Expat Criminal & Deportation Risk Checker

The petty-offense exception is an inadmissibility exception for certain applicants with one CIMT. The statutory requirements include that the applicant committed only one CIMT, the maximum penalty for the offense did not exceed one year, and the applicant was not sentenced to a term of imprisonment exceeding six months. It is an exception to the relevant inadmissibility ground and should not be treated as a general exception to deportability.

It can. Under INA §101(a)(48)(A), a disposition can qualify as a conviction when there is a formal judgment of guilt or, where adjudication is withheld, the person has entered a guilty or nolo contendere plea or admitted sufficient facts and the judge has ordered some form of punishment, penalty, or restraint on liberty. The exact disposition must be reviewed; not every pretrial intervention program automatically satisfies the federal definition.

A single simple DUI is generally not a CIMT and is not, by itself, a standalone deportability ground. However, the Department of State has a specific prudential-revocation process for certain DUI arrests or convictions within the previous five years. In applicable cases, a panel-physician medical evaluation may be required under the State Department's medical-referral rules. Additional offenses or aggravating facts can change the analysis.

No. Federal immigration law continues to treat marijuana as a controlled substance even where a state permits marijuana under state law. However, the immigration consequence of marijuana use depends on the specific immigration benefit and the facts. A claimed 'admission' must satisfy the legal requirements for a valid admission of an offense, and medical inadmissibility involves specific statutory and medical standards. Do not assume that any statement about marijuana automatically produces inadmissibility.

INA §101(a)(43) contains a detailed list of offenses that qualify as aggravated felonies, including murder, rape or sexual abuse of a minor, certain drug-trafficking offenses, certain firearm offenses, qualifying crimes of violence or theft offenses with the required sentence, and specified fraud or deceit offenses involving victim loss exceeding $10,000. The exact statutory elements and sentence requirements depend on the particular subparagraph. An aggravated-felony conviction is a deportability ground, but the availability of immigration relief or waivers must be analyzed under the specific statute and circumstances rather than described as universally unavailable.