DUI before H1B stamping. Please Help

[itsmeanil]

Hi friends,

I was supposed to go for my H1B visa stamping on June 20th, but had a DUI ticket in Philadelphia 3 weeks back and also have a court date for that on 21st June.

I talked to a couple of attornies and they advised me not to skip the court hearing as it might turnout to be a major offence.

Did anyone have this kind of experience. Please advice.

Would the DUI have an impact on my stamping ?(If I postpone my visa appointment to a future date)

Please help me.

[freshoftheboat?]

Hello- You have two options either change your plan for visa stamping or change your court date to another day if you cant go to the courtroom. Usually courtrooms are resonable and if you provide substanial reasoning for not being able to show up- they work with your schedule. As an H1B holder any negligence in general can definitely impact you.

I know of someone directly who is an H1B worker here in the USA and went back to India for a vacation and has been put on administrative processing because of his DUI. During the interview they told him that they need to check his case with respect to the DUI. He hasnt got any response from the consulate since then. Administrative processing takes a while so he is still waiting for a response.

[itsmeanil]

Thank you so much freshoftheboat?

I guess the only option I have is to change the visa stamping date as the court room requires a valid reason to move my date.

The attorney was not familiar with the immigration process so he was not sure if telling the court that I have a visa stamping would be a strong enough reason to move the court date.

The attorney is pretty confident that he would convince the judge not to impose DUI and make it as a ARP program.

Hope fully that would not be a bad mark on my records.