Archive for category: Hardship Waivers

J-1 Hardship Waiver Letter of Approval: I-612 Application Success Story

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I-612 Hardship Wavier Approval for Indian National Doctor who conducts medical research




Date Waiver was Filed: 9-27-17
Date of Approval: 9-09-19
Client is a native of: India

Our Indian native client is an accomplished doctor who conducts medical research. To get her J-1 waiver approved, we proved that our client’s United States Citizen relative (her young daughter) would suffer extreme hardship if her mother were to return to her home country of India to fulfill the two-year foreign residency requirement without her and with her.

The facts of this case: how we proved exceptional hardship

Client’s Daughter:

  • needed to stay in the United States to continue seeing a highly-knowledgeable medical specialist to help with her specific medical condition – which she would not have access to if she were to return to India with her mother;
  • could not remain in the United States without her mother: the separation was not an option as the child was fully dependent on maternal care. The baby was exclusively breastfed and refused formula.

Furthermore, we also proved that client’s husband:

  • would be adversely affected if he were to stay in the home country or remain in the United States without our client;
  • was only two years away from being eligible to naturalize; relocating to India would delay this process;
  • was seeing a psychologist for severe mental conditions and a physician for a physical ailment. Both of which would be difficult to attend to in the same high-quality manner if they were to relocate to India;
  • would not be able to continue his work, since his occupation’s field is far behind in India and lacks the progress and solid foundation that exists in America

In addition to all this, if the family were to relocate to India, they would face extreme hardship as they would need to sell their house, and in doing so, they would deplete their savings and have nothing to return to America with except for damaged credit and debt.

Our client’s J-1 waiver was approved on 9/09/19

Our client will do a lot of good for patients and, through her research, for the future of medicine.

Additional information and other success stories about I-612 Waivers:

I-612 Hardship Waiver Approval Success Story for Canadian Native

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I-612 Hardship Waiver Letter of Approval for a medical geneticist Canadian native client




Our Canadian native client is a medical specialist who was pregnant with her first child when she contacted our firm to file her J-1 waiver case.

We proved that our client’s United States Citizen husband and his United States Citizen parents would suffer exceptional hardship if she returned to her home country of Canada to fulfill the two-year foreign residency requirement and if her husband et al were to relocate to Canada with her.

Her spouse would be devastated because of his inability to continue his career abroad and because of the couple’s obligations to his elderly sick American parents. He had sacrificed so much to become a United States board certified specialist (spending 14 years in education and training) and is unable to practice in Canada.

Furthermore, he had mental health issues including generalized anxiety disorder. Any other scenario aside from an approval of this waiver would be severely detrimental to his mental health and ability to function.

Finally, he would not send his wife to Canada to be a single mother to their child, he would not remain in the United States separated from his wife and child, nor would he separate the child from its mother and send his wife to Canada by herself.

Our client is one among the severe shortage of medical specialists.

Current wait times to be seen by this specialist for initial evaluations is up to 11 weeks. If consulted and seen early, therapies can be put into place to prevent further damage to overall health.

Fortunately, because of her J-1 approval our client can continue helping a vulnerable population.

Additional information and other success stories about I-612 Waivers:

Responding to a Hardship Waiver RFE

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Hi this is Kaushik Ranchod of The Ranchod Law Group here, coming to you live. Today we’re going to talk about a case study of what to do when you get an RFE for a hardship waiver.

I just had a consultation with someone who hired an attorney and they filed the hardship waiver but they didn’t file it in a way that would be in the clients best interest because it was not well prepared.

Unfortunately there was a statement of reason and that was it. There was no legal brief and the supporting arguments didn’t demonstrate the exceptional hardship.

So it’s really extremely important that the hardships are flushed out. In this situation their hardships were just basically stated and that is not enough. It needs to be backed up with evidence, it needs to be demonstrated through not only flushing out exactly what would happen if you faced hardship as a US citizen or permanent resident if you had to go back to the home country, but also it needs to be backed up with evidence and in this situation it was just unfortunately statements that were written by the actual applicant, and the applicant did the best job that they could.

But the attorney really did not. It appeared to me the attorney did not provide guidance or do anything that would take the case a step above to result in an approval. You know sometimes requests for evidence, they do happen but they can be prevented in many situations or even if you get a RFE it’s easier to respond if the case was thoroughly prepared: in this situation the case wasn’t thoroughly prepared so the RFE is going to be very difficult to substantiate and build.

Basically a whole new case needs to be built because nothing was done, so it makes it much more difficult if nothing was done. Now if the attorney does prepare a very thorough case from the get-go, then it’s a lot easier to respond to the RFE. So if you’re in a situation where you get a RFE and sometimes if you hire a new attorney, they may need to start over and rebuild the whole case just does it, it was a new filing depending upon what was done.

So I invite you to contact us at (916) 613-3553.

If you do get a RFE don’t worry you can respond to it and get an approval we’ve done that in many many situations you just need to make sure that you get the right legal counsel and if you have questions call us at (916) 613-3553 or email us at info@ranchodlaw.com thanks and have an awesome day!

Additional information on Requests for Evidence (RFE):

J Waiver Approval for a Brazilian national married to a U.S. citizen

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I-612 Approval Notice




More good news on the J Waiver front! Our client, a Brazilian national, is married to a United States citizen who was working towards his master’s degree, who had a long-standing career with a well-known company, and who ran a small business on the side. With all of these things going on, he had a lot to lose if he had to relocate to Brazil for two years to be with his wife. We argued that because of his ties to the U.S. —including financial obligations— that relocation would impose exceptional hardship; we also highlighted unfavorable conditions in Brazil like high crime and prevalence of communicable diseases that would add to the hardship.

What was interesting in this case was that the two had already experienced separation, so the United States citizen husband, despite all of the hardship, was not willing to remain behind while his wife was in Brazil for two years.

During their short separation, he engaged in unhealthy coping mechanisms which affected his work. Luckily, she was able to return and prevent him from financial ruin. USCIS issued an onerous RFE which The Ranchod Law Group was able to successfully overcome.

Additional information and other success stories about I-612 Waivers:

I-612 hardship waiver approval success story and approval letter

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I-612 Application to waive foreign residence requirements




The latest success story to come out of The Ranchod Law Group belongs to a Pakistani national for whom we filed a Waivers of the two-year home residency requirement based on exceptional hardship to his United States citizen wife. By working closely with the clients, we were able to successfully demonstrate that his wife would suffer exceptional hardship if he were to move back to Pakistanfor two years. We highlighted the fact that due to her recurrent major depressive episodes coupled with chronic pain, that being without her husband for two years was simply not an option as she would suffer medical hardships. Our argument explaining why she could not relocate was airtight as well. The husband is Pakistani and Muslim, while his United States citizen wife is a white, Christian woman. This kind of arrangement would already be socially frowned up in Pakistan, but adding to the exceptional hardship was the fact that the husband already had an arranged marriage, per local custom. Upon breaking that arranged marriage, our client effectively made himself and his family a target. Therefore, we were able to successfully argue that their lives would be in danger upon relocation to Pakistan. It is work mentioning that the case was approved without a Request for Evidence (RFE); in today’s climate, that is a huge feat!

Additional information and other success stories about I-612 Waivers:

J-1 Hardship Waiver Approval for a Dominican national

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212(e) hardship waiver approval – Ranchod Law Group




A 212(e) Hardship Waiver Success Story

Our latest success story here at the Ranchod Law Group comes from a Dominican national who was faced with having to go back home without her United States -born husband and child because of her two-year residency requirement. The client sought our services as she had filed the Waivers on her own, but did not complete it by sending the necessary forms and documents to the Department of State ( Department of State Department of State (DOS) ) as well. Within weeks, we prepared a compelling statement of reason to show why separation from her family was not feasible–and also why her family relocating with her to the Dominican Republic would have resulted in exceptional hardship . We identified exceptional hardship s to our client’s husband, showing that he would be financially unable to provide for their two children, and our client in the Dominican Republic. Additionally, one of her children was diagnosed with autism, and we demonstrated why he would suffer exceptional hardship if his mother were to relocate back to her home country.

After about 4 months of anxiously waiting, we received the approval from the Waiver Review Division of the Department of State (DOS).

The client, her husband, and their children are now able to remain together in the United States where their son can get the specialized attention he deserves.

Related Information on J-1 Hardship Waivers

What you can do if your Hardship Waiver gets denied?

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So we do get people that come in and ask us:

What do you do if your hardship waiver filed by another attorney or notario is denied?

They filed their hardship waiver with another attorney or they did it with a notario and they got their case denied – what should they do? There are two options:

  1. They can file an I-290B appeal
  2. We could refile

We’re gonna go into detail about that a little bit. One option is filing an appeal. If you feel like the officer made some errors in their decision then you can appeal and it’ll go to the AAO (Administrative Appeals Office) and another set of eyes will look at the decision. Now it’s important to contact an immigration attorney as soon as possible because you have very limited time to file the appeal so you want to do that immediately. In that situation you can address the erroneous reasons that were made in the denial so in this situation what we normally do is we prepare a detailed legal brief addressing the reasons for the denial and why we think those reasons are not accurate. Another option is to refile a case if some new facts came out – so for instance let’s say you’re a United States citizen and you have a new United States citizen child: that would be a new factor of exceptional hardship. You can refile the case and include that new factor there to try to get an approval based off of the new additional factor that your new child being born and the hardship that would create with having a child in the picture.If you are going to refile I would recommend having some new factors of exceptional hardship to discuss.If you’re going to spend this significant amount of time because you have to go through the whole filing process again and of course the money that it’s going to take to refile as well, you don’t want to just refile based off of the same situation. Now every case is unique so that would be up for your attorney to decide by evaluating the facts of your case. Sometimes it might even make sense to refile, it’s just important to get this evaluated by an immigration attorney as soon as possible, as soon as you get a denial, that way you are able to have time on your side rather than against you. I want to thank you for tuning in to get your questions answered – thank you and have an awesome day!

Related Links to other Videos and posts on Hardship Waiver Denials

I-612 Waiver Approval and Success Story

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I-612 Waiver Approval Notice (Filed on 1/2/2018, Approved on 2/4/2019)




  • Date Filed: 1/2/2018
  • Date Approved: 2/4/2019

The Ranchod Law Group was able to get the case approved even though there was Government Financing1.

The Facts About this Approval

  • Applicant has two U.S. citizen children from a relationship he had while in the U.S.
  • Is now married to a U.S. citizen
  • He is the stepfather of his wife’s children from her prior marriage.

The Ranchod Law Group argued numerous factors in this case which would contribute to a finding of exceptional hardship whether:

  • applicant returned to his home country on his own for two years;
  • his qualifying relatives (wife and two children) tried to relocate for the two-year period.

Applicant’s wife has received therapy in the past which we argued is relevant in both scenarios

We maintained:

  • If waiver were denied, Applicant would not be able to see his children from his prior relationship.
  • If his wife relocated, she wouldn’t be able to see her own children.
  • If waiver was denied, the wife and children would all lose their health coverage which is provided by Applicant’s employment.
  • Applicant’s wife is a student, unemployed, and completely financially dependent on Applicant, a role he could not fulfill from abroad.
  • Applicant couldn’t meet his child support payments from abroad.

approvals are currently taking around 17.5 months

We were pleased with the comparably quick turnaround.

(1) – The participation in an exchange program financed by an agency of the United States Government or the government of the country of citizenship or nationality or last foreign residence, for the purpose of promoting international education and cultural exchange.Click here to return to the note.

Additional information and other success stories about I-612 Waivers:

212 (e) hardship waiver approved for Client from Lebanon

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212(e) Hardship Waiver Success Story for J-1 Visa

  • Date filed: 04/17/2018
  • Date approved: 12/12/2018

Client is a professional from Lebanon. Client is married to a United States Citizen and the couple recently had a baby in the U.S. Client entered the U.S. as a J1, subject to the two year home residency requirement.

The Ranchod Law Group filed for a hardship waiver so client could remain in the U.S. with her American spouse and child, under Chapter 45 Waiver of Section 212(e) Foreign Residence Requirement, (45.3 – Waiver Based on exceptional hardship to U.S. Citizen or Lawful Permanent Resident Spouse or Child).

The case was based mostly off of arguments concerning the hardship inherent to the family’s relocation to Lebanon due to country conditions.

In order to win the case, The Ranchod Law Group argued the American spouse and/or child would suffer exceptional hardship if Client returned to Lebanon without her family to complete her home residency requirement. To support this part of the case we argued exceptional emotional hardship – hardship to the American spouse’s mental health.

We are so happy Client will be able to remain in the U.S. with her American spouse and child. Client’s next step, now that she is no longer subject to the home residency requirement, will be to apply for a marriage based greencard.

Other Success Stories and Information for J-1 Visa Holders: