Immigration Mental Health Evaluations
Evaluaciones Clinicas para Casos de Inmigración
By Myrna Young MS, LPC
An Immigration Mental Health Evaluation can assist individuals and families in their immigration process. It is crucial to first seek out legal consultation and representation by an immigration attorney. Your attorney may recommend getting a mental health assessment for your immigration case. An Immigration Mental Health Evaluation is an assessment that is used in immigration cases as supportive information and could add considerable value to an immigration case. An Immigration Evaluation can assist with the credibility of the immigrant and help immigration court decide if the person can legally remain in the United States.
It is important to note, that while an immigration evaluation may provide significant support to an immigration case, Stone Path Counseling clinician makes no guarantees regarding the outcome of the case.
Immigration Evaluations provided at Stone Path Counseling can be valuable for the following immigration proceedings:
Extreme Hardship Cases
In extreme and exceptional hardship cases, a citizen of the United States, or a legal permanent resident of the United States, is the spouse, fiancée, parent, or child of an individual who may be deported from the U.S. The United States citizen applies for a waiver on the basis that deportation would result in an extreme and exceptional hardship.
An Immigration Mental Health Evaluation is completed to identify and explain the extreme and exceptional hardship that the citizen of the United States (qualifying relative) will suffer if the waiver were not granted.
Reference:
For more information visit www.uscis.gov
Spousal Abuse (VAWA):
Despite the name of this act, the VAWA (Violence Against Women Act) immigration provisions benefit both women and men. In spousal abuse cases, a woman or man from a foreign country marries a citizen or a legal permanent resident (LPR) of the United States. After the marriage, the immigrant claims the presence of domestic abuse and seeks to file for legal status separately from their U.S. citizen spouse, generally because the U.S. citizen or LPR spouse doesn’t want to assist his or her spouse in this process. The foreign national can file a VAWA petition even if the marriage ended in divorce, as long as there was a connection between the divorce and domestic violence and/or abuse. The abuse may have been in the form of physical, verbal, sexual, or psychological abuse.
During the Immigration Mental Health Evaluation for VAWA cases, the clinician will evaluate the scope and nature of the abuse, existent complications, impact of the abuse on the individual’s emotional well-being, and adverse effect on the individual’s level of functioning in different areas of his/her life.
Reference:
For more information visit www.uscis.gov