S-Visa for Material Witnesses: Getting a Work Permit and Legal Status by Being a Material Witness

The S Nonimmigrant Visa allows Foreign Nationals with critical information on criminal or terrorist organizations to come to the U.S. to provide this critical information to law enforcement. There are also different classifications of the S Visa: The S-5 applies to Criminal Informants, the S-6 applies to Terrorist Informants, and the S-7 applies to Accompanying Family members.

Certain family members of the alien providing the information-spouse, parents, and children-are also eligible for admission into the United States in an S nonimmigrant derivative status. The S nonimmigrant visa is a special visa available to those individuals who assist law enforcement as a witness or informant in a criminal investigation or prosecution. This visa allows the witness or informant to come to or remain in the United States during the investigation or prosecution of the criminal act. The US government created this visa for people who would be inadmissible to the US if they applied for any other type of visa. Also the visa is for those who would be deportable. These are people who have a past criminal record or problems with their immigration status.

The S visa allows the Secretary of Homeland Security to waive these grounds of inadmissibility. The waiver applies only if the person in question has valuable information on a criminal or terrorist organization or activity. The person would have to prove that they are a valuable witness. Their information would have to lead to discovering or preventing an illegal activity from happening in the US.

This visa is also helpful for those witnesses who hold information and are in danger in their home countries because of it. The US government can provide a safe haven for them in the country as long as they cooperate with the relevant authorities.

This particular sample is an actual S Visa Petition for somebody who was a material witness and which is processed through U.S. Immigration Law. Of course, it would be sure that the ultimate beneficiary had the requisite requirements needed to fulfill the S visa and that in fact they were a material witness. Note that our library also has all the other types of preference petitions for your perusal. Note that our library includes not only this family petition and other family preference petitions, but nonimmigrant visa petitions such as the L-1A Intracompany Transferee Petition and other types of applications and petitions such as the Humanitarian Reinstatement application, multiple types of work-permits such as the H-1B Specialty Occupation Visa Petition, the O-1 Extraordinary Alien Petition, B-2 examples, I-140 Applications and many more. If you enjoy this family 2nd preference petition and it makes your life easier, then come back and try the other immigration applications and petitions.

Remember this S Visa Petition does need the cooperation of a government official to ultimately succeed and could eventually get the Green Card. If granted, you will be given an S Visa which will allow you to work and then some time afterwards, you can apply for the Green Card.

We certainly hope you find this petition useful and helpful and hope for the best immigration experience you can have. We do have petitions on every subject area of immigration, and you might look at those if needed as well. If you do need to actually have a consultation, you can call our U.S. Immigration Law office at 562-495-0554 for an initial free consultation to determine what must be done to help you and your family.