A woman now living in Costa Rica called the Immigration Answer Show hoping to fix a visa overstay so she could one day attend college events in the United States and watch a friend graduate. She had entered as a minor on a tourist visa, overstayed for years, finished high school, worked, and left voluntarily in April 2024. Founding attorney Jim Hacking told her the door is closed for a decade.
mic What the Attorney Says
“You also have a 10-year bar on coming back because you overstayed for more than 1 year after turning 18.”
The bar comes from INA § 212(a)(9)(B) — 8 U.S.C. § 1182(a)(9)(B). More than one year of unlawful presence followed by a departure triggers a ten-year inadmissibility on return. The detail that saves nothing here is the one that often matters: unlawful presence does not accrue while a person is under 18. She turned 18 in February 2022 and left in April 2024, so she still ran past two years over the line.
Trying to apply for a visitor visa now would only add a refusal. The application asks whether she has ever overstayed, the answer is yes, and that fact plus the bar means a consular officer has every reason to deny. There is no quiet way to reset it from inside the United States, because she is already outside it.
mic What the Attorney Says
“I don’t think you can really clean it up until you’ve done the 10 years outside the United States.”
A waiver of the unlawful-presence bar exists, but it requires a qualifying U.S. citizen or lawful permanent resident spouse or parent who would suffer extreme hardship, which she does not have. Absent that, the only path is time. The practical task is to make the ten years provable.
mic What the Attorney Says
“I think you probably want to document that you’ve been living in Costa Rica since the time you left and just keep records of that …”
College tuition payments, housing payments, and bank statements all work. The point is an unbroken trail showing she has been in her home country the whole time, so that when the decade is up there is no fight about whether she served it. Hacking added that not applying for visas and not trying to enter during the ten years is itself the right posture; each attempt is another refusal on the record.
The same overstay that builds the bar also poisons any future request for a visitor visa, the way a B-2 extension can quietly create an immigrant-intent problem, and old immigration history has a way of resurfacing years later when someone tries to move forward, much like a removal order that sat undelivered for a decade.