CASE: J-1 Waiver of Two-Year Foreign Residency Requirement, No Objection Statement
NATIONALITY: Korean
LOCATION: Boston, MA
Our client is from South Korea who came to the U.S. on a J-1 Visa in June 2015. Later, he changed his status from J-1 to H-1B and filed his adjustment of status application based on an I-140 NIW self-petition. Both of his J-1 visa page and DS-2019 clearly state that his J-1 program is not subject to the INA 212(e), two-year foreign residency requirement. However, in order to make sure that he is not subject to the 2 year foreign residency requirement, he filed advisory opinion in June 2018. Nevertheless, the Department of State found that his J-1 program was subject to the two-year foreign residency requirement.
After the advisory opinion, our client contacted our office and retained us on October 24, 2018 for his J-1 waiver case. After retention, Attorney Sung Hee (Glen) Yu from our office contacted the Korean Consulate in New York to pursue the waiver for our client. The Consulate requested six different documents including a statement of reason for the waiver, the applicant’s resume, a J-1 visa waiver confirmation application, and a letter of reason for obtaining 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 October 25, 2018, the J-1 Waiver (Form DS-3035) Application was filed to the Department of State. We also sent a request to the Korean Embassy to issue a No Objection Statement and recommend this waiver based on the fact that our client is eligible to adjust in the United States if he obtains the waiver.
The Korean Consulate General in New York 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 December 20, 2018, the Waiver Review Division issued a favorable recommendation based on the No Objection statement. Eventually, the USCIS issued an I-612 approval notice on January 7, 2019.