Know Your VAWA Options: Self-Petition Compared with Special Rule Cancellation of Removal
Chart-based comparison of VAWA self-petitions and VAWA special-rule cancellation of removal, with eligibility and strategy differences called out side by side.
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Chart-based comparison of VAWA self-petitions and VAWA special-rule cancellation of removal, with eligibility and strategy differences called out side by side.
Eligibility for U Nonimmigrant Status, commonly known as the “U Visa,” hinges on whether the applicant has been the “victim” of a qualifying crime. The regulations implementing the U visa statute contemplate three categories of “victims” who may qualify for the U visa: direct, bystander, and indirect victims. This practice advisory provides a basic overview of the requirements for U nonimmigrant eligibility. It then discusses the definition of “victim” and three different ways to qualify as a vi
In Department of State v. Muñoz , 602 U.S. 899 (2024), the U.S. Supreme Court concluded that a U.S. citizen and her noncitizen spouse had no access to judicial review of a consular officer’s denial of an immigrant visa. The Court held that a U.S. citizen has no “fundamental liberty interest” i n her spouse’s admission to the United States. This practice advisory, by the American Immigration Council, the International Refugee Assistance Project, and the Consular Accountability Project, is intende
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Addresses strategy when inadmissibility issues surface late in a U-visa case and explains how to preserve the case rather than treating the new issue as fatal.
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In a case brought in Federal District Court in Rhode Island an abused spouse whose VAWA self-petition had been approved challenged USCIS’s revocation of her approved petition. The self-petitioner was divorced from her abuser and remarried after filing the self-petition but before the self-petition had been approved. The court’s ruling allows the self-petitioner to fully litigate her challenge the USCIS’s revocation of her self-petition due to remarriage in Federal District Court. The court’s rul
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NIWAP participated in an amicus brief on writ of certiorari to the US Court of Appeals of the Third Circuit to ensure that courts review BIA hardship determinations for immigrant victims of domestic violence seeking cancellation of removal under VAWA. SCOTUS ruled in favor of Wilkinson, holding that the application of the exceptional and extremely unusual hardship standard to an established set of facts is a mixed question of law and fact that is reviewable under 1252(a)(2)(D). This ruling gives
United States V. Luciana Moreno-Lopez ; (June 7 2010) United States District Court, Eastern District of Chattanooga. The National Network to End Violence Against Immigrant Women, among others, and represented by Dean Hill Rivkin, filed an amicus brief in a case in which undocumented workers had been victims of extortion, when the workers complained to EEOC and the Department of Labor the employer retaliated by triggering the employees detention by the Department of Homeland Security. The workers