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I am in the process of writing my hardship letter. At the moment i have a 10 page letter... Good or Bad? If someone has some good advice as to what to take out or what to include... it would be very appreciated.

Here are some key items that im including in my hardship letter.

*My spinal health over the past 10 years, has resulted in surgery for herniated disc due to degenerative disc disease.
*My children's health, such as asthma and allergies and psychological disorders.
*Lack of Healthcare and medical insurance
*My childrens educational opportunities
*My career and further education opportunities. I am a Nationally registered certified medical assistant and required to keep my certification renewed by continuing education credits... failure to keep current means i lose my certification. I am also serious about becoming an RN in the near future.
*Financial hardships, not alot, only 17,000.
*Family ties in the United States
*Crime in El Salvador
*Natural disasters in El Salvador


These are the things i'm including in my letter... Please let me know if i'm going to far or if this is even enough to possibly convience them to approve our I-601.

EL SALVADOR IS WHERE WE ARE FILING OUR 601.

I think you have a good grasp on what should be included in your hardship letter. If you haven't already done so, I would go to immigrate2us.net and post it (without identifying information) for their review. They have a lot more experience with this subject on that site.

PS. Just make sure to keep it as UNemotional as possible.

Thank you for your advice...

When you say keep it as UNemotional as possible... exactly what do you mean...?

Try to keep your letter factual. Try not to include statements of: I'll be sad/devastated. But I feel he/she is such a good person... They really don't care that much about your feelings. (Harsh as that is..)
The items you listed above are great facts. Stick to those and you should be fine.

Make sure that in addition to your letter, you have evidence to prove each statement you make in the letter. The letter is only part of the journey.

Singers is right about being objective and not including too much emotion, but you must strike a balance. If you are not using an attorney then your letter does most of the proving and therefore emotion can come off as extraneous information. . .however, if you are too mechanical it also might leave the wrong impression. Strike a balance. Sounds like you have a good start.

Good luck!

Ok... I think my letter is well balanced as it is. I think that it has enough emotional tone to it to keep the facts moving smoothly throughout the letter. Of course each factual thing i'm stating has an attached emotional statement to it somewhere or it wouldn't be truly a hardship... : )

Thanks so much, i'll keep working on it... Then post it to the forum that you Singer mentioned above.

One last question? What is too much evidence that one can include? I dont want to do overkill. Right now i have around 30 pieces of evidence. By the time i'm done i should have possibly 40. Or should i narrow it down?

Prioritize it. It depends very heavily on your case what is enough, or too much. Just make sure that if you do include that much evidence to go with that many arguments, that your most convincing arguments are placed first in your letter. . .remember that with ANY human being you have a very short window in which to CATCH their attention. If you don't convince them with that window they are not going to pay attention any longer. Human nature.

Medical issues are a strong argument. Make sure you have your doctors and children's doctors write letters stating your conditions and necessary treatments and continued care. Provide evidence of poor medical care in El Salvador vs US, etc. You certainly have some very good arguments. Good luck!

I completely understand about the amount of evidence and arguments... Thanks for your advice.

I think the angle that i'm going to go with with the healthcare issues is that... if i were to relocate to El Salvador... we will be living in a small rural area that does not offer much of clinics or doctors, especially english speaking ones or ones with knowledge of US medical practices and standards....

Although... I have found that in San Salvador... a 3 hour drive from where we would live... AND that we will only have my husbands 25.00 a week income to live on... that we could not afford to travel 3 hours then pay cash for healthcare services... and with my spinal degeneration, i would need frequent chiropractic treatments to help slow the process of the degeneration... Would be impossible.

Of course i'm summarizing it better than i did in the above rough draft... but you get my general idea of what i'm going for. I dont want to go the route of saying there is not any medical options for me, because there is, but of course not as good as here in the US but the traveling 3 hours, lack of money and health insurance... etc... is the main hardship. I have 3 children... plus myself and my husband. WE could not afford to travel that distance.... every week or every month.

Any advice on what i just wrote?

Why do you need a waiver? Profile says you are K3.

I too sugest that you post your letter on the immigrate2us.net forum. You will find a lot of good information about harship letters and waivers in general. Have you done any poking around over there yet? I found the people over there to be most helpful and supportive while I was in the waiver process.

Thanks for the posting, I am in the middle of working on my I601 hardship letter as well.

Let's help each other..


Your posting was somewhat similar to my situation.. medical issues. etc. No children for me.. but Medical, other people dependencies on me..

When we were told about the letter, we were told that 2 pages of good information was better than 10 pages of weak information.

Mine will probably be about 3 pages.. but with supporting documents from each doctor or person on my case.

Let's stay in touch.. Cindy

If you haven't already done so, I strongly suggest that you check out the immigrate2us.net forums. It has a weatlh of information about the waiver process and hardship package. Strong information is surely better than weak information, but you are arguing your case and proving your hardhips with evidence. You will find that 99% of the letters on the other site are well over 2-3 pages. It is well worth your time to spend several hours reviewing the wealth of knowledge at immigrate2us.

I am in MA too, my fiance was from Brazil.

My fiance "at the time" was deported... I went to El Salvador and we married there... now we are in process of bringing him back.

Yes i have posted my hardship letter on the immigrate2us.net. I have received nothing but wonderful comments on the letter i have drafted. I am just pretty much editing and taking out wordiness right now... cutting it down slowly but i still expect the letter will be 10 pages... Its 11 right now... i have added a bit to it the last couple days.

I am working on gathering all my evidence right now. I only have 3 letters from doctors. the rest are just diagnosis, mri and other reports. I have printed alof ot very informative things from government websites for both US and El Salvador. I have used the CDC website and Worldfact book... etc (only well known websites)

I feel that if i take too much information out it will just be really plain and the adjucator will only be spending alot of time flipping to the evidence pages to get information about everything. I put alot of information in it so that the letter reads well and is explaining my situation at the same time. I made sure that i tied everything back to me and did a well rounded picture of events that would happen... etc.

Thanks for all your wonderful posts...