Exceptional Hardship Waiver for Prominent, but Illegal, J-1 doctor

One of the most prominent doctors in a Pennsylvania community, with a perfect family of four children born and raised in the U.S., was unknown by everyone, including his own family, to be an illegal alien physician who had overstayed a J-1 visa. The problem is that the physician had a two year home country residence requirement which had not been fulfilled and which a number of previous attorneys had been unable to get waived.

We decided to apply for an exceptional hardship waiver based upon the hardship to the U.S. citizen children. However, the U.S. citizen children, including teenagers, could not be brought into the process because their father did not want them to know that he was a long-time illegal alien. We developed a solution of having expert psychiatric testimony based upon a psychiatric evaluation of the children. We created the premise that the psychiatrist was doing a story on the children of a famous doctor, which enabled the psychiatrist to interview and obtain all necessary information about the children without letting the children know that their father was an illegal alien.

With this psychiatric evaluation as a main exhibit, the waiver application was filed and ultimately approved based on the hardship to the children, despite the fact that the J-1 physician had been out of status for almost 20 years.