Waiver of Inadmissibility

A waiver of inadmissibility is required most often for immigrant visa applicants (ie spouse, child or parent) whose visa has been denied for the following reasons:

Heath related such as serious communicable disease;
Serious criminal history such as those events that involved the police and/or courts;
Immigration fraud or misrepresentations such as working illegally in the US or making false statements to US Customs, USCIS or Embassy officers;
Subject to 3 or 10 year ban such as those applicable for overstaying your US visa in the past or being deported; and
Others

If you are applying for a waiver of inadmissibility for a family member, you must submit evidence that demonstrates the denial of the applicants visa would result in "extreme hardship" to the person sponsoring the visa.

Such evidence of "extreme hardship" would include the following:

Evidence establishing family relationship to the sponsor;
Conditions is the applicant's foreign country of residence;
Financial impact of departure from the US if the person sponsoring the visa had to relocate to the applicant's foreign country of residence;
Significant health conditions that prevent the persons sponsoring the visa from leaving the US;
Impact of separate on the relationship between the visa applicant and the sponsor; and
Other conditions that impact the relocation, such as economic and social conditions impacting quality of life, technical skills, etc.

The waiver of inadmissibility is applied for "after" the interview at the US Embassy. Thus, if you know that you are inadmissible in advance for reasons such as past criminal conviction or overstay, then you must still apply for the visa as normal and then wait until after the interview at the US Embassy to apply for the waiver of inadmissibility.

A waiver of inadmissibility application normally takes approximately 3 - 6 months to process depending on the schedules of the USCIS and US Embassy.