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Declared Illegal Immigrant - rest of family in USA?

Put up house for sale in Canada. Moved to USA with spouse (USA Citizen) and kids (Not yet USA citizens - Canadian). Just came back to collect possessions from house, stopped at USA border, put in cell, fingerprinted, declared Illegal.. Wife and kids in the USA... What are my options? Has my wife just managed to kidnap my kids?? She has no intention of moving back to Canada...

Update:

Kids entered the USA with only Canadian Passports and were born in Canada.

Update 2:

When we entered together, me and my kids were put on visitor Visas

8 Answers

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  • 9 years ago
    Favorite Answer

    As a Canadian citizen your marriage to an American citizen alone is insufficient for permanent resident status in the United States, you also need to apply for a Green Card in order to be a legal US resident.

  • Anonymous
    9 years ago

    Has your wife sponsored you for a greencard? While you can travel visa free to the US as a tourist, you cannot live there without getting a visa or greencard.

    If you told the border that you were going to live in the US with your married spouse they had no other choice to reject you if you didn't have the proper visa.

    Putting the blame on your wife seems to be dishonest. It was both your responsibilities to inform yourself about the proper process of moving country.

    Your children should be fine since they should be dual US/Canadian citizens by having an US citizen mother.

  • 9 years ago

    You are married to US citizen, yet attempted to enter the US without first obtaining a proper spousal visa? You intend to remain, therefore are not eligible to enter on Visa Waiver - that's ONLY for the purpose of tourism, not remaining. You blew it. You needed your visa before trying to enter, and now you're in a big enough mess that you really need an immigration attorney to sort it all out.

    The kids were born to your US-citizen wife? Then they are US-born citizens - they have dual US-Canada citizenships. They are not "Canadian-only" citizens.

    You need a lawyer - like needed one yesterday. . .

  • 9 years ago

    As a Canadian, you have no right to move to the United States, unless you have an immigrant visa. Such an immigrant visa (CR-1 if married for less than 2 years, otherwise IR-1), is issued based on an I-130 petition of your U.S. citizen spouse. The entire process takes roughly a year.

    It sounds to me like you were just abusing your privilege to visit the United States visa free with the intent to immigrate. If so, that is indeed fraud, and you hopefully have not triggered a bar but just being denied entry based on presumed immigration intent. An entry in your passport should tell us more.

    So here is how this works:

    Your wife files an I-130 petition with the USCIS. It costs $420 and takes about 5 months to be processed. Thereafter the petition goes to the National Visa Center (NVC) in New Hampshire and they will contact her for the mandatory Affidavit of Support.

    Since the US government needs to make sure that no foreigner becomes a public charge, every intending immigrant needs a sponsor. The form for this is I-864 and she'll need to make at least $ 28,812.00 after taxes with 2 children in order to qualify. If you have more children, your household size and the income limit goes up. And no, your income doesn't count, only hers.

    http://www.uscis.gov/files/form/i-864p.pdf

    What they want to see is your wife's latest US income tax return. As you know, Uncle Sam taxes worldwide income, so I hope she has filed her US taxes every year since she started making money. If her income is not sufficient, you guys will need either a co-sponsor, or you can make up for it with assets at the rate of 1:3.

    After that's been taken care of, the entire package goes to the US consulate in Canada, and they will ask for paperwork, a medical, police reports, and schedule an interview. If that goes well, you'll receive your visa and have up to 6 months to "activate" it.

    P.S.

    If the kids are your wife's kids as well, then they are natural-born US citizens based on jus sangunis. As such, they were required by law to enter the United States with US passports, thus identifying themselves as such to federal law enforcement officers. I'm not sure how you can make such horrible mistakes if you even spent a few minutes to look this up.

    Source(s): An immigrant of German and Swedish decent, I am an attorney and reside in the charming old mission town of San Buenaventura, California.
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  • 9 years ago

    Exactly what made you think you could move to the USA without the proper visa?

    Your wife needs to file a proper immigration petition for you and since I assume these are her kids too she needs to get their citizenship straightened out too.

  • Anonymous
    4 years ago

    seeing as classic vampires did not drink blood yet drained sexual ability (succubi and incubus) or drained life rigidity (additionally typical as soul suckers) i dont think of they might have lots of a issue. maximum traditoinal vampires lived close to historical ruins and weren't ineffective human beings yet spirits or residing human beings (ie soul suckers and Psychic vampires) Now say that the hollywood form vampire grew to become into reborn (the hypothetical concern) then identity ought to consider maximum one and all else. there can not be a criminal case against him because of the fact they won't in any respect knew he died in the 1st place and if he could not prepare citizenship nicely like one reported previously there is dinner.

  • 9 years ago

    Contact your embassy. You obviously did something wrong when entering.

    BTW regardless of what passport the kids entered America on, they're dual citizens because their mom is American.

  • 9 years ago

    This is ONE issue I don't agree with. If your spouse is a USA Citizen, you should be able to be with her. Call the Embassy?

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