Protecting Our Client With An I-751 Waiver During Abusing Relationship

Nationality: Vietnam
Case: I-751 Waiver; Petition to Remove Conditions on Residence Based on
Marriage Entered in Good Faith and Client Being Subject to being Battered
or Experiencing Extreme Cruelty by U.S. Citizen
Approval Date: 01/23/2021

Challenges:

1. Divorce Process not finalized at the time of filing
2. Extreme shortage of bona fide documentation
3. Little documentation in evidence of abuse inflicted by U.S. Citizen
4. No commingling of assets or children

BACKGROUND

Ms. Pham’s time in the United States for the last few years have been nothing short of a nightmare. After meeting what she thought was the love of her life in 2013 over Facebook, she married him in 2014, and moved to the United States. In 2017, Ms. Pham and her then husband came into Tsang and Associates and filed an I-751 joint petition to remove the conditions on her residency based on their bonafide marriage. The problem, however, was that later that year they separated, and things got ugly. It turns out that Ms. Pham’s fairytale had quickly turned into a nightmare, and she had been suffering both emotional and physical abuse at the hands of her then-husband for the last few years.

At this point, divorce seemed like the best option for Ms. Pham’s well-being, and in 2017, divorce proceedings began. Since they were now in the process of divorce, in 2019 Ms. Pham filed an I-751 Waiver herself based on the fact that she had entered the marriage in good faith. Right as this draining process began to wind down however, she received a Request for Evidence from USCIS, questioning the bonafide nature of her marriage. Terrified and exhausted, she turned to our office yet again for help with this issue.

KEYS TO SUCCESS

Our office understood that Ms. Pham had been through a lot up until this point, and immediately began working on her case, as to help her put this dark chapter in her life behind her for good. The difficulty with her case was that the couple had little joint documentation to prove that they were in a bonafide marriage, and those that she did have were already submitted in her previous filing, leaving us with little new information to share. We took what documents we did have that had been sufficient to prove her bonafide marriage before, including affidavits from friends and family, and used that.

A key strategy, however, was that we argued that in addition to the marriage she entered in good faith, she qualified for the waiver on the basis that he had been a victim of battery and extreme cruelty by a U.S. Citizen, another reason she did not possess a lot of evidence of her marriage, as it was an unhappy one. Lastly, we prepared her for her interview thoroughly, an important determinant in whether or not she would receive an approval.

OUTCOME

In January of 2021, Ms. Pham’s waiver was finally approved. The whole process took around two years. She thanked Tsang and Associated profusely for helping her through this difficult time when she felt not only anxious about her fate, but very alone. Thanks to Tsang and Associates, Ms. Pham can begin doing the work to heal from her abusive past marriage and look to a brighter future, with happier days ahead.