they must establish that their absence from the United States is causing "extreme hardship" to their qualifying family members in the United States who are U.S. citizens or lawful permanent residents.

The problem is that the adjudication process for these waivers can sometimes take a year or longer. So at a minimum, the families face a long period of separation while trying to become legal. And of course, there is no guarantee that the waiver will be approved after the long adjudication.

If implemented, the new proposed process would allow those seeking to legalize their status through consular processing to submit their waiver applications for pre-approval before leaving the United States. While such applicants would still have to leave the United States to receive their status, the new process would have the potential to drastically decrease the time that they are abroad away from their citizen spouses and families.

As of now, the new rule is just a proposal and has not been implemented. There is no date certain for implementation. Also, it appears that the new pre-approval process would only be available for the waiver of unlawful presence bars. Those who also need waivers for bars triggered by criminal convictions or past fraud would have to continue to follow the old process where their waivers are submitted and adjudicated abroad.

Click Here to see the New York Times Editorial

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MILITARY RECRUITMENT PILOT PROGRAM

The Secretary of Defense authorized the military services to recruit certain legal aliens whose skills are considered to be vital to the national interest. Those holding critical skills - physicians, nurses, and certain experts in language with associated cultural backgrounds - would be eligible. To determine its value in enhancing military readiness, the limited pilot program will recruit up to 1,000 people, and will continue for a period of up to 12 months. Read More

ELIGIBILITY
1. The applicant must be in one of the following categories at time of enlistment
a. asylee, refugee, Temporary Protected Status (TPS), or
b. non-immigrant categories E, F, H, I, J, K, L, M, O, P, Q, R, S, T, TC, TD, TN, U, or V

2. The applicant must have been in valid status in one of those categories for at least two years immediately prior to the enlistment date, but it does not have to be the same category as the one held on the date of enlistment; and

3. An applicant who may be eligible on the basis of a non-immigrant category at time of enlistment (see 1b above) must not have had any single absence from the United States of more than 90 days during the two year period immediately preceding the date of enlistment.

HEALTH CARE PROFESSIONALS
· Applicants must fill medical specialties where the service has a shortfall
· Applicants must meet all qualification criteria required for their medical specialty, and the criteria for foreign-trained DoD medical personnel recruited under other authorities
· Applicants must demonstrate proficiency in English
· Applicants must commit to at least 3 years of active duty, or six years in the Selected Reserve

ENLISTED INDIVIDUALS WITH SPECIAL LANGUAGE SKILLS AND CULTURAL BACKGROUNDS
· Applicants must possess specific language and culture capabilities in a language critical to DoD
· Applicants must demonstrate a language proficiency
· Applicants must meet all existing enlistment eligibility criteria
· Applicants must enlist for at least 4 years of active duty

Languages
· Albanian · Amharic · Arabic · Azerbaijani · Bengali · Burmese · Cambodian-Khmer · Chinese · Czech · Hausa · Hindi · Hungarian · Igbo · Indonesian · Korean · Kurdish · Lao · Malay · Malayalam · Moro · Nepalese
· Persian [Dari & Farsi] · Polish · Punjabi · Pushtu (aka Pashto) · Russian · Sindhi · Sinhalese · Somali · Swahili · Tamil · Turkish · Turkmen · Urdu · Yoruba

If you have questions regarding these changes or other immigration issues, please contact Joseph Law Firm, P.C.

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