Home > Research Legal Advice > Immigration > Eligibility for Discretionary Parole for a military spouse who is "inadm...
Asked 7 months ago - Petaluma, CA
FlagMy husband falls into the inadmissable category of 212a(9)(c). He EWI when he was 17, returned for a couple of weeks when he was 20 then EWI again. I am active duty military and am familiar with the idea of parole-in-place. Would he be eligible due to his inadmissable status? We have one child and I am likely to deploy early next year.
Don't speak legalese? We define thousands of terms in plain English.
Browse our legal dictionary
No. Parole in place is a system designed to help certain individuals who are eligible for adjustment of status "but for" the fact that they entered without inspection. One of the prerequisites for most adjustment applicants is that they were "inspected and admitted or paroled" into the U.S. Those that don't meet this requirement often have to leave to seek consular processing of an immigrant visa. However, by leaving, those individuals often trigger an unlawful presence bar, which says that people unlawfully present in the U.S. for a year or longer can't be admitted for a period of ten years. There is a waiver available, requiring a demonstration of hardship to a qualifying relative, but the wait for the waiver approval can itself be difficult for a family. This is especially so for spouses of military personnel deployed overseas. As a result, USCIS will sometimes allow "parole-in-place," where an individual is "paroled" into the U.S. (thereby meeting the threshhold criteria for adjustment), but without actually leaving the country (so that the unlawful presence bar is never triggered).
Your husband, unfortunately, falls into a different category of inadmissibility. Unlike the individuals described above, who would trigger the unlawful presence bar IF they left the U.S., your husband already triggered a separate bar, called the permanent bar. It is activated when someone has more than a year of unlawful presence in the U.S., then departs, then reenters (or attempts to reeenter) without admission.
Because of this, his inadmissibilty would not be "cured" by a parole in place. The parole in place would address the fact that he wasn't inspected and admitted or paroled at his last entry, but it would not overcome the separate issue of having triggered the permanent bar.
Talk to an immigration attorney. You are going to need to look for alternative solutions.
Unfortunately, I must agree with my colleague's assessment. There should certainly be an exemption for spouses of military servicemen, but there isn't. Once you reveal to the government that your husband has two illegal entries, the consulate will make the a9c finding and he would have to wait abroad for 10 years before being able to apply for a waiver.
You can consider humanitarian parole, but you'll need a lawyer to assess your chances as that's a rarely given remedy.
