I-94 expired a year back But I-797 is valid for another 5 months

SW_employee

By SW_employee,
in H1B : I-94 Cards

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SW_employee Member

SW_employee

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Hello All,

I am on H1-B. My last I-797 is valid till 30-Mar-2018 and it had I-94 at the bottom of page which was also valid till same date. 

My passport was due to expire in November'2016. 

Then I traveled to India at the end of 2015 and when I returned back, I got "valid to" date till 1-November-2016 on my passport as that was date my passport was supposed to expire. So my I-94 was valid till November-2016.

I had baby in 2016. Somehow got my passport renewed but missed to get I-94 updated.

Now, as my visa expiry is approaching, my employer started extension processing and found that I am out of status for over a year and do not have valid I-94. Hence, my extension is put on hold right now.

I  have stopped working as soon as I came to know this. I understand that there is 10 year ban in this scenario and I am trying to understand if there is any option at all to avoid this. Really stressed! I worked really hard this year trying to manage baby with work and was doing really well at office and did not expect whole year to go waste. I understand it is miss from my end to not to update I-94 on time but trying to see if there is anything I can do to fix this. My employer is taking very long time to respond to me on next steps. 

Do I try to meet CBP officer now? Crossing border is really risky I understand considering its been over a year now. Does NTP work? is there waiver for non-immigrant visa ban? Do I have to convert H1-B visa into H4 or F1? Can I work on EAD? 

Hope this is something which can be fixed! :( 

Please help if you have any pointers. Thank you.

 

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  • 2 weeks later...
aerozeppelin Newbie

aerozeppelin

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I had the same issue. My I-94 "admit until" date was Sept 2016, but I did not find out until 2 weeks ago, as I was going to extend my H1B visa. I was clueless initially, but then I decided to hire a lawyer. My lawyer prepared an appeal and went to the CBP Deferred Inspection site, my appeal was accepted and the CBP officer changed the date on my I-94. The new date on my I-94 was the expiry date of my current H1B visa. 


I would recommend hiring a lawyer to handle this issue. Do not handle this by yourself. I'm no expert on this, from what I've heard this error can be rectified. Wishing you all the best :)

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  • 4 weeks later...
SW_employee Member

SW_employee

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On 12/7/2017 at 9:12 PM, aerozeppelin said:

I had the same issue. My I-94 "admit until" date was Sept 2016, but I did not find out until 2 weeks ago, as I was going to extend my H1B visa. I was clueless initially, but then I decided to hire a lawyer. My lawyer prepared an appeal and went to the CBP Deferred Inspection site, my appeal was accepted and the CBP officer changed the date on my I-94. The new date on my I-94 was the expiry date of my current H1B visa. 


I would recommend hiring a lawyer to handle this issue. Do not handle this by yourself. I'm no expert on this, from what I've heard this error can be rectified. Wishing you all the best :)

I went to CBP officer but he did not help me. He asked me to file I129. Not sure if it is because my new passport number is not in the system or something.

My company has filed for H1B extension along with NPT. Now I have received RFE and it is taking time to respond. My company has asked me to stop working and did not pay for last 2 weeks. I don’t know what to do.

Can you please suggest what was the appeal lawyer prepared? Was your situation different? 

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  • 3 weeks later...
SW_employee Member

SW_employee

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So today I received my approval notice with I94. NPT does work but provided everything else is in its place.

The wait was really hard and I lost 2+ months of my work in such a critical time where everything was going just fine.

Also, this has long term (if not lifelong) impacts on travel and immigration to USA.

I really hope people monitor their I-94 and do not get into same position. 

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