Wait to hear about this wacky case. Hi, I'm Jim Hacking, immigration lawyer practicing law throughout the United States at our offices in St. Louis, San Diego, and Washington, DC. In today's video, we're going to go off an email that I recently received from a viewer and someone on our mailing list. They had a question about their situation. I thought it was interesting, pretty wacky, and I thought it might be something that would interest you. Then I'll share with you the advice that I gave this person.
"Hello, my I-765 was approved, but my I-131 is denied." 765 is the work card and I-131 is the travel card. "I have a pending application adjustment of status, but my advance parole application was denied because they felt we were likely involved in marriage fraud from their records. We had previously applied for adjustment of status, I-130 and I-45, and we went for the interview. We didn't have much evidence at that time. We were later invited for a second interview, but we missed the let because we changed address. That case was denied. We quickly reapplied rather than appeal to save time.
"We are still together, no divorce, marriage is approaching our fourth year now. We have enough evidence this time, which we had when we sent with our package. To my surprise, for the second application of 45, the advance parole was denied based on their records," in quotes, "but the I-765 was approved. Meanwhile, the denial letter for that first application didn't mention anything about fraud, it only stated how the evidence wasn't enough and that we missed the second interview. This is the only person that has ever filed the adjustment of status for me, I've never applied for an immigration benefit with any other person. Please, what can I do?"
We'll say that's from Matthew, that's not Matthew's real name, but Matthew, as you know, in the email that I sent back to you, this is one of those situations where your case is very winnable. This situation can be solved and your 45 can be granted, but man, you are teetering on the fence because you screwed up the first time in two ways, not submitting enough evidence and not showing up for the second interview. Not changing your address with USIS can really lead to fatal problems, and of course, we see that right now in this case.
Now, the one good thing that you did do was simply reapply for the green card as opposed to appealing, appealing a denial like that would be a real waste of time, but now you've got to do that little bit of extra work to get this case over the goal line. If I were you, Matthew, what I would do, and this is what I said in my email to you, is I would hire our firm. What we would do is we would obtain a complete copy of your immigration file to see what we can find about that first application, see where things went wrong, and then be ready and help you to prepare a stronger case. If you've been together four years, we can make a really strong case that this case is approvable.
Then we're going to prepare you for the interview. They're probably going to separate you again, you and your spouse. They're going to come hard at you, trying to make it look like there was fraud in the first place, but I think that having someone from our firm, having a lot more marital evidence and the fact that you've been together for four years, I think they're going to understand that this was just people that didn't really know what was going on or how serious this all was.
I don't think we need to worry about the travel document right now. The focus should be on getting that green card and filing more evidence at the interview in support of the application to get that damn thing approved.
I hope that you are wise enough, Matthew, to do that and to hire us or another experienced immigration law firm to help you build up your case, get that case approved so that you can get your green card. Totally approvable, but you've created a higher burden for yourself by the mistakes that you made in the past.
I share this question and answer with you because I think it's really instructive for a lot of people. Sometimes people think, "Well, I'll just hire the lawyer on the back end if things don't go well." I think that's the wrong approach. I think the better approach is hire the lawyer at the beginning so as to cut down on the mistakes. Now, you might want to roll the dice, you might be a gambler, you might like hanging out in Las Vegas and playing roulette, but why gamble with your immigration status? Why not get it right the first time? Because that's the main thing, as Billy Joel once said.
All right. If you have any questions about this, give us a call at 314-961-8200, email us at [email protected]. You can join us in our Facebook group, which is called Immigrant Home. If you liked this video, we ask that you please share it out on social and that you subscribe to our YouTube channel down below. Finally, don't forget on Tuesdays and Thursdays, most weeks, usually at noon Central, you'll find me in the Immigrant Home Facebook group and on our YouTube channel answering as many of your immigration law-related questions live without a net for up to 60 minutes. Thanks a lot and have a great day.
