The United States Information Agency has partially reversed its earlier position regarding requests for waiver of the two-year home residency requirement in J-1 cases when an alien loses home country citizenship by acquiring citizenship in another country. Last year, the INS approved a case that received considerable publicity where a Chinese national became a citizen of Canada and automatically lost his Chinese citizenship. The USIA approved the waiver on the basis that the performance of the home residency requirement would be impossible to perform.

The USIA now makes the following statement with regard to these cases:

"Having reviewed this matter at length, the Agency cannot adopt this theory as a matter of policy and will not recommend the grant of a waiver based solely upon the loss of home country citizenship. In many cases, other means of fulfillment, such as the utilization of a nonimmigrant visa for entry into the home country are available."

The USIA did leave the matter open for possible exceptions, but believes they will only be available in an "extraordinarily few instances." If one can prove that fulfilling the residency requirement is "totally beyond the control" of the waiver applicant, then the waiver can still be granted. For example, if the applicant can prove a request for a nonimmigrant visa from the home country or denial of a request to restore home country citizenship.

Interestingly, only a few days before this policy was announced on August 7th, our firm received an approval on a case with identical facts to the 1997 case mentioned above. No request was received for proof that it would be possible to get a temporary visa to return to the home country. That case was stalled for several months and then approved right before the new policy was released. Whether that means that the USIA is only applying this standard to new cases only and that it cleared out cases relying on this theory by applying the older, looser standard is not clear, but certainly seems possible.