CASE: J-1 Waiver of the Two-Year Foreign Residency Requirement, No Objection Statement
NATIONALITY: Indonesian
LOCATION: San Francisco, CA
Our Indonesian client came to the U.S. on a J-1 Visa in September 2007. He came to the U.S. for his research program, and his J-1 visa had him subject to the two-year foreign residency requirement.
He wished to take advanced studies to pursue his Master’s degree in the United States and got a student visa in Indonesia. He came back to the United States in 2011, completed his master’s program and thereafter applied for OPT.
His research and higher education enhanced his interest in the field, and he wanted to further his research and development acumen. However, since most of the research projects that interest him will take a longer time, and since some of the projects he has discussed have resulted in the employers/institutions inquiring whether he is eligible to work beyond his OPT, he anticipated that most employers will eventually wish to petition him for an alternate form of visa such as an H-1B.
However, due to the two-year foreign residency requirement, he had to obtain a waiver first before he could change his current status in the United States.
After he retained our firm, we prepared and filed a waiver request through a No Objection Statement (NOS) from the Indonesian Embassy in the United States. We included nine different documents including a statement of reason for the waiver, the applicant’s resume, a copy of his valid Indonesian passport, and a copy of Form DS-3035.
On November 2, 2012 the J-1 Waiver (Form DS-3035) Application was filed to the Department of State. We also sent a request to the Indonesian 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 change of status application but for the waiver.
The Indonesian Embassy eventually issued a No Objection Statement for our client, and sent this letter to the State Department’s Waiver Review Division.
On December 6, 2012, 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 December 18, 2012. Now that our client’s two-year foreign residency requirement is waived, he can be a beneficiary of other non-immigrant visa petitions in the United States without having to go back to Indonesia for 2 years.
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