Christina Joan Murdoch’s Answers

It's definitely more of a challenge to establish that you have a good faith marriage when you don't live with your spouse full-time after the marriage. But it's not impossible, if you have a reasonable and believable explanation for why you need to maintain separate addresses. I would strongly recommend that you and your fiance retain a good immigration lawyer to help you with this case. Not only do you have the issue of your separate residences to deal with, when you try to get a green card...

You can sponsor your sisters, but you have to file separate I-130s for all of them. Also, your sisters, unlike your mother, are going to face a considerable wait before they can immigrate (many years) because of severe backlogs in the visa category for siblings of U.S. citizens. Once your mother gets her green card, she can also sponsor your sisters (assuming they are unmarried). There's a waiting list for those visas too, but it's shorter than the waiting list for siblings. I would...

You can, but it's probably not the best evidence, especially if the mail is only addressed to you. More convincing are letters or cards written to you and your spouse by friends and family or bills addressed to both of you by name at the same address. This is one way a good lawyer can be helpful, and why I recommend you hire one. A lawyer can help you sort through the documents you have and arrange the most helpful ones into an organized packet of information for the officer. Christina...

That isn't quite right. You have until the expiration date on your visas to enter the U.S. Once you enter, you become a permanent resident immediately. And once you become a permanent resident you must maintain a residence in the U.S. or you will be found to have abandoned your green card. So you cannot take one year after entering before moving to the U.S. What is true is that once you become a permanent resident and get your actual green card you may travel outside of the U.S. for up to...

You need to consult with a qualified immigration lawyer. If your boyfriend entered the U.S. illegally, he's probably not going to be able to get his green card without leaving the U.S. and going back to his native country to apply for an immigrant visa. And if he leaves the U.S. at this point he will probably trigger a ten-year bar on coming back. This means he will need a waiver to get his immigrant visa, and he can only get that if he can show that you would suffer extreme hardship should...

I think you need to have a consultation with a good immigration attorney about this and probably hire a good attorney to help you. It's not clear to me exactly what happened, but one possibility is that your removal proceedings were administratively closed. This happens when the government decides that, for various reasons, their resources are not best spent trying to deport you. When a case is administratively closed it is indefinitely put on hold until either the government or you make a...

I would suggest talking in more detail with a good immigration lawyer to make sure your son is not a U.S. citizen already. If you are a U.S. citizen, there's a chance he is too even if he was born abroad. If he is already a citizen, he doesn't need an immigrant visa but a U.S. passport. Christina Murdoch Attorney Scott D. Pollock & Associates, P.C. 105 W. Madison St., Suite 2200 Chicago, IL 60602 (312) 444-1940 (312) 444-1950 (fax) cmurdoch@lawfirm1.com www.lawfirm1.com "Like"...

Yes, your sister may file an I-130 immigrant visa petition for you if she is at least 21 years old. But you should know that, if you have overstayed, you will probably not be able to apply for your green card from within the United States when a visa becomes available to you. You will have to leave and go back to your native country to apply for an immigrant visa at a U.S. consulate. In addition, if you overstay by more than 180 days, you will likely face a bar on returning to the United...

If you've been given a hearing, you should be given a chance to show an immigration judge that you always intended to come to back to the U.S. after you finished caring for your mother and thus did not abandon your status. Start gathering documents showing your mother was ill and documents showing you maintained some ties to the U.S. for the last three years (i.e. US tax returns, bank account statements, evidence of property you own in the U.S., if any). Any lawyer you hire, and you should...

I would suggest meeting at length with a good immigration lawyer to discuss your options. They are pretty limited at this point. You can continue with inquiries to the consulate. You can make congressional inquiries (which a lawyer can help you with). And as a last resort you can bring a lawsuit in federal court asking the court to order the consultate to make some sort of final decision on your husband's visa application. I have worked on a case in the past where this approach resulted...