Posted by: ice_cop123 July 28, 2009
overstayed nepali caught by immigration police
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What Happens If I Overstay My Visa?

By Baker Cowden

I’ve seen it happen on more than one occasion. A person comes to the U.S. on a 90 day visa, a B1/B2 visitor visa, or a student visa,
and then stays beyond the initial length allowed by that visa. We call
that “overstaying a visa”. Now that person wants to know what he can
do to fix his situation. If marriage to a U.S. citizen is not a
genuine opportunity for him (marrying a citizen just to get lawful
status in the U.S. is a felony, so the marriage must be for love!), he
must come up with another plan.


If this describes your situation, one thing is for certain, you need
to call an immigration attorney as soon as possible. The decisions you
make now will have long lasting effects on your ability to live in,
work in, or even visit the United States in the future.


Whatever you do, realize that if you leave the U.S. after
overstaying a visa, you are subject to mandatory bars from re-entering
the country, sometimes for as long as 10 years or even forever!
And
don’t think for one second that immigration officials at the border
will not know when you last entered, when you last left, and what your
visas allowed you to do. The systems they use are very sophisticated
and the border officials are trained to suspect everyone. Believe me,
they have heard every story you could possibly come up with, trying to
lie your way out of being sent back to your home country. If you
overstayed a visa in the past and you try to return to the U.S., you
will not be able to lie yourself out of a seat back to your home
country on the next flight out. If you lie, on top of trying to enter
the country when you are barred from returning due to a previous
overstay, you may find yourself forever barred from ever coming to the
U.S. for the rest of your life.


It’s a heart breaking thing to see happen. When someone calls us
from overseas or in a detention facility after the fact, there is
sometimes very little we can do to help. In some cases there are
mitigating circumstances that allow us to apply for waivers or other
relief, but it’s hard work and often expensive to try without any
guarantees of success.

source: http://hubpages.com/hub/What-Happens-If-I-Overstay-My-Visa

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