Vidalia, GA Immigration Law Firms & Lawyers

If you fail to take all the required courses, you will lose your F1 status. If you accept employment off-campus without permission of USCIS, you will lose your F1 status. Generally, you cannot adjust status if you do not have a legal status. It means that, if you lose your F1 status, you will not be eligible to receive a green card without leaving the U.S. and going through a consular interview in your country. (And, if you stay in the U.S. for 180 days without status, you will be barred from coming back to the U.S. for 3 years - or for 10 years if you stay here without status for 1 year or longer) The only exception from this rule is if you applied for a green card because your spouse (or your parent or your child) *who is a U.S. citizen* filed an immigrant petition for you. In such a case, you do not have to worry about maintaining your visa status. Otherwise, enroll in all the required courses and ask your foreign students adviser before accepting any job offer.

Your question about expungement assumes incorrectly that such a step would be helpful for your spouse's immigration eligibility. In general, an immigration applicant must disclose and provide disposition to the USCIS about all arrests and convictions regardless of whether they eventually became subject of an expungement, became pardoned, were the subject of a court-sealed file, were the subject of a juvenile court, etc. It sounds like you are a U.S. Citizen who wishes to file a marriage-based application for adjustment of status for your husband, who was convicted of a felony 15 years ago when he was age 16. If that is correct, then there is no substitute for having an immigration attorney carefully review all immigration-relevant circumstances relating to your husband, including all details about the conviction, in order to advise you and him about immigration eligibilities, options and strategies.

Assuming that your boyfriend has not been previously deported, and that he did not enter the United States on the visa waiver program, he should have a right to a hearing before an immigration judge. While the rights of undocumented foreign nationals has been severely limited in the last few years, there are still some possibilities based on the number of years he has lived in the United States, his family ties here and whether his relatives would suffer if he were deported, conditions in his home country and other factors. Its very important to consult with a qualified immigration attorney so that you know your options.