Immigration Risk?

The lack of conviction is very good news. It should NOT prevent you from obtaining your citizenship but I would ask that you have a lawyer involved in the case because you will have to write about it since you will need to answer "yes" to the questions about ever having been arrested and "Yes" to the questions about ever having been charged. Best, Khaja M. Din, Esq. Din | Memmen, Inc. www.dinmemmen.com FREE CONSULTATION FOR YOUR IMMIGRATION AND DEPORTATION ISSUES Chicago Office 4518 North Kedzie Avenue Chicago, IL 60625 P.312.878.2357 F.312.794.1813 Madison Office — By Appointment Only Main Street Justice 354 West Main Street Madison, WI 53703 P.608.238.1050 No client-attorney relationship is being created by this posting. Please contact an attorney with questions about your case and to verify the statements made herein before acting upon them.

Hello, In order to answer your question accurately, we need more information. Were the charges dropped prior to any hearing (due to lack of evidence or some other reason), or were they dropped after some sort of deferred adjudication arrangement? If you were not required to enter any plea or go through a hearing to get the charges dismissed, the incident should not affect your eligibility for naturalization. However, when completing the naturalization application, it will be important to disclose that you were arrested and provide the court disposition showing the charges were dismissed. Deferred adjudication is a different situation, and may depend on whether you had to enter a plea and complete conditions prior to the charges being dismissed or not. If deferred adjudication occurred, definitely consult an immigration attorney about whether/how that will affect you. In fact, it is always a good idea to verify eligibility and address any potential concerns with an experienced immigration attorney prior to submitting any application to USCIS. If you need assistance locating immigration attorneys, you can look here on , at www.aila.org, www.ImmigrationLawHelp.org, or http://www.justice.gov/eoir/probono/states.htm. Best wishes, Jennifer

If your case was dismissed that is a good thing, however before you file your N-400 you must have the entire criminal record reviewed by an experienced immigration attorney. There are certain crimes where admission is enough to trigger deportation.

You will need to admit to the arrest. You may also need to write a statement. However, I agree that an attorney should prepare the forms and appear with you at your naturalization examination.

Any arrest, either federal, state or municipal must be disclosed by any applicant applying for Naturalization with N400. I would strongly suggest to retain a licensed immigration attorney to represent you at every stage of that process and attend the interview with you. In my experience, professional approach does make a difference even with the same fact pattern.

I would also urge you to consult an immigration attorney prior to traveling outside the United States. Even though you did not have a conviction, there may be an underlying basis to deny your admission back into the United States. For example, if you were indicted, but not convicted of trafficking a controlled substance, Customs Border Patrol, may deny you admission back into the U.S. based on "a reason to belief" you are involved in drug trafficking.