I-192 Waiver Application Re-Opened and Approved for Five Years
Wednesday, September 23, 2009
A client recently came to our office after having his Form I-192, Application for Advance Permission to Enter as a Nonimmigrant, denied. This particular client had previously applied for, and received, two (2) of these nonimmigrant waivers. He requires a waiver due to a theft conviction from over 15 years ago.
Our client’s previous two (2) waivers were issued prior to the formation of the Admissibility Review Office (“ARO”), which is part of U.S. Customs and Border Protection (“CBP”). Currently, all Forms I-192 are sent to the ARO for adjudication.
The most recent waiver application (Form I-192) was submitted by our client over one year ago at a land border port of entry, which then forwards all Forms I-192 to the ARO. Six (6) months later, our client received a request for additional evidence (“RFE”) from the ARO requesting specific documentation from the client to supplement his waiver application.
Our client, still acting without a lawyer, complied with the ARO instructions and submitted the additional evidence to CBP through a U.S. land border port of entry – the same port of entry where he submitted his Form I-192 six (6) months earlier. Fortunately, our client saved a copy of what he submitted to CBP at the border, together with a copy of the form completed by the CBP officer on that date. These copies were extremely useful when our client came to us after receiving a waiver denial letter from the ARO. It turned out that the documents submitted by our client were lost somewhere between the port of and entry and the ARO. When the ARO never received the requested documents, they issued a decision denying the waiver application.
By regulation [8 C.F.R. § 103.5], individuals have 30 days following a waiver denial to submit a Motion to Reopen and/or Reconsider the decision. Due to delays experienced by Canadian mail, our client did not receive the denial letter for almost three (3) weeks following issuance, leaving him almost no time to submit a Motion to Reopen and/or Reconsider. It was shortly after this 30-day period expired that he finally contacted our office for legal assistance.
With the documentary evidence that our client saved, we prepared a persuasive Motion to Reopen the denial decision. We were also able to convince the ARO to accept the motion after the expiration of the 30-day filing deadline, in light of the delays often experienced by the Canadian post. The ARO then granted the Motion to Reopen and granted our client’s nonimmigrant waiver application (Form I-192) within one week of receipt of our motion.
The waiver was granted for a period of five (5) years from the date of approval, which allowed our client to enter the U.S. immediately to visit with children and grandchildren in the U.S.