CASE: J-1 Waiver of the Two-Year Foreign Residency Requirement, No Objection Statement
NATIONALITY: Burmese
LOCATION: East Lansing, MI
Our client came to the U.S. on a J-1 Visa in September 2012 from Myanmar. She came to the U.S. for her research program, and her J-1 visa made her subject to the two-year foreign resident requirement.
In June 2013, our client married her U.S. Citizen husband and she wanted to apply for permanent residency. However, due to the two-year foreign residency requirement, she had to obtain a waiver first.
After she retained our firm, we prepared and filed a waiver request through a No Objection Statement (NOS) from the Myanmar Embassy in the United States. Our office contacted the Embassy in Washington D.C. to make sure we knew all the requirements needed for their office to issue a no objection statement. The Embassy requested seven different documents including a statement of reason for the waiver, the applicant’s resume, a copy of her valid Myanmar passport, a copy of her marriage certificate and a copy of Form DS-3035.
On November 27, 2013 the J-1 Waiver (Form DS-3035) Application was filed to the Department of State. We also sent a request to the Myanmar Embassy to issue a No Objection Statement and recommend this waiver based on the fact that our client would have been eligible to file a marriage based adjustment of status application but for the waiver.
The Myanmar Embassy eventually issued a No Objection Statement for our client, and sent this letter to the State Department’s Waiver Review Division. On February 27, 2014, the Waiver Review Division issued a favorable recommendation based on the No Objection statement. The CIS then issued a receipt and an I-612 approval notice on March 6, 2014. Now that our client’s two-year foreign residency requirement is waived, she can file an adjustment of status application with her husband’s I-130 petition.