Immigration Waivers
Over 15 years of experience preparing immigration waivers.
An immigration waiver is a request to forgive something in your past that would otherwise keep you from getting your residency. It might be years spent in the United States without status. It might be a prior deportation. It might be a misrepresentation you made on an old visa application. Whatever it is, the waiver is often the only thing standing between you and a green card.
It is also one of the hardest applications to win in immigration law.
Attorney Sherwin C. Carballo has been preparing immigration waivers for over 15 years. We do not treat a waiver as just some paperwork to be filled out. We treat it as a complex case that needs to be researched, investigated, and diligently assembled.
Why Waivers Are Difficult to Win
For the most common waivers, the officer has to be convinced of two separate things: first, that a qualifying U.S. citizen or permanent resident family member would suffer extreme hardship, and second, as a matter of discretion, that your case deserves forgiveness at all.
That means two families with nearly identical facts can get opposite results, depending entirely on how well the hardship was identified, documented, and explained. The evidence does not assemble itself, and the officer is not going to go looking for it. This is why preparation matters more in a waiver case than in almost any other kind of immigration filing.
Our Process
Here is exactly what happens when you bring a waiver case to our office.
- Initial consultation. You sit down with the attorney and we go through your complete immigration history — every entry and exit, any arrests, any prior removal orders, and anything you have filed before. The purpose is to determine which waiver applies to your situation, whether you are eligible for it, and who your qualifying relative would be (if needed). Sometimes the answer is that you do not need a waiver at all. Sometimes the answer is that you are not eligible yet. Either way, you should know that at the beginning, not after you have spent thousands of dollars.
- Waiver interview with the attorney. This is a separate, in-depth appointment that we book after you open your case with our office — and it is done by the attorney, not a paralegal. We go deep into your family’s circumstances: medical conditions, finances, conditions in the country you would be returning to, who depends on you for care, your children’s education and needs, and the emotional and practical realities of separation. Most of the evidence that actually wins a waiver comes out of this conversation. It is not something that can be captured on an intake form.
- The attorney prepares your supporting document list. Not a paralegal, and not a generic checklist handed to every client. Your document list is written by the attorney based on what came out of your waiver interview, so you are gathering the evidence that matters in your case instead of collecting papers that will not move the officer.
- Two hardship letters are drafted. One for the qualifying relative and one for the applicant. Two letters allow the officer to see the hardship from both sides — what the qualifying relative would face, and what the applicant would face — in each person’s own voice, drawn from what you told us in the interview.
- The complete packet is assembled. All appropriate forms, a cover letter that explains the legal basis, and a table of contents indexing every exhibit. An officer with hundreds of files on their desk should be able to open yours and immediately understand what the hardship is and exactly what proof we have. Making the officer’s job easy is part of the strategy.
What Sets Us Apart
The attorney does the work that decides the case
At many offices, the client meets the attorney once and then deals with staff for the rest of the case. In our waiver cases, the attorney works together with the paralegals for the duration of the case, and the attorney exclusively conducts the hardship interview with the client, and writes the supporting document list. Those two steps determine the entire theory of your case, and everything else follows from them. They are never delegated.
Psychological evaluations only when the case calls for one
A psychological evaluation can be strong evidence when there is a real condition to document. It can also do damage. When an office sends every single client to the same evaluator regardless of the facts, officers notice — and an evaluation that is not supported by the rest of the record can look like evidence created for the filing rather than a genuine condition. That undermines the credibility of everything else you submitted.
We make that decision case by case. If your facts support an evaluation, we will tell you and explain why. If they do not, we will tell you that too, and put the effort into the evidence that will actually help.
Some of the more common waivers we handle
Form I-601A — Provisional Unlawful Presence Waiver
The I-601A is filed inside the United States, before you leave for your immigrant visa interview abroad. It forgives unlawful presence only — the three- and ten-year bars that are triggered when you depart the country after accruing a certain amount of unlawful presence. It does not forgive anything else.
You always need an approved immigrant petition, and you need a qualifying relative — a U.S. citizen or lawful permanent resident spouse or parent — who would suffer extreme hardship if you were not allowed to return. The major advantage is the timing: you get the decision before you leave the country, instead of leaving and hoping for an approval.
USCIS Form I-601A page: https://www.uscis.gov/i-601a (https://www.uscis.gov/i-601a)
Form I-601 — Application for Waiver of Grounds of Inadmissibility
The I-601 is the broader waiver and covers far more ground. It is used for fraud or misrepresentation, for the unlawful presence bars once a person is already outside the United States, for certain criminal grounds, for health-related grounds, in some circumstances for alien smuggling, and more.
Depending on the situation, it can be filed from inside or outside the country. It can sometimes be filed together with an adjustment of status, and other times it is filed after a denial at the U.S. consulate. The qualifying relative requirement and the legal standard are not the same for every ground — what has to be proven for a fraud waiver is different from what has to be proven for a criminal ground — which is why identifying the correct ground of inadmissibility at the outset is so important.
USCIS Form I-601 page: https://www.uscis.gov/i-601 (https://www.uscis.gov/i-601)
Form I-212 — Permission to Reapply for Admission After Deportation or Removal
The I-212 is technically not a waiver. It is a request for permission to apply to come back after you have been deported or removed. There is no qualifying relative requirement; instead, the officer weighs all the favorable and unfavorable factors in your case, and hardship to you personally can count, as well as hardship to your family.
One-point clients often misunderstand: an approved I-212 does not by itself let you enter the United States. It removes the bar created by the removal order. You still need the underlying visa approval. Many cases require an I-212 alongside another waiver, and the order and timing in which they are filed is something you should discuss with an experienced immigration attorney.
USCIS Form I-212 page: https://www.uscis.gov/i-212 (https://www.uscis.gov/i-212)
Other waivers
These three are the most common that we come across, but they are not the only waivers that exist. We also handle the Form I-192 waiver for nonimmigrants, which comes up most often in U visa and T visa cases, along with other forms of waiver relief. If you are not certain which one applies to you, that is exactly what a consultation is for.
USCIS Form I-192 page: https://www.uscis.gov/i-192 (https://www.uscis.gov/i-192)
For a fuller explanation of how these waivers differ from one another, see our blog post on the most common immigration waivers:
Do I have to leave the country?
Sometimes yes, sometimes no. It depends on how you entered, what your ground of inadmissibility is, and which waiver applies. The I-601A exists specifically so that people can get a decision on unlawful presence before departing. Other situations require consular processing abroad. This is one of the most important questions to answer correctly.
How long does a waiver take?
Processing times change constantly and vary by form and service center. Rather than quote a number that will be out of date, we recommend checking the current USCIS processing times directly: https://egov.uscis.gov/processing-times/ (https://egov.uscis.gov/processing-times/). We will give you a realistic picture for your specific case at your consultation.
My waiver was denied before. Can anything be done?
Often, yes. A denial is frequently the result of hardship that was real but never properly documented, or a ground of inadmissibility that was never correctly identified. We would want to review the prior filing and the denial notice to see what was actually submitted and what was missing.
What does immigration mean by “extreme hardship”?
It means more than the ordinary difficulty any family goes through when they are separated, or when they choose to leave the U.S. together. It is a specific legal standard, and it is built out of the details of your life — health, finances, country conditions, caretaking, family ties, and how those factors combine. We wrote about how this assessment works here: https://www.elabogadocarballo.com/i-601a-hardship-assessment/ (https://www.elabogadocarballo.com/i-601a-hardship-assessment/).
To find out more, schedule a consultation with our office.
Call 323-592-9611
The Law Office of Sherwin C. Carballo — Serving all 50 states.
1055 E. Colorado Blvd., #500 Pasadena, California 91106
323-592-9611