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Legal Grounds of Inadmissibility and I-601 Waivers for Prostitution

Transcript of the above video:

In this video today, we're going to be discussing the rather serious topic of prostitution, prostitution waivers with respect the United States immigration. So just to go through, sort of, the statutory authority on this pursuant to the immigration Nationality Act section 212 A to D, a foreign national who prostitutes or who has engaged in or sought to engage in prostitution or to procure prostitutes within the last 10 years or seeks to engage in prostitution is inadmissible to the United States.

Waivers available, there are certain grounds of inadmissibility which are waivable under the INA. It should be noted that pursuant to INA that the immigration Nationality Act 212 H for immigrants or INA 2 1 to D 3 for non-immigrants may apply under this ground of inadmissibility. To get into specifics here, prostitution is an issue. It can come up in certain situations. It's not a frequent issue but it does come up sometimes out here in Southeast Asia especially in some of the more economically depressed areas of Southeast Asia.

The thing with the prostitution waiver as noted by statute, first of all there's a 10-year issue so if one say worked in the field of prostitution 15 years prior to their application for a visa to the United States, admitting that does not create a legal ground of inadmissibility so long as set activity has not occurred in that 15 year interval. Because again, the statute specifically states 10 years.

Another thing to think about with respect to this issue and with respect specifically to the ICS of one waiver, which I will get to a little bit more in detail here in a moment, is the issue of or seats to engage in prostitution as admissibility is inadmissible the seeking to engage element of this statutory section comes after the 10-year requirement. So basically, someone with an actual to engage in prostitution in the United States remains in a Mrs. Bull regardless of prior activity. So one could have engaged in prostitution 10 years in a day prior to the application for a visa. But add the intent to engage in said activity in the future which leads us to the issue which leads us to the issue of the ISIS of one waiver. Because if someone intends to engage in that behavior in the future, they may or may not be eligible for a waiver and they definitely will be eligible for the inadmissibility so to speak, specifically to the 601.

And why is it's this intention to engage further it's so important. First of all, in order to obtain an I-601 waiver,  a legal ground of inadmissibility needs to be shown with respect to an immigrant visa specifically his immigrant spouse visa or fiance visa it needs or family visa for that matter. He needs to be shown that in this extreme hardship will occur or befall a United States citizen or lawful permanent resident as a result of denial of the issuance of an I-601 waiver. This is important because a street hardship is very it sounds like an easily definable term it's actually a term of art. There's a great deal of actually massive body jurisprudence sort of underlying the issue of extreme hardship which we're not going to get into in this. But to move specifically to the issue of intention to engage in the future, so let's say that there's an issue of admissibility with respect to prostitution and let's say that the illicit activity occurred five years prior to the applicant's visa to the United States, the issue of intention to engage in the future is rather important with respect to one element of the 601. Because it's important to show that the applicant in question has clearly made such sets which rectify their overall lifestyle in moving away from a lifestyle that would cause that individual to become involved in that lifestyle again.

So if it's very clear that someone has moved on with their life from engaging in sex act, in such activity in the past and they've moved on with their life and are doing something totally different and have changed their lifestyle choices, change their lifestyle decisions in such a way that they're, for lack of a better term, materially different than they were at the time they were engaged in the illicit activity, that's going to go a long way with respect to not only getting over the issue of maybe being found not an admissible. Because the activity hasn't occurred within the 10-year period but also if a waiver is necessary, it's also a good thing to be able to show because as part of the waiver process you know these officers are going to want to see that the individual in question isn't likely to succumb to undertaking such activities and upon their arrival in the United States.

So again, showing a disinclination toward engaging in such activities in the future is important as is the issue of the extreme hardship with respect to the I-601 waiver. However, getting into issues with roost acidic with respect to extreme hardship is very difficult to do in a video such as this as it's going to be very fact dependent. It's going to be extremely circumstantially dependent on the circumstances of both the applicant and the possible beneficiary or American citizen involved in the case or citizens or lawful permanent residents showing these kinds of things and demonstrating what extreme hardship is going to mean. In this specific case, it's extremely unique and cases involving I-601 waiver approvals or I-601 waiver generally such cases are almost like snowflakes in the sense that they're so unique.