Immigration Newsletter – May 2015
FOREIGN CONVICTIONS and CIMT – Ever since the U.S. Consulate in Saigon, Vietnam, started requesting the immigrant visa applicant to submit the “police clearance number 2 from the Ministry of Justice of Vietnam,” quite a few of the applicants have been found to be inadmissible pursuant to Section 212(a)(2) of the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) for having been convicted of a “crime involving moral turpitude” (CIMT), even though the conviction is from Vietnam.
On the police clearance letter number 2, the Ministry of Justice lists all convictions regardless whether they were expunged or not. A foreign expunged conviction is still considered a conviction for immigration purposes, and the applicant could be inadmissible to the United States for having been convicted of a CIMT.