CASE: J-1 Waiver of Two-Year Foreign Residency Requirement, No Objection Statement
NATIONALITY: Korean
LOCATION: Los Angeles, CA
Our client is from South Korea who came to the U.S. on a J-1 Visa in December 2013. He came to the U.S as an intern, and his J-1 program subjected him to the two-year foreign residence requirement. Later, in July 2014, he married his current U.S. citizen wife. His wife was willing to file an I-130 petition for our client’s permanent residency; however, our client has to get a waiver for his two-year foreign residency requirement before the filing the I-130/I-485 applications.
They retained our office on September 22, 2015.
Once retained, our office prepared a waiver request through a 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 Los Angeles to pursue the waiver for our client. The Consulate office 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.
His previous immigration counsel already filed the DS-3035 application to U.S. Department of States, but wasn’t able to get a no objection statement. So after retention, on September 25, 2015, our office filed 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 based on his marriage to his U.S. citizen wife.
The Korean Consulate General in Los Angeles promptly 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 October 28, 2015, the Waiver Review Division issued a favorable recommendation based on the No Objection statement. Eventually, on December 2, 2015, the USCIS issued an I-612 approval notice and waived our client’s 2 year foreign residency requirement. Now our client can file an adjustment of status application along with his wife’s I-130 petition.