Adjustment of Status - I-485

I wanted to write this because very little people had insight into what to do with criminal history and trying to get a Green card. I was a little hurt at how judgmental some people were earlier, but overall this message board is extremely helpful.

Anyway.

I'm a USC and hubby is not. He had one crime involving moral turpitude offense (theft). It was a MISD A. He had other charges out of the same arrest (one arrest) but they were all dismissed.

Basically he was eligible for the petty offense exception. So we didn't need a waiver.

PD Feb 20, 2018 - 485, 130, 765
Dallas filer
July 2018 - EAD approved
Interview date April 29, 2019
Approval - May 8th, card is in production.

During the application we ofcourse were transparent. We did an FBI background check just to make sure the information was correct. We got the documents from the court showing the dismissals and the final plea, and we added it to the 485 application. (I'm a lawyer so I just kinda did the application myself, and asked friends for guidance)

Attached to the 485 we printed out the specific statute that he was convicted under, and highlighted that the punishment range was under 1 year.

To qualify for the petty offense exception you must have:

a. only one crime involving moral turpitude conviction
b. the range of punishment must be up to or under a year (Texas is a little funky with MISD wording)
c. and you must have been incarcerated for less than 180 days.

So we answered the 485 questions honestly, and attached documents explaining what happened. USCIS does not care about the facts of the case. They only care about what you were convicted of and whether you are admissible.

Our application went through well, no RFEs. This website was REALLY helpful and we were detailed. We got the EAD, and then we waited.

Finally we got the interview. Before the interview we hired a lawyer just to help us with the interview. We prepared with him. He went over all the questions, esp the 485 questions to make sure hubby was confident and explained the conviction as succinct as possible.

Then we went for the interview. We were really nervous. They asked us very chill questions about each other, how we met, what we do for a living etc. We had plenty of evidence, even though we sent alot of evidence in the initial application. The officer then asked hubby about the criminal history stuff and he was very short but detailed about the outcome.

Officer said he would approve us instantly but he needed to get supervisor oversight because of the criminal history. We waited for a week and a half, and today I checked online and saw that the card was in production. It will be the 2 year conditional card.

Thank you all so much for the emotional support, the detailed information, and the calming of the psyche.