My partner and I have been working towards sponsoring my partner's parents (parents-in-law = PIL) to come over to the US on a green card. My partner has been in the US for over 5 years and is now a US citizen which allows for sponsoring parents to get permanent residency (green card). The PILs have not been able to meet their two grandkids (both under 5 years old) yet in person. The PILs were both denied a US tourist visa and Canadian tourist visa previously without any clear, specific reasons for the tourist visa rejections. They did their best to prove they would return to their home country, yet it was still not enough to convince the US and Canada. The PIL do not want to live in the US and just really want to visit the grandkids and their child (my partner).
My partner's father (father-in-law = FIL) has a criminal record, but due to his actions that got him in legal trouble, he has helped his family escape a dangerous environment in his country to keep his family safe and provide a better life for his children. These are the criminal records facts noted for my FIL:
1) 2 years in prison and was released 5 years early in the early 2000s
2) Illegal ownership of a gun
3) Assaulting individual with gun because the individual was actively harassing his family
4) Organization of a group to protect businesses in the 1990s, but the law considered this as "organizing an illegal group"
Additional background about what happened: My FIL organized a vigilante group to protect business owners that were importing goods into his country because there was a racketeering criminal group that would either intercept the goods being transported from a neighboring country or extort these businesses for money by threatening to harm the business owner/business if they did not pay the criminal group. The criminal group was like the mafia and FIL's vigilante group were like friends of the businesses. The criminal group told FIL's vigilante group to stop helping the businesses and started harassing the families of those in the vigilante group. At one point, the criminal group targeted a party that the vigilante group was having and the FIL got shot in the leg and nobody got arrested. The conflict between both groups escalated and FIL approached the leader of the criminal group requesting to stop harassing the vigilante group's families, which escalated into an argument resulting in FIL shooting a criminal group member in the leg. FIL was sent to prison for this incident to spend 7 years in jail, but was able to get released after 2 years for good behavior and after continuously appealing to the court about his actions that were related to protecting his family and stopping a criminal group from harassing people. After he got out of jail, FIL never broke the law and it's been almost 20 years since the incident happened.
Two questions we had for our permanent residency/green card application form DS-260 for the FIL:
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What should we write in the "explain" area for the question about being in jail? We clicked on "yes" and there's an area to explain more details.
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Do we need a lawyer to advise us how to respond to the explanation? We were able to fill out everything else in the application and during the process of having my partner come to the US on a K1 visa, we did not use an immigration lawyer and managed all the documents on our own. This situation seems more complex though. If we need a lawyer, how much should this cost? How would we be able to find a reliable immigration lawyer that won't be super expensive?
We understand that we can only maximize our chances of having our FIL obtain permanent residency to visit his grandkids. We really appreciate in advance any advice that you have!
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source https://www.reddit.com/r/immigration/comments/j123o6/help_fatherinlaw_with_criminal_record_meet_his/