CASE: J-1 Waiver of Two-Year Foreign Residency Requirement, No Objection Statement
NATIONALITY: Korean
LOCATION: Schaumburg IL
Our client is from South Korea who came to the U.S. on a J-1 Visa in February 2018. Later, he married his current U.S. citizen wife and filed an adjustment of status application. At the time of his adjustment of status application filing, he did not know that he needed to get a waiver for his two-year foreign residency requirement. After he found out that he needed a waiver for his adjustment of status case, he contacted our office.
He retained our office on August 9, 2018 for his J-1 waiver case. Once retained, Attorney Sung Hee (Glen) Yu from our office promptly contacted the Korean Consulate General Office in Chicago 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.
On August 14, 2019, 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 Chicago 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 24, 2019, the Waiver Review Division issued a favorable recommendation based on the No Objection statement. Eventually, the USCIS has issued an I-612 approval notice on November 15, 2019.