About the Government Shutdown and Filing I-601A Waivers

• The government government shutdown
• How to prepare an I-601A waiver

So we have been getting a lot of calls about how this government government shutdown is going to affect or is it going to affect filings with the USCIS. So great news, the United States CIS and the department of state are funded with filing fees. So since they are self-funded the government government shutdown does not affect your filings with the USCIS or your United States embassy interviews.Alright now onto our next topic we recently received an I-601 “>I-601 A Waiver.So I wanted to share with you how to file an I-601A waiver it’s really important to demonstrate that there is exceptional hardship to the United States citizen it’s not enough to just show that there is going to be separation. Now you might be thinking, well being separated from my children, from my spouse that’s exceptional hardship to me, but unfortunately what the law states is that mere separation is not enough, but how we build the case is by looking at what the hardship factors would be to your United States citizen spouse.We file many spousal cases, it could also be to your United States citizen parent as well. So for instance in the case that we just got approved they had a United States citizen spouse, United States citizen husband, and they also have two children and what we talked about is:

• the health issues that the United States citizen has;
• the psychological issues that the United States citizen would face;
• how they would face exceptional hardship if they had to go back to Mexico .

We were able to do that through extensive documentation, providing economic surveys for instance, and we also like to explain this in detail through a legal brief, which is really important in demonstrating the exceptional hardship.With the health issues it’s really important that you document with actual evidence. You want to make sure you have, for instance, medical records because you can’t just make it up and say “Oh I have issues with my heart” they want to see an actual medical record.Alright, so moving on to the next type of hardship, you could also look at for instance psychological hardship. I mentioned mere separation is not enough however for instance:

• if you have a history of depression then looking at the psychological evaluation;
• having a psychological evaluation done, looking at the history of therapy that you might have had and providing that documentation as well demonstrating how that depression could be affected by the separation of you and your spouse.

You also want to document the country condition.How we do that is by providing extensive documentation and research on the country conditions with statistics from a reputable organisation. We also like to refer to what the department of state has put out as well. Additionally we like to look at career disruption and also financial aspects as well because in that situation we are able to show that perhaps you wouldn’t be able to get the same career if you had to go to your spouse’s home country or you would face adverse financial conditions and we back this up with economic surveys and other forms of documentation as well.Alright, we just got a question(I believe it’s Maleek from Los Angeles asking us):

We are going to call a wrap for today, so we’ll see you next week again. You can ask your questions and we do respond throughout the week – thank you and have an awesome day!