Illegal Alien ‘Petty’ Criminals Denied Waiver Given Another Opportunity
The Provisional Unlawful Presence Waiver (I-601A) allows spouses, children, or parents of U.S. citizens to be pardoned for their time spent illegally in the U.S. and to apply for a green card. The new USCIS guidance says that applicants should not be denied an I-601A waiver due to a past criminal offense if it “falls under the petty offense or youthful offender exceptions or is not considered a crime involving moral turpitude.”
USCIS is now re-evaluating waiver applications that were denied ‘solely’ because of a prior criminal offense “in order to determine whether there is reason to believe the prior criminal offense might render the applicant inadmissible.”
Jessica Vaughan, Policy Studies Director at the Center for Immigration Studies, told Daily Caller that the Administration is now “second guessing” staff decisions on inadmissibility due to a criminal past. “It is really striking to me the extent to which they go to bend over backwards and help marginally qualified people and maybe even unqualified applicants work through the system,” Vaughan said. “(T)here are 4.5 million pretty qualified legal immigrants waiting their turn overseas and managing to get through our system.”
Vaughan added, “What I can’t understand is why they won’t trust the process that exists. It’s not like these people are automatically all getting denied. What they are doing is basically steamrolling all of the checks and balances in our legal immigration system to screen out potentially unqualified people and working under the assumption that they all qualify, that nobody should be denied.”
Although the USCIS announcement surprised NumbersUSA’s Jenks, she noted, “This is part of the overall effort to see how few people this administration can actually deport.”
Read more in The Daily Caller.