I am currently out of status and would like to know what my options are. If I marry a citizen would I have to go back home while he is filing for me? Would his filing for me affect his citizenship? How long would it take to obtain one's citizenship?

Being out of status, your options are really quite limited. To remain legally in the United States you must change your status by having an immediate relative petition for you. Immediate relatives are US citizen spouses, US citizen children over 21 years of age filing for their parents and US citizen parents filing for unmarried children under 21 years of age.

Entered the US legally

Being of status assumes that you entered the United States legally and remained beyond the time allowed by Customs and Border Protection at the port of entry. You must prove that you entered the US legally by producing your I-94 form received at the airport when you are applying for your adjustment of status. If you have misplaced your I-94 form, you must apply to the Department of Homeland Security to replace it.

If you marry an American citizen, your spouse can apply to adjust (change) your status to that of a permanent resident and he must be prepared to accompany you to your local United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) for an adjustment interview before a USCIS adjudications officer. Both of you must be prepared to prove to USCIS that your marriage is real - provide documentation that both of you had a relationship prior to the marriage, that you have lived together since the marriage and that you commingled your assets and liabilities. Both of you must also be prepared to answer questions about your relationship, before and after marriage, and about each other's families.

Be sure to file the entire adjustment of status package at once, and to indicate that you are in the United States and will appear at your local USCIS office for the interview. Do not make the grave mistake of many people by filing the adjustment of status package and indicate that the visa will be collected in Jamaica. If you are in the United States out of status for six months and you leave the US there is a mandatory three-year bar to your returning to the United States. If you are out of status for one year or more and leave the US, you cannot return for 10 years.

Extreme hardship Waiver

The only way to return to the US before the three- or 10-year bars have expired is for the US citizen to obtain an extreme hardship waiver for your return. These waivers are very hard to obtain and each one is decided on its own merit. There are scores of people who are currently in Jamaica because of the grievous error of going back to Jamaica to "pick up" their Green Cards when they were perfectly eligible to adjust their status in the United States. Don't leave the US.

It does not negatively affect the citizenship of a person if they marry an out of status alien and petition for that alien to become a permanent resident. The only negative impact to an American citizen who petition's for an undocumented alien would occur if the marriage was a fraud - then the US citizen would face arrest, a hefty fine and possible jail time.

US citizenship

After obtaining a green card through marriage to a US citizen, an alien is eligible to apply for US citizenship three years after being approved for the Green Card, but the alien must remain married to and living with the US citizen in order to qualify for this three year rule. If for any reason the couple stops living together, the alien spouse must wait the regular five-year period before applying for US citizenship.

Dahlia A. Walker-Huntington, Esq. is a Jamaican-American attorney who practices law in Florida in the areas of Immigration, Family, Corporate & Personal Injury Law. She is a Mediator, Arbitrator and Special Magistrate in Broward County, Florida. Send your questions and comments to info@walkerhuntington.com or editor@gleanerjm.com.

'Do not make the grave mistake of many people by filing the adjustment of status package and indicate that the visa will be collected in Jamaica.'