{"id":1812,"date":"2024-02-14T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2024-02-14T06:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/eaganimmigration.com\/real-eagan-success-stories-making-your-valentine-permanent-with-the-i-601a-waiver\/"},"modified":"2026-04-16T15:24:45","modified_gmt":"2026-04-16T20:24:45","slug":"real-eagan-success-stories-making-your-valentine-permanent-with-the-i-601a-waiver","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/eaganimmigration.com\/en\/real-eagan-success-stories-making-your-valentine-permanent-with-the-i-601a-waiver\/","title":{"rendered":"Real Eagan Success Stories: Making Your Valentine Permanent with the I-601A Waiver"},"content":{"rendered":"\nBy Alicia Atteberry\u00a0<\/strong>\n\nThis Valentine\u2019s Day, Eagan Immigration wants to remind you that where there\u2019s love, there\u2019s a way! There are multiple ways to apply for legal status based on your marriage to a U.S. citizen or Lawful Permanent Resident, even if you\u2019ve accumulated unlawful presence in the United States. Eagan has successfully secured many clients their permanent residency using the I-601A Application for Provisional Unlawful Presence Waiver. Now, I\u2019m going to tell you about one such Eagan client who has a green card in his hands TODAY.\u00a0\u00a0<\/strong>\n

Our Story Begins\u2026<\/span><\/b>\u00a0<\/span><\/h4>\nTom\u00e1s* came to the United States from El Salvador in 2005, seeking a better life. He began working, making friends, and building a life for himself. He met his wife, Linda*, in church. Tom\u00e1s and Linda began dating and quickly fell in love. Linda had a difficult upbringing, so she took comfort in Tom\u00e1s\u2019 reliability and calm nature. Tom\u00e1s admired Linda\u2019s strength, perseverance, and beauty. They soon married, and by 2019, had two children.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span>\n\nWhen their second child was born, Linda needed special surgery and the complications left her with mobility issues and chronic pain. Tom\u00e1s took over sole responsibility for supporting their family financially and also stepped up and made sure that Linda was not overexerting herself and had all the resources she needed to heal. Despite the challenges life threw at them, Tom\u00e1s and Linda found each other, chose to love each other, and made it work. In a chaotic world, they built a safe, stable family life for themselves and their children. <\/span>\u00a0<\/span>\n

So, What\u2019s the Problem?<\/span><\/b>\u00a0<\/span><\/h4>\nTom\u00e1s and Linda face one major issue. Tom\u00e1s was undocumented. Like many people fleeing poverty and violence in their home countries, he had entered the United States and accumulated what is known as unlawful presence: time spent in the United States without proper documentation. This meant that even though he could apply for status based on his marriage to a U.S. citizen, returning to his home country for the required consular processing interview could result in him triggering a 10-year bar from entering the United States due to his prior unlawful presence.\u00a0 Every day, Tom\u00e1s and Linda lived in fear that the life they built together could be ripped away from them if Tom\u00e1s was deported. The family was now completely dependent on Tom\u00e1s financially, but his lack of legal status made it more difficult for him to find well-paying work or anything that would provide him medical benefits. Now that Linda was facing chronic medical issues and they had young children, these problems became even more pressing.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span>\n\nThat\u2019s when Tom\u00e1s and Linda reached out to Eagan Immigration. We got right to work collecting information, evidence, and most importantly \u2013 Tom\u00e1s and Linda\u2019s story. We determined that the best course of action was to apply for a waiver for his Unlawful Presence with the I-601A.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span>\n

What is the I-601A? What made our client qualify?<\/span><\/b>\u00a0<\/span><\/h4>\nAn I-601A waiver requires that the applicant and beneficiary already have an approved I-130 Petition for an Alien Relative, establishing that a qualifying relationship exists between the applicant and beneficiary. The I-601A waiver will forgive the unlawful presence of a beneficiary\/qualifying relative (in this case, Tom\u00e1s) if their removal from the United States would create \u201cextreme hardship\u201d for the applicant (in this case, Linda). The waiver also allows the beneficiary to travel to their home country and interview for normal consular processing, without fear of being refused entry when they come back to the United States. Now, in order to qualify, we needed to demonstrate that <\/span>Linda<\/span><\/i>, the U.S. citizen, would suffer extreme psychological, medical, and\/or financial hardship if separated from her husband, Tom\u00e1s. Because Linda relied on Tom\u00e1s so much, we believed he would easily qualify for the I-601A waiver and be able to become a permanent resident.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span>\n\nTo determine \u201cextreme hardship,\u201d U.S. Customs and Immigration Services considers the following factors:\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span>\n