How do I get the conditions on my green card removed? Hi, I'm Jim Hacking, immigration lawyer practicing law throughout the United States out of our office here in St. Louis, Missouri.
This is the third video in our seven-part series on how things work at immigration. In this video, we're talking about a situation where a foreign national has married a US citizen and has obtained a conditional green card.
One of the ways that USCIS cracks down on immigration fraud and specifically marriage fraud, is they give newlywed couples just a two-year green card. The way that it works is you apply for and receive a green card.
When you receive that green card, it's going to have an end date two years later, two years after the start date. The start date will be when the case is approved.
The start date is not when the couple filed the case. Once the case is approved, let's say the case is approved on June 5th, 2018.
Well, by June 5th, 2020, the couple's going to have to file an I-751. They're going to have to file this form to remove the conditions on their green card.
The fact is that you could apply three months early or 90 days before June 5th, so that would be May, April, March. You'd want to file that right after March 5th, 2020, you want to get it in that window, that last 90-day window.
With that application, you're going to file this I-751, typically that's filed jointly. The spouses, both signed it. The US citizen and the foreign national both sign it, and they submit additional marital evidence.
Now, this is not as onerous as the marriage evidence that you have to submit in order to get the initial green card, but you do still have to make a good show of it.
In our office, we try to submit as much as possible because the goal is to try to avoid an interview. There are interviews on I-751s, I'd say maybe 25-30% of cases do have an interview.
I think part of that's random, but I think more often it's when the case that was originally approved might've been a little bit shaky. There might've been questions, or there's been some time where the couples lived apart though, that's another thing.
Sometimes they just randomly pick cases and you're going to have an interview on that 751. When you work with us, we again, prepare you for that interview. We go to the interview with you and we help deal with anything that comes up.
The thing is at this point, you're married at least two years, probably longer, and you should have a good set of evidence.
You might have a child, or you might have a house together, or you might have major purchases. These are the kinds of things that they look at commingling of funds.
If the couple is living apart still, or if they haven't joined their money together, USIS gets a little bit suspicious. You can't file an I-751 on your own. If the couple has dissolved the marriage, if they are divorced, that's possible.
That's a whole other video, which you can find on our channel, but typically, it's filed jointly and our role as the attorneys to help gather all the evidence to submit the strongest case possible, to try to avoid the interview, but the interview is no big deal. They're usually pretty straight forward.
These are fun cases to work on. We get to work with a lot of our old clients. It's nice to see how their lives have developed after two years.
We are always happy to work on an I-751 for a past client, and of course, for new clients. If you have questions about the I-751, give us a call at (314) 961-8200.
You can email us at [email protected]. Be sure to join us in our Facebook group, which is called Immigrant Home. If you like this video, we ask you, please subscribe to our YouTube channel and share it out on social so you get updates whenever we make videos, just like this one. Thanks a lot. Have a great day.
