Dealing with U.S. Illegal Migration and Immigration

Jun 23
2007

Current immigration law provides that anyone who enters the U.S. without inspection (without being inspected at a U.S. Customs point of entry and granted admission) and who stays for more than 180 days is barred from returning to the U.S. for a period of 3 years. If one enters without inspection and stays for more than 360 days he or she will be barred from returning to the U.S. for 10 years.

This often puts immigrant families in a very difficult situation. We frequently see couples where one party is a U.S. Citizen and the other party is an immigrant who entered the country without inspection. Even though the immigrant spouse is married to a U.S. Citizen he cannot gain lawful status in the U.S. (at least not very easily.) This is for two reasons: 1) he cannot “adjust his status” to a lawful permanent resident because he has not lawful status in the U.S.; and 2) if he leaves the U.S. to apply for a visa the 3/10 year bar will apply to him and he’ll be barred from returning.

This leaves the immigrant between a rock and a hard place. On the one hand, if he stays in the U.S. he will never gain lawful status unless or until the law changes, but if he leaves to apply for a visa he will not be allowed to return for 3/10 years.

The immigrant can apply for a waiver of the 3/10 year bar but this cannot be done until the immigrant leaves the U.S. Thus, the immigrant has to leave the U.S. and be subjected to the bar without any guarantee of success. Furthermore, the success rates of the waiver applications are not encouraging in most countries.

Ideally, the new proposed immigration reform bill will change all this and provide new options for undocumented immigrants

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