What to do if you're stuck because of COVID-19 and your visa is expiring
*If your legal stay in the United States is expiring and you can’t leave because of COVID-19, this may be impossible.
Do not just ignore your deadline and plan to tell them afterward. This is illegal. Obviously in a global emergency, a sane government would let this slide, but the United States government is kind of crazy right now. There’s no telling what they might try to do. At the very least, having been an “illegal immigrant” will make it harder to come back into the country if you ever want to.
If you came to the U.S. with a visa, file a form I-539 (visa extension) here. Do this before your authorized stay expires.
If you need any kind of publicly-funded benefits—a lot of people do in the middle of the global emergency—file the visa extension before you apply for those. They ask whether you are receiving any public benefits and you want to be able to say no. For Medicaid (depending on why you needed Medicaid) it might matter whether you ever applied; for every other benefit they they ask whether you are receiving it.
You can file online here or sign and mail it to addresses listed here. There is a $370 filing fee and an $85 biometric services fee. You can send a fee waiver application based on financial hardship for the biometric services fee. You can’t get a fee waiver for the visa extension itself unless you are a trafficking victim or a foreign investor.
If you came to the U.S. under the ESTA visa waiver program, then you don’t have a visa to extend. You need to apply for “Satisfactory Departure,” where you tell Customs and Immigration Services that you were unable to leave and that you will when you can. Do this before your authorized stay expires.
There is no single procedure for this. It depends on where you were planning to leave from. Find the contact information for the USCIS office at your port of entry here. Call them and wait on hold for a very long time. That directory will list a lot of phone numbers. You want the Deferred Inspection Unit or if not that, anything that sounds like it’s for immigration problems.
Depending on which office, the application may have to be submitted close to the time your authorized stay expires. Like within a few days of when you’re required to leave. Expect it to involve proving that you entered the country legally, with ESTA approval or a passport stamp. Some USCIS offices will want proof that you were unable to leave. You may need to show a canceled airline itinerary. If they are especially perverse, you may have to prove you can afford a replacement ticket.
Most USCIS offices will let you send the application by email. Two offices (Albuquerque and Raleigh) are still requiring in-person applications. If you are unlucky enough to need an emergency appointment, contact the USCIS contact center.
More Information
All this is true as of late March/early April, but it is changing quickly. If you need more information, Google “Covid satisfactory departure.” Whatever you find may be more up to date.
Links that are still useful as of early April:
A law firm’s description of visa waiver difficulties
Update May 26: This is still mostly true. USCIS does say they may be flexible if you file an extension after the deadline, which is good. (Their page last updated May 1.) Staying without an extension is still illegal, but they might make exceptions. This is in their discretion. That means you should not count on it. Still file early if you can.
If you came in under the ESTA program, you still need to apply for Satisfactory Departure. Your ports of departure may have changed their procedures and hopefully aren’t requiring anything in person.
Mentors
- Attorney Advisor at the National Commission on Service (constitutional law, reports, ethics, policy, a ton of legislative drafting).
- Privacy/Cybersecurity Litigation Associate at a big law firm in D.C.
- Litigation work, experience in national security/cybersecurity/data privacy with the Department of Defense, the FCC, the Department of State, and Ingenico.
- Taught programming (Python) to law students with Prof. Paul Ohm.
- Supernova cosmology research with Nobel Laureate Saul Perlmutter at Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory.
- Supersymmetry research with the CMS experiments at CERN.
- Particle and astrophysics research at the U.S. Dept. of Energy, Fermilab.
- This website 🙂 and our Medium blog and our novels.
- Short stories & poetry, was a freelance columnist for The Boston Globe and The Washington Times, author of The Eyes of Mikra, a spy/war novella.
- Love music and have played the piano for 20 years. Classically trained in Western Honors Chorus & Hindustani/Carnatic.
- Speak English, German, French, Spanish, Kannada, Hindi.
- Love art.
Hi! I’m one of the founders of this website. I graduated from USC in math and philosophy and Georgetown Law.
Here’s some of the hats I’ve worn before:
Appellate Attorney representing disabled veterans.
Law Fellow at the Northern Virginia Capital Defender Office. Virginia has specialized death penalty defense offices who get called in whenever the state tries to execute someone. I was performing research, writing motions, and interviewing possible mitigation witnesses.
Volunteer Attorney, at several different places.
—Rising for Justice, doing civil protection order defense (I swear we’re the good guys.) A disturbingly large fraction of protective orders aren’t people in danger of domestic abuse, but people who figured out this is a quicker way to get rid of someone than getting an eviction. Rising for Justice takes those cases.
—Institute for Justice, performing legal research for cases fighting civil forfeiture.
—Helpful Engineering, giving legal advice to engineers trying to produce supplies to fight COVID-19.
Miscellany:
I also write things. This website, Medium blogs, and I will write sonnets or song parodies about philosophy or current events on request.
I am not very good at fencing. My goal was to get good enough to effortlessly beat a majority of non-fencers, just in case it ever came up.
I’m better at chess, and would play tournaments occasionally if not for the quarantine.
If you’d like to contact me, please send me a message through our Contact page.
Languages: English
- Associate Attorney, Kilpatrick Townsend, & Stockton.
- I’ve also clerked at the U.S. Tax Court, interned for a federal district court judge, and worked as a legal fellow on the Hill.
- J.D. & L.L.M. in Taxation, Georgetown University Law Center. I was an Executive Editor for the Tax Lawyer.
- B.A. in Law and Constitutional Studies, Utah State University.
If you’d like to contact me, please send me a message through our Contact page.
Languages: English, French, Spanish | Some Arabic, German, Japanese, & Mandarin
- Data Privacy Analyst with Syneos Health and tons of experience in the data privacy field.
- Lawyer with a Bachelors in Business and a Masters in Cyber Security.
- Interned at Philly’s DA’s Office and clerked for a Judge.
- Founded a Cyber Law Society.
If you’d like to contact me, please send me a message through our Contact page.
Languages: English
I’m an international lawyer at the U.S. Department of the Treasury where I specialize in matters at the intersection of foreign policy, national security, and economics and finance. Previously, I served as an attorney at the National Commission on Military, National, and Public Service and, earlier, as an associate in the International Trade and National Security group at a leading international law firm. I hold a J.D. from Georgetown University and a B.S. from Cornell University and am admitted to practice in the District of Columbia and the State of New York. In my free time, I enjoy going for long outdoor runs, completing New York Times crossword puzzles, and analyzing geopolitical trends and prospective investment opportunities.
If you’d like to contact me, please send me a message through our Contact page.
Languages: English | Some French