CASE: I-751 / Waiver of the Joint Waiver Requirement
APPLICANT: Guyanese
LOCATION: Shorewood, Wisconsin
Our client contacted our office in August of 2018 regarding his potential I-751 filing. He came to the United States from Guyana and he married a U.S. Citizen (his ex-wife) in November 2015.
Through his marriage, he was able to obtain a 2-year conditional green card in November of 2016 with our office’s legal assistance. Thus, his conditional residency terminated in November 2018.
To comply with immigration requirements, our client and his wife had to file an I-751 Joint Petition to Remove Conditions. He retained our office on August 8, 2018, and our office prepared an I-751 application for our client with other supplemental exhibits.
On August 13, 2018, our office filed an I-751 application to the USCIS with multiple affidavits from his friends and family members, joint bank statements, utility bills, joint tax documents, , and photos of our client and his wife to demonstrate the bona fideness of their marriage.
Unfortunately, while his I-751 case was pending, their marriage ended in March 2019. Our client experienced a lot of difficulties during his marriage with her ex-wife. Thus, our client could not continuously pursue his I-751 joint filing application. In July 2019, the USCIS issued Request for Evidence and requested our client to submit more bona fide marital documents.
When we prepared a Response to RFE for our client, we requested to change our client’s I-751 from joint filing to a waiver of joint filing because our client entered into the marriage in good faith, but the marriage was terminated through divorce or annulment. We sent this request based on the April 3, 2009 Donald Neufeld USCIS Memorandum entitled “I-751 Filed Prior to Termination of Marriage”, which allows for these applications to be converted to a waiver, if the divorce happened during the pendency of a jointly filed I-751 application.
The memorandum, in part, states, on page 3:
“If the Conditional Permanent Resident provides evidence that the proceedings (divorce) have been finalized, the ISO amends the I-751 petition to indicate that the CPR is eligible for a waiver of the joint filing requirement based on termination of marriage and adjudicates the petition on the merits in accordance with established procedure. In so doing, the ISO determines whether there is sufficient evidence the CPR entered the marriage in good faith, or whether the case warrants relocation to a Field Office for an in-person interview.”
On September 21, 2019, our office filed Response to RFE along with a detailed affidavit from our client and various supporting documents to demonstrate our client’s bona fide marriage with his ex-wife.
Eventually, the USCIS approved our client’s I-751 application on November 4, 2019. Now, he has his ten-year green card.