lz7782

I posted on here in December at a very difficult time for both me and my family. I was asking for anybody that had experience with a very specific situation, as I couldn’t find any information about current LegalNet timeframes or how an enquiry to the LegalNet team works in practice. It was a very unpleasant experience tbh. I was shamed, mocked and had multiple posters prying into something I had made clear I didn’t want to expand upon, on the pretext of offering advice that I hadn’t asked for and didn’t need. I honestly will never understand what the internet does to people, but I did not find this to be a friendly or helpful forum and I wasn’t going to ever post on here again, but the enquiry to LegalNet was successful, and I wanted to post the details to offer help to anyone who finds themselves in a similar situation. As I said in my original post, I had an attorney who had written a brief ahead of my interview to explain that my crime was not one of moral turpitude. When I was denied my visa, her view was that the law had been misapplied. If you do want to send an enquiry to LegalNet, this is one of the few reasons that they will look at a decision taken by a consular officer. They will not overrule a matter of judgement. https://fam.state.gov/FAM/09FAM/09FAM010304.html#M103_4_2 My interview took place December 22nd and we submitted our enquiry through the attorney on December 23rd. LegalNet acknowledged receipt of the email on December 24th. After an enquiry is submitted, the first hurdle is for an administrator to decide whether or not the enquiry is within scope. If it is in scope, they refer it to an attorney. If it is not, you probably won’t ever hear from them again. On December 29th they confirmed the enquiry had been sent to an attorney to review with this email: On January 23rd, after we asked for an update, they sent this email: On 5th February, the embassy in London asked me to send my passport to them. It was received on February 9th, the visa was issued on Feb 12th and it arrived today. All contact with LegalNet was through our attorney. I’d strongly recommend using an experienced attorney if you have any criminal record. Without her, we would not have had this positive outcome. Good luck to anyone who finds themselves in a situation like this. The legal system is complex and it is easy for mistakes to be made. I hope the above information is helpful to someone.

I appreciate that, I have an attorney who has been managing this whole process for me from the very beginning. I'll continue to take professional legal advice and have an attorney manage both the LegalNet enquiry and the waiver process. The crime itself, the embassy and circumstances aren't relevant to the question, which is whether anyone has any experience of LegalNet as a process. How close are they currently to their stated operating timelines? Do they still send out an update after 7 days of submission to confirm the case has been escalated? What approximate timelines are they working to? How big is their backlog? I did see some posts from last May from someone who was in a similar, but not identical, situation to me, but the user's post history does not show a resolution, and they haven't interacted on the site since August. I like to think that's because LegalNet worked for them, and they're now happily settled in the US 🙂 Appreciate every case is very different, but any information is helpful. It's a rough time as we were all prepared to move, maybe that was naivety on our part and we put too much trust in our attorney's opinion. She is still very confident she's right and this will be overturned. Once again, thank you to everyone taking the time to reply.

Thank you everyone for your input, we have also started to prepare the paperwork for the waiver. Still would be very interested in any first-hand experience with LegalNet. And I'll update in the new year if we get an answer.

Thank you. this is also a good resource for how CIMT is defined and how consular officers are advised to make their decisions: https://fam.state.gov/fam/09FAM/09FAM030203.html This is the section that advises Consular Officers, and b(2) is the relevant part for divisible statutes under foreign law. 9 FAM 302.3-2(B)(5) (U) Determining Whether a Statute Is a Crime Involving Moral Turpitude (CT:VISA-2009; 06-11-2024) a. (U) Provisions of Law Defining an Offense: Where the record clearly shows the conviction to be predicated on one specific provision of law, whose terms embrace only acts that are offenses involving moral turpitude, that supports a conclusion that the conviction was for a crime that involves moral turpitude. The statutory definition of the offense will determine whether the conviction involves moral turpitude. Each separate provision of law defining an offense must be read in conjunction with such other provisions of law as are pertinent to its interpretation. b. (U) Divisible Statutes Under U.S. And Foreign Law: (1) (U) If the provision of law on which a conviction is predicated has multiple sections, only some of which involve moral turpitude, evaluate the nature of the act to determine if the conviction was predicated on the section of the statute involving moral turpitude. If the divisible statute in question is part of the law of one of the U.S. states, you may only examine the charge, plea, verdict, and sentence in assessing the presence of moral turpitude in the certain act for which the conviction was obtained. (2) (U) If the statute in question is a foreign law, you may assess the presence of moral turpitude in the act for which conviction has been obtained by reference to any part of the record or from admissions of the applicant. The applicant must provide you with copies of any relevant laws that will allow you to make this determination.

Yes I was told I'm eligible to apply for a waiver. As long as the law is applied accurately I can have no complaints. As mentioned, my attorney believes a mistake has been made in the application of the law, but that doesn't mean that she's correct. My understand is that LegalNet exists for a Government lawyer to review a decision made by the consular officer, who is not legally trained, to judge if a mistake has been made on a point of law. Any light that anyone can shed on the LegalNet process would be much appreciated.

Hello everyone. After 22 months of waiting for the paperwork for my spousal visa to be processed, we had a bit of a shock when I was denied for having a crime involving moral turpitude on my record. The only reason this was a shock was that our attorney had advised that while the consular officer could make a mistake, this was a point of law and we should be ok. The technical argument is that the offence does not directly map to an offence in the US, and it is divisible, so some aspects can be considered a CIMT and some cannot. The court records no longer exist as this took place so long ago (and I have confirmation from the court on this point). The closest offence under US law is explicitly not considered a CIMT. The brief from our attorney argued: The consular officer disagreed with this, and did not give me any real detail as to why. Our attorney remains confident that she is correct, and we have submitted an enquiry to LegalNet as she believes this is a mistake on a point of law, and not a judgement from the consular officer. If anyone has been in a similar situation, or has knowledge of how this will all work, I'd really appreciate hearing about your experiences. There is very little online about LegalNet, but we've been warned that they are not currently operating within their target timeframes for resolution. I think I'll make a good candidate for a waiver based on rehabilitation, but would obviously prefer not to have to wait another two years with the ongoing risk that the waiver is also denied.