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ResourcesVisa & Immigration LawUS Immigration LawI-407 Surrender and Refiling for Immigrant Status

I-407 Surrender and Refiling for Immigrant Status

Transcript of the above video:

As the title of this video suggests, we are discussing I-407 Surrender and subsequent refiling for Immigrant Visa status.

I have had this happen, I have had it happen here recently. This comes up once maybe every year; yeah about every year it seems to come up in our office. I want to be really clear, I am prefacing this video, if you are thinking about doing this for whatever reason you need to talk to a lawyer. I am not saying what particular lawyer but you need to talk to a qualified legal professional that deals with US Immigration on a frequent basis because if you think you know what you are doing with this, you may not. 

That stated, what are we talking about? Well I see this happen, like I said it is not frequent but it is not unheard of. About once a year I see something like this. For instance one time we had a case that involved someone who was abroad far longer than they should have been. Their Green Card had expired and they had not been in the US; they were Permanent Resident but they had not been in the US for a prolonged period of time. Long story short, basically we were trying to get them back to the States and this is back in the days when we had a Bangkok USCIS office here and we could do some of this stuff a lot more easily than unfortunately it is the case that we can do them under the Trump Administration and presumably beyond. What was going on was, this person presumably still had their Residence notwithstanding the fact that their Green Card had expired they presumably still had their Residence. For this reason we had to deal with surrendering that Residence and then turning back around and filing for an Immigrant Visa case. Understand there may be other options including what is called an SB-1 Returning Resident Visa but in this set of circumstances and again I see this occasionally, it is someone that has been abroad so long that even an SB-1 or Returning Resident Visa is not really an option because they just simply don't meet the criteria. So we had to affirmatively surrender status and then go request it again. It is a very weird kind of catch-22 or maybe I shouldn't call it that but it is kind of a weird paradox where you have to affirmatively give up status. Because you don't have the Green Card, you can't board the plane and therefore you can't get into the United States, so you have to give up the status you want in order to apply for the status you want. It is very odd. Very rare circumstances will come up where I will see this have to occur but it does happen from time to time. For those who are unaware, a 407 Surrender is where you affirmatively give up your Residence and then obviously if you are applying for Immigrant status you are applying to become a resident. Very odd set of circumstances that will come up where we will see this scenario need to play out especially where an SB-1 Returning Resident Visa is not an option but it does happen. 

For those folks who do find themselves in that position need to proceed with this with caution. Also if you are watching this video and think this applies to you it is highly likely it probably doesn't. Because you think it might apply to you there may be other options. As I said check out maybe an SB-1 Returning Resident Visa or your circumstances may be such that you may not need to affirmatively surrender your status. Again it is going to be very fact driven. It is a very good idea to contact a legal professional on something like this because this is something you can definitely make worse if you don't know what you are doing. But there is a limited set of circumstances where this counterintuitive process occurs where you have to sort of affirmatively give something up that you are affirmatively trying to get back.