harbouring an overstayed alien

[crb3 0]

Hello,

I have a question on behalf of my now-husband, a US citizen. I came on a k-1 visa and married a man in the US, but our marriage did not work out. When I realized that, I left him and stayed with friends for some time, then with the man that is my husband now. I was living with him while I was waiting for the divorce from my first husband to be finalized. I filed for the divorce myself, and I didn't care if I had to leave the country because living in the US wasn't my goal, but I stayed there until the divorce was finalized, then I married my new husband and then promptly left the US. We are now planning to go through the CR-1 process, and I have this question:

I know there's a law concerning US citizens who harbour/help/employ illegal aliens, and it's pretty severe. My husband and I are wondering if this law will apply to him, because I lived with him for 8 months while I was out of status. (My K-1 visa ran out, and my ex-husband never filed AOS for me, so I was in that grey area.) When I was filling out g-325a I saw that I need to state where I lived in the past 5 years, and one of the addresses is my husband's current address. Is it going to mean a bad thing for my husband - i.e. that he was harbouring me or something - if the INS sees that our addresses match and i was out of status then? Mind you, I did not work at all and had no troubles with the law. Could he be potentially charged with harbouring or are we worried unnecessarily? Are there any known cases that would be similar to that? A lawyer that we saw a long time ago didn't seem to think it was a problem, but I don't know if he could be trusted. It does seem like the INS would have a bigger fish to fry if they wanted to, what with all the illegal workers...

Thank you for your insight!

[pushbrk 13,111]

Hello,

I have a question on behalf of my now-husband, a US citizen. I came on a k-1 visa and married a man in the US, but our marriage did not work out. When I realized that, I left him and stayed with friends for some time, then with the man that is my husband now. I was living with him while I was waiting for the divorce from my first husband to be finalized. I filed for the divorce myself, and I didn't care if I had to leave the country because living in the US wasn't my goal, but I stayed there until the divorce was finalized, then I married my new husband and then promptly left the US. We are now planning to go through the CR-1 process, and I have this question:

I know there's a law concerning US citizens who harbour/help/employ illegal aliens, and it's pretty severe. My husband and I are wondering if this law will apply to him, because I lived with him for 8 months while I was out of status. (My K-1 visa ran out, and my ex-husband never filed AOS for me, so I was in that grey area.) When I was filling out g-325a I saw that I need to state where I lived in the past 5 years, and one of the addresses is my husband's current address. Is it going to mean a bad thing for my husband - i.e. that he was harbouring me or something - if the INS sees that our addresses match and i was out of status then? Mind you, I did not work at all and had no troubles with the law. Could he be potentially charged with harbouring or are we worried unnecessarily? Are there any known cases that would be similar to that? A lawyer that we saw a long time ago didn't seem to think it was a problem, but I don't know if he could be trusted. It does seem like the INS would have a bigger fish to fry if they wanted to, what with all the illegal workers...

Thank you for your insight!

What length of time did you overstay your visa?

[crb3 0]

My K-1 ran out on June 5, 2006, and I left the US on June 3, 2007, so it was less than a year overstay.

[MargotDarko 0]

You're currently not in the US right? I believe you should look into whether or not your overstay will cause problems with the CR1 process. I know that more than a 180 day overstay can be quite bad.

Edited July 7, 2007 by MargotDarko

[MargotDarko 0]

I've been reading some other threads - you will just need to file a wavier. I was worried that perhaps you really would have to face the three year ban for the more than 180 days overstay.

About your husband - I can't imagine there would be any problem. I would think harbouring an illegal alien must involve intention to hide an illegal alien when they were going through some type of proceedings.

[crb3 0]

I've been reading some other threads - you will just need to file a wavier. I was worried that perhaps you really would have to face the three year ban for the more than 180 days overstay.

About your husband - I can't imagine there would be any problem. I would think harbouring an illegal alien must involve intention to hide an illegal alien when they were going through some type of proceedings.

MargotDarko, thank you for your concern. Like you said, I'm probably facing a 3 year ban and we will do the waiver, but for now we will just have to bounce around overseas, thankfully my husband is willing to relocate for me, the main thing for us is to be together no matter where. I just didn't want him to have legal problems in the US because of me, but is seems that since I left the country and didn't break any laws, he wasn't "harbouring" me anyway, right?

When i was leaving the country I thought they would put some kind of a stamp in my passport saying i overstayed or something, I've heard about something like that before, but nobody even looked at it, except for when i was getting the ticket at the airport the airline person took out my I-94. Is that a good thing or does it not matter because they'll see I overstated during my new CR-1 process anyway?