Immigration Problem and Advise

[titanman4you]

An individual (U.S. citizen wife and and illegal Mexican) hired an attorney to file their immigration paper. The individual is a U.S. citizen and married to an illegal alien, the paperwork was filed by their previous attorney. This attorney received an I-130 approval and the application has been sent to the NVC. However, this petition was approved in 2004. Its been 5 years since filing, and there have been no other communications from the attorney nor the USCIS. Do you think the case has been closed? If not, why is there a delay? Also, the illegal alien is in U.S. I don’t understand why the USCIS sent his approved I-130 petition to the consulate. The attorney never filed an I-485, so he expected this illegal alien to go back to the country of origin for consulate processing. Do you this is a good idea? The illegal alien has never been detected by the U.S. officials. I would advise that this illegal alien go back undetected and setup an interview at the U.S. consulate. Hopefully, you can enlighten me on this.

I am friend of this family, and I have been trying to assist them every way I could. They have two minor children which I am their god-father. Hope you can give me good advise.

 

[Jackolantern]

Are you saying this person entered the US illegally, as in sneaking across the border without a visa? If that is the case, he would not be eligible to adjust status within the US, because that requires entering the US legally. For someone who is married to a US citizen, they will normally forgive visa overstays, but not illegal entry.

They must have forwarded the case to the consulate because the lack of legal entry would disqualify him from adjusting status within the US. By now they must have closed the case for a failure to contact the consulate for such a long time.

Sneaking back to Mexico and pretending that he never was in the US for those years would be ridiculous, as he is married to a US citizen who lives in the US and had two children with her. Getting caught in such a blatant lie would likely result in a lifetime ban from the US.