Interviewer: You mentioned some of the inadmissible factors like some sort of criminal background or some sort of disease. What are some examples of those?
Jeanne Morales: There are crimes that fall under the label of crimes involving moral turpitude, so crimes where an individual, regardless of where you come from, what your education level is—these are crimes that pretty much everyone in the human race will know is wrong. These are crimes like theft or fraud. Those are crimes involving moral turpitude and it generally makes someone inadmissible to the United States.
Tuberculosis and HIV Are Diseases That Render Individuals Inadmissible
Interviewer: What about diseases? Are we talking about tuberculosis, things like that?
Jeanne Morales: In order to enter the United States legally, you have to have an immigrant physical. In essence, what that does is the doctor will double-check the inoculation record to make sure they have had all their vaccinations, but they will do a tuberculosis test. So tuberculosis and HIV, along with some other communicable diseases may make them inadmissible or would require the person to obtain a waiver.
Previously, Mental Health Issues as Well as Mental Retardation Would Prevent Individuals Legal Entry into the U.S.
Years past, if someone received a certain classification for mental health, it was an automatic inadmissibility to enter the United States, but now there are ways around it. Not necessarily waivers, but if you can prove that the individual is not a danger to himself or others and that they have someone to take care of them, then that usually suffices.
We had a case where 20 years ago the entire family immigrated to the United States legally, but the one sister who had mental retardation was not allowed. It was a large family. It was parents and six or seven siblings. Over the course of the 20 years, they had all taken turns returning to their home country because this individual was not able to live on their own but they couldn’t be brought to the United States.
With the Help of an Attorney, the Mental Health or Retardation Issue Can Be Proven to Not Be a Barrier and the Person May Be Allowed Entry
When they came to see us, we recognized that mental condition was no longer a complete barrier and we filed the paperwork necessary. They were so happy when they could bring their sibling here. This is because they are all people who are now very anchored in the United States.
One of them having to constantly be going back to their home country to take care of this one sibling that was left out, it was creating quite a hardship on the family. They were very happy when they were able to bring that individual to the United States.
