Petitioning Your Parents? Fix a 30-Year-Old Undisclosed Divorce First

A caller and his U.S.-citizen siblings are sponsoring their parents for green cards. While filling out the forms, they learned that their father had a marriage in Mexico 30 years ago that he never legally ended. One lawyer told him to file and simply not mention it. A second told him to finalize the divorce, have the parents remarry, and then file. On the Immigration Answer Show, founding attorney Jim Hacking did not hesitate between the two.

The reason the first lawyer’s advice is dangerous is that the forms force the issue. An adjustment application asks every prior marriage and exactly how it ended. Writing that the father’s first marriage was terminated when it never was is a false statement about a material fact, and a material misrepresentation to gain an immigration benefit triggers a permanent bar under INA § 212(a)(6)(C)(i) — 8 U.S.C. § 1182(a)(6)(C)(i). There is no lawyer who can make that risk smaller by hiding it; there is only cleaning it up.

There is a second problem underneath the paperwork. If the father’s first marriage was never dissolved, his later marriage may not be legally valid in the first place, which is why the fix is a real divorce decree and then a remarriage, not a rewritten answer on the form. Sponsoring the parents of a U.S. citizen is otherwise one of the most forgiving petitions in the system: parents are immediate relatives under INA § 201(b)(2)(A)(i), with no visa wait, and immediate relatives are exempt from most of the unlawful-presence bars to adjustment that block other applicants. There is no reason to put that at risk with a false answer on a form.

The one thing the parents do need is a lawful entry, and Hacking flagged the piece of proof that people lose. Both parents’ visas had expired, but they still had their I-94 admission records, which show they were inspected and admitted.

So the sequence is finalize the divorce, obtain the decree, remarry, save clean color copies of both parents’ I-94s, and only then file. Correct the record rather than paper over it. That is the same approach that governs a foreign divorce whose validity controls a later marriage case and family members you were tempted to leave off the forms.