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ResourcesVisa & Immigration LawUS Immigration LawWhat Happens After an I-601 Waiver Is Approved?

What Happens After an I-601 Waiver Is Approved?

Transcript of the above video:

In this video today, as the title suggests, we are discussing I-601 Waivers. For those who are unaware of what an I-601 waiver is, there is another video on this channel, in fact multiple other videos on this channel, discussing I-601 waivers at some length. Suffice it to say, an I-601 waiver is used utilized by those who are found to be inadmissible to the United States under one of the legal grounds of inadmissibility listed in the Immigration and Nationality Act and if found inadmissible, the only real remedy for that inadmissibility is the use of a waiver; in most cases it is an I-601 waiver. There are certain circumstances where what is called an I-212 may be necessary but in most cases a simple I -601, and I- 601, and they are not exactly the most simple things in the world, but the i-601 waiver is going to be what is needed to go ahead and overcome that inadmissibility.

So basically this week we got an approval on an I-601 waiver and I was thinking about it after I had sort of looked over the approval notice and I thought to myself, "We need to do a video about what happens after an I-601 Waiver is approved. We discuss a lot about I -601 waivers with respect to what they are needed for and the reasons and findings of inadmissibility that they are associated with, but I never really thought about it. We haven’t really done a video about what happens if they do get approved. I think that there is a common misconception out there that upon approval of an I-601, the visa is sort of just magically issued; that is not the case at all. I-601 waivers, especially in cases where the applicant is applying outside of the United States for their visa, I-601 waivers are kind of a reversion if you will to an earlier phase in the process in that, and again it's not exactly a reversion, it is a totally different process but it seems like it to those undertaking this process as a whole. For those going through like a K-1 process and say or the processing of a CR-1 or an IR-1 visa. There is the initial petition being filed with USCIS. Upon approval of that you are going to be dealing with National Visa Center back with the embassy in order to move the case forward through consular processing at a US Embassy or Consulate abroad. Presuming that a Consulate finds a ground of inadmissibility and that that ground of inadmissibility is in fact waive-able by use of an I-601, which that may or may not be the case depending on the finding of inadmissibility, the 601 is then filed and  upon approval what happens? Well the case actually has to be sent back to the US Embassy or notification has to be sent back to the US Embassy who made the finding of inadmissibility that in fact the finding of inadmissibility is now waived and that individual is now able to obtain a visa and travel to the United States. Essentially there is another round if you will of Consular Processing that one needs to go through in order to finish up dealing with the visa and getting it issued, so for example in the time that it may have taken for an I-601 to  adjudicate, and it can be a while, it can be anywhere from 6 to 18 months maybe even longer, depending on the nature of the underlying case, if it is a contentious issue etc, etc. documentation requirements can be  rather time consuming so these cases can take quite a while from the time of the finding to the ultimate issuance of an ultimate visa and the reason for that is in the aftermath of the 601 being approved, you may have to go back and re-obtain things like police clearances things like medical examination documentation because all of that documentation may have gone sort of "stale" in the time it took to get the I 601 waiver issued. So there is a whole sort of other process that happens on the back end of a 601 but that being said in most cases where the finding of admissibility has been waived, the process isn't particularly time-consuming nor is it particularly cumbersome it is just a matter of going through a few more weeks of the "motions" to go ahead and get the document issued and then once the visa is issued, because the 601 has been approved, that individual can travel to the United States rather freely and be admitted notwithstanding prior finding of inadmissibility.