In March, the United States government will implement a new visa policy that may make it easy for illegal immigrant families to renew their visa without having to leave the country for unpredictable and lengthy amounts of time. Currently, in order for a visa applicant to receive a renewal, he or she needs to fly back to the country of origin and apply. Because that applicant exited the country, he or she may be put on a re-entry ban. This can last from one year up to a decade. For one mother and wife, Lidia Morales, going back to Guatemala to apply for a United States visa would mean being separated from those that she loves for 10 years. This is because there is a ban on re-entry for this amount of time. The mother has a 3-year-old son whom she would not see until he was 13 if this was her fate.

Morales lives in San Antonio, Texas, where she has been raising her family and taking care of her ailing mother-in-law for 7 years. She entered the country illegally in 2006. Morales does not want to have to leave her family to go apply for a visa, but faces the threat of deportation if she does not take this next step. She has the right to apply for a waiver which may be able to eliminate the ten-year ban. Chances are, Morales will be granted a waiver because her husband is a United States citizen. Still, at present she would need to apply for this waiver in Guatemala and wait until it got approved. This may take months or even a year before the process has been completed.

Starting in March, this difficult situation may be resolved. Instead of requiring immigrants to apply for the re-entry delay waiver once they arrive in their country-of-origin, the new visa laws will allow immigrants to apply while they are still in the United States. This way, people will not leave America uncertain of when they will see their friends and families again. For Morales, this would be a large blessing. She would not need to take her son with her to Guatemala if she knew that she could be back in a short amount of time. She says that she doesn’t want to take him with her because of the dangers that lurk everywhere in her native country.

According to My San Antonio, the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services is moving forward on this new rule and hopes to implement the law by March in order to help men and women like Morales. The USCIS will allow immigrants to stay in America with their families until their re-entry waivers are approved. Then, they can travel to their native homeland, apply for a visa, and be back at home within a few weeks. The USCIS says that this will allow people to shorten the visa application process and be with their families where they belong. This new ruling only applies to the relatives of U.S. citizens, so if spouses are both not citizens they will have to use the traditional process in order to get their visa.

In the future, the government hopes to help the men and women in this situation by making the process even easier. Currently lawmakers are working on a process which would make it so that men and women who need to apply for visas won’t even have to go back to their home countries to do so if they have relatives that are United States citizens. This litigation is still pending. Currently, most waivers about re-entry are being approved for families who need this service. If you want more information about immigration or about this new visa law going into effect in March, then talk to a local immigration attorney today!