CASE: J-1 Waiver of Two-Year Foreign Residency Requirement, No Objection Statement
NATIONALITY: Korean
LOCATION: Cambridge, MA
Our client is from South Korea who came to the U.S. on a J-1 Visa in August 2015 to pursue his Ph.D. degree in Illinois. His J-1 program made him subject to the two-year foreign residence requirement. In 2023, he was offered a professor position with a tenure track. His prospective employer also planned to file an H-1B petition for him. However, before they filed the I-129 (H-1B) petition for him, he had to get a waiver for his two-year foreign residency requirement. Our client retained our office on April 10, 2023 for his J-1 No Objection Statement Waiver.
Once retained, our office prepared and filed the waiver request through the No Objection Statement (NOS) from the Korean Embassy in the United States.
Attorney Sung Hee (Glen) Yu from our office contacted the Korean Consulate General Office in Chicago to pursue the waiver for our client. The Consulate requested six different documents including a statement of the reason for the waiver, the applicant’s resume, a J-1 visa waiver confirmation application, and a letter of reason for obtaining the J-1 waiver. Most of those documents needed to be written in Korean, so Attorney Yu, a Korean himself, assisted our client in completing those documents.
On April 20, 2023, the J-1 Waiver Application was filed to the Department of State. We also sent a request to the Korean Consulate General in Chicago to issue a No Objection Statement and recommend this waiver based on the fact that our client is eligible to change his status in the U.S.
The Korean Consulate General in Chicago forwarded our client’s documents to the Korean Embassy in DC. After that, the Korean Embassy issued a No Objection Statement for our client and sent this letter to the State Department’s Waiver Review Division. On June 20, 2023, the Waiver Review Division issued a recommendation based on the No Objection statement. On July 17, 2023, the USCIS issued an I-612 approval notice and waived our client’s 2-year foreign residency requirement.