J-1 advisory opinion for an Iranian

[Alish 0]

Briefly my wife and I are citizens and permanent residents of Iran.  My wife came to the US with a J-1 Visa on June 2013 for a dental program for which she was self-funded. Her University, by the time of issuing her DS 2019 form, mistakenly wrote the United Arab Emirates (UAE) as the country of her permanent residency. I think this mistake was made, because by the time of her application to the University, my wife was a student in the UAE.  I should mention that UAE does not offer permanent residency to foreign nationals. Also in my wife’s UAE visa, it is mentioned that she is a student and is not allowed to work in the country. We contacted the University office of international students (OIS) about this mistake. The OIS student adviser judged her as not subject and mentioned that she is sure that this mistake wouldn’t affect the judgment by the Department of State (DoS) because she was self-funded. 
So, we applied for the first time for the advisory opinion online for which she was judged as “Subject”. Immediately afterwards, we asked the university to amend DS2019 form, but they refused to do so claiming that because her status changed from J-1 to F-1 they are not able to amend the form. Still they wrote a letter to the DoS explaining the error. We applied for another advisory opinion and included the copy of this letter and all the documents that shows she is an Iranian and not a permanent resident of UAE. Yet we received another copy of the same judgement that was received before with the previous case number, for our second inquiry. It seems to me that they have not even considered the new case and neglected the provided documents. I should mention that we cannot even track the second case number online. These judgement are particularly interesting because she already changed her status once. 
I am writing this to ask you what course action we should take.  Anyone had the same experience? I am sure that she is not subject since she is Iranian and never been permanent resident of any other country. I appreciate all your help.

[Coco8 1,042]

I've read of people that were studying in country X and received a J1 with country X on the J1 even though they were from country Y. 

 

I think that rather than try to keep changing the DS 2019, just request a waiver of "no objection". But before doing that, call the UAE embassy to ask if they can give you a no objection statement (NOS). Explain your situation carefully but do not tell them all the story about the fact that they should have put Iran on the DS 2019. You do not want to overcomplicate things. Just mention that the DS 2019 says UAE because she was studying there, and how could she get a NOS to request a waiver. They might only do it for citizen which could be a problem, but you do not want to give them that idea. But even if they did it for citizen, they could still write a NOS saying that they have no objection because she is not a citizen of UAE. 

 

It seems they only make the advisory opinion once. You only get one chance.