Please don't send that letter. Hi, I'm Jim Hacking, immigration lawyer practicing law throughout the United States at our offices in St. Louis, San Diego, and Washington DC. Earlier this week, Daniel and I had a young lady on the Immigration Answer Show, and she started telling us about how she was having problems with her husband off and on. And that she had really gotten angry at him. And I could see on her face where she was headed. And she started to say, "So I wrote this letter," and I stopped her. And I said, "Please, please tell me that you didn't send that letter." But guess what? She sent the letter. She sent the letter and now her case is a big old mess.
What do I mean by that? Well, this is a marriage based case. And so whenever you have a marriage based case, the most important person, the most important witness, the most important testimony comes from the US citizen. Immigration assumes and believes and guesses that the immigrant is always going to tell you that everything's hunky dory, that everything's fine with the marriage and that they're going to do everything they can to get their case approved.
But with the US citizen, that's where they feel. They can really strike a nerve. That's where they can really divide the couple and conquer is by going after the US citizen. So when a US citizen gets angry and sends the angry letter to USCS, you're handing them the exact evidence that they need to hang your husband or hang your wife. And that's probably what's going on in this case. Now, in this particular instance, the officer who received the letter called the petitioner, the US citizen and said, "Hey, you didn't sign this letter. Did you mean to send it?" And by that point, she and her husband had made up. And as of now, when we had our call on the Immigration Answer Show, they had made up, but she was very sad, very sad that USCS had this in their possession. And she was wondering what she should do.
Now, I told her based on some other things that she said that for this particular case, she might want to withdraw it and start over. And the reason for that is because she had originally received a denial notice. And then once she told the officer that she didn't want to withdraw it, they said it was activated again, but I don't think USCS's computers are actually even set up to do that. So I think that case is for all intents and purposes dead. Now, they're going to have to file it much stronger case and to demonstrate that they do love each other, that the marriage was entered into for a legitimate marriage, not a sham marriage, and that they're going to proceed to interview and that the US citizen is ready to stand up and tell the whole story. To talk about the fighting, to talk about the sadness, to talk about what caused her to write that letter.
That is a bell that we cannot unring. We can't change the fact that USCS has a letter in their files from the US citizen petitioner saying, "I don't want to proceed any more." For all I know she said even worse things like he only married me to get a green card, or she's could have said any kind of horrible things about him. And that's the thing. I'm asking you, begging you, please don't send that letter. When I was a little kid, I used to read this newspaper column called Ann Landers and Ann Landers would always say that if you have an angry letter, put it in a drawer and wait a day or two before you send it off. And that's the advice that I'm asking for you is that if you have an angry letter that you're thinking about sending to the USCS, just let things cool down.
In our office, we get calls from spouses that are fighting all the time and they say, "We want to end this case right now." And if we just hold our breath in and sort of slow walk, don't do anything for a few days, many, many times, I'd say 80% of the times things work out. So you really need to make sure that if you're going to send such a horrible letter and really mess with someone's immigration status, that you understand what you're doing before you do it. So overall, please don't do it. But if you're going to do it, do it after a few days of cooling down and making sure that you're 100% sure that you're done with this marriage, because it can be a fatal flaw. It can prevent the foreign national from ever getting a green card.
If you have questions about this, or if you sent such a letter, or if you're thinking about sending such a letter, or if someone sent a letter about you, give us a call at 314-961-8200. You can email us at [email protected]. Be sure to join us on our Facebook group, which is called Immigrant Home. If you like this video, we ask that you please share it out on social, then subscribe to our YouTube channel and that you join us every Tuesday and Thursday at noon central, where we answer as many of your immigration law related questions as possible for free. Thanks a lot. Have a great day.
