Shamus6200

Thank you both for your responses. We've scheduled her medical exam, and are using Simple Citizens services to do the actual paperwork. We plan on taking what SC sends us and all of our supporting documents to an immigration lawyer for one last look at everything before we submit in order to avoid any last minute disasters in the making. Obviously, nothing is assured, but we are hopeful that this can be resolved and things will improve. 

Your response is fair, and I deserve no pity. I have no excuse for not adjusting her status,...honestly, the only explanation I can give you is that we were naive and ignorant, and then progressively more and more terrified as time went on. Again, not an excuse, just what it was. 

Sorry in advance for this wall of text.

I am a US Citizen by birth, and retired from the US Army. I married my German wife in 1995 while stationed in Germany and we came to the US in 1996. At the time of her entry, she was on a 90 day visa with a German passport (neither of which we have now) with the intention of staying with me for about a month until I settled in to my new unit which was slated to go to Bosnia on deployment. Once we arrived, things changed and the unit I was with did not deploy. We found a house to rent, and lived together in the US until I reclassified to a new job field and was reassigned to a duty station in Germany. We arrived in Germany in March of 1998.

We lived together, with our two children at the time until August of 2000 when my tour was done and we returned to the US. At the time, my wife had a German passport, and just a US military dependents ID card. She presented herself for inspection, was issued an I-94 that was stamped "Paroled pursuant to..." and "deferred inspection", as well as her passport was stamped. We have these documents. I am from Michigan, so they indicated that we needed to go to the inspection in Detroit. We ended up going directly to my duty station in Kansas, and did go to an inspection site in Kansas. At the inspection site, they stamped her I-94 with ext- (date 30 days farther along) and KAN. They said they would need to gather more information from Detroit, took all our contact information, and said they would be in contact. We never heard from them again.

Time passed, life happened, and we made several false starts to try and resolve her status. We've been married now for 24 years, and have 4 children together (all US citizens, 3 adults, 1 minor). She has never worked or committed any crime and has never left the United States since. During my time in the service, she was even interviewed by the Defense Intelligence Agency as part of my security clearance, and they had no issues with her. I am honorably discharged and retired and work in security now, making well above the support threshold to sponsor her.

So here are my questions:

1. Does here previous visit with over stay (which was started before the 1 April 1997 3/10 year ban law became effective) influence her eligibility for Adjustment of Status as an Immediate Relative?

2. If she did incur a ban from the first over stay, does her being physical present in the US now have any influence on the ban? To that, I mean, does she have to leave to serve out the ban first before an AOS and if so, would I then be eligible to apply for parole in place as a military veteran sponsoring her?

3. Does her inspection and parole for the deferred inspection suffice for the inspected and paroled requirement to be lawfully admitted (for the purposed of adjusting status)?

4. Are there other issues I am not seeing here? Other options I might have?

I understand a visit to a lawyer is in order here, but I am trying to wrap my head around the complexities before I walk in to an office. "Know thy enemy" so to speak.

Thank you for reading this, and any help or advice you might be able to provide.

Shamus