I just realized a gigantic mistake and I need help trying to fix it.
On my DS-260, for the question about having been convicted of a crime I checked “No” because I’ve never been arrested and thought I’d never been convicted because from what I understood my conviction had been forgone in the one criminal case I’d ever had to do with.
When I was nineteen I was asked to court for “accessory to commit fraud” - but the case was ultimately closed and nothing came of it.
The final paper said “case dismissed” so my brain thought this wasn’t a conviction. I never went to court and didn’t even have any of the documents. I can’t imagine I’m the only person this has happened to. If something was dismissed you automatically think it wasn’t a conviction don’t you?
I was fully prepared to mention this case on my interview to be fully transparent and I had already set aside any documents I had to give to the consular officer despite it having been dismissed but I didn’t realize that this was considered a conviction or I would have clicked yes. I wasn’t at all trying to hide it.
When we were filling out the form my husband and I googled what a conviction was and our findings brought us to think this wasn’t one.
Our mistake seems to have been that we didn’t google wether this was a “conviction” in the eyes of immigration because in some back corner of the internet I finally found out that immigration has a different definition of the word than the “real world”
My interview is this week and I just found out my mistake yesterday 😣
I have the papers and I’m still planning to bring it up at the interview but I’m terribly worried they’re going to think we ticked this box wrong on purpose.
I want to do everything correctly and I’m already so upset I messed this up, how can I fix it now?
