CASE: J-1 Waiver of Two-Year Foreign Residency Requirement, No Objection Statement
NATIONALITY: Turkish
LOCATION: Los Altos, CA
Our client is from Turkey who came to the U.S. on a J-1 Visa in January 2014 to work as a graduate student. He would like to apply for an adjustment of status based on an I-140 National Interest Waiver self-petition. However, he won’t be able to adjust his status unless he gets a waiver for the 2-year foreign residency program.
He retained our office on July 17, 2020. We filed a waiver request through a No Objection Statement (NOS) from the Turkish Embassy in the United States. Every country’s Embassy maintains different procedures for the J-1 No Objection Statement waiver. Our office contacted the Turkish Embassy in D.C. to pursue the waiver for our client. The Embassy requested several documents including a statement of reason for the waiver and Turkish National ID.
On July 24, 2020, the J-1 Waiver (Form DS-3035) Application was filed to the Department of State. We also sent a request to the Turkish 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 I-140 NIW petition.
Eventually, the Turkish Embassy issued a No Objection Statement for our client, and sent this letter to the State Department’s Waiver Review Division. On December 17, 2020, the Waiver Review Division issued a favorable recommendation based on the No Objection statement. On March 29, 2021, the USCIS issued an I-612 approval notice. Now, our client can file an I-485 adjustment of status application along with the I-140 NIW Self-Petition.