CASE: J-1 Waiver of the Two-Year Foreign Residency Requirement, No Objection Statement
NATIONALITY: Nepalese
LOCATION: Michigan
Our Nepalese client came to the U.S. on an F-1 student visa and finished his Ph.D. program. Thereafter, he changed his status from F-1 to J-1 to work as a research scholar. However, his J-1 visa made him subject to the two-year foreign resident requirement. In April 2015, he filed an I-140 EB-2 NIW Self-Petition to the USCIS and it was approved in August 2015. However, due to the two-year foreign residency requirement, he had to obtain a waiver first before he can file an adjustment of status application.
After he retained our firm, we prepared and filed a waiver request through a No Objection Statement (NOS) from the Nepalese Embassy in the United States. Our office contacted the Nepalese 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 numerous documents including a statement of reason for the waiver, the applicant’s resume, a copy of his valid Nepalese passport, the approved copy of I-140 notice, a copy of DS-2019, and a copy of Third Party Bar Code Page
On January 12, 2016, the J-1 Waiver (Form DS-3035) Application was filed to the Department of State. We also sent a request to the Nepalese Embassy to issue a No Objection Statement and recommend this waiver based on the fact that our client would have been eligible to file an employment-based adjustment of status application but for the waiver.
The Nepalese Embassy eventually issued a No Objection Statement for our client, and sent this letter to the State Department’s Waiver Review Division. On March 7, 2016, 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 August 23, 2016. Now that our client’s two-year foreign residency requirement is waived, he can file adjustment of status application with the approved I-140 petition.