In 2025, Immigration Wants ALL Your Criminal Records – What You Need to Know

Let’s talk about criminal records at USCIS and the State Department in 2025. Hi, I’m Jim Hacking, immigration lawyer practicing law throughout the United States out of our offices in St. Louis, San Diego, and Washington, D.C. As a lawyer and an advocate for immigrants, we want to be as aggressive as we can be in what evidence we turn over, and we winna be honest and forthright.

We want to give USCIS or the State Department everything that they ask for. Historically, uh, though, when it comes to criminal records, the government hasn’t always been very consistent in what they ask for. Sometimes, they just ask for the disposition. They just wanna know, did this case get resolved? And I’m not here specifically talking about traffic, but the, the theories sort of apply.

I’m talking more about criminal records, and usually, they just want to see if this is something that makes you deportable, or if it’s something that makes you inadmissible to the United States, or if it’s something that would keep you from getting a visa to the United States. In 2025, those days are over. The government, USCIS, or the State Department, they are going to expect you to bring them a complete set of everything related to any criminal infraction that you’ve had. Now, if you’re applying for citizenship 30 years later, maybe not from way back then, but generally, if you have any kind of crimes that could impact your immigration case, so if you’re applying for citizenship and you have one during the statutory period or maybe even beyond the statutory period that was a serious crime, they’re going to want the arrest report, the court file certified by the clerk of court wherever your criminal charges were, and they’re going to want the disposition. So, you know, we’ve gone to immigration interviews with all those in our hand, and sometimes if the officer only asks for the, uh, disposition, then we just give them what they ask for.

There’s no rule that says you have to dump everything on them. But what I’m here to tell you is that in 2025, they are asking for everything. So, that, that cuts across lots of issues within the immigration process. What do I mean by that? Well, number one, you probably want to get all those records before you file, because you never know at what stage in the process, they might send you a request for evidence about documents related to your criminal charges.

Now, on the forms themselves, you have to list your crimes, and they might ask you very early on in the process for the documentation of that. So, I believe that gone are the days where officers are going to accept just the disposition. You could send that in, but you’re going to get a request for them. And so, in most immigration offices around the country and in most consulates around the world, you can expect that they want to see everything. They wanna know what’s in that police report.

And a lot of times, police reports contain really bad things, things in there that might not have impacted the overall case, but that might make the applicant look bad, and they are asking for those. And so, we’re cry- you’re going to see a lot more of a focus in the Trump administration as it relates to USCIS and the State Department in their efforts to keep America safe again to not allow immigrants in or to give them immigration benefits if they have criminal matters that the government doesn’t like. So, you can expect a lot more scrutiny. How else does this impact it? Well, whenever you receive a request for evidence or a notice of intent to deny, or a continuance on your citizenship case, that slows down your case.

So, if you think to yourself, “If I’m the government and I want to slow down legal immigration to the United States…” which is what Stephen Miller, Steve Bannon, and Donald Trump want to do, is to slow down legal immigration to the United States. By requiring everybody to get every criminal record that they’ve ever had, it’s going to slow down individual cases.

It’s also going to slow down the system, which is part of what they’re after. You’re going to see a lot more cases where you go to the interview and you give them those records, and they say, “Well, I can’t give you a decision now, because I have to review those records.” So, we’re, we are really seeing a sea change in how the embassies or USCIS look at criminal matters, and specifically the documentation of. So, another way this is gonna impact is just on approval rates. There are going to be more people who get denied because of something that makes them inadmissible, something that makes them removable, or something that makes them not eligible for a visa, and you’re going to see even the government try to stretch those powers soon.

I saw a denial the other day of a case type that I have never seen before. So, in this denial notice on a green card application, the fellow had one screwy crime back in the UK, and then, like, a resisting or not pulling over for a police officer on a traffic matter. That was it. And even though this applicant explained to the officer what had happened, and even though the USCIS concluded that he was admissible, so they said, “We’ve received these criminal records from you, from the, the weird thing in England and the thing in New York City, and we know that that does not make you inadmissible. But we have the discretion on who we give green cards to, so we’re going to use our discretion and not give you a green card.” So, you can expect, if you have any kind of criminal matters, that your case just got a whole lot more complicated.

And I would say that based on the calls that I’m getting on my immigration answer show, that if you’re doing this without an attorney, you’re nuts. I don’t care if you hire me or not, and I’m not here to scare people. People love to say in the comments, “Oh, this lawyer, he just likes to scare people.” Do you really think that I create 2,200 videos for free for people to sort of learn how to do a lot of this on their own?

Do you think I do that to make money? No, I don’t. I don’t. I do it because I care about immigrants, and I, I believe that if I demonstrate to you over and over that I know what I’m talking about and that we as a firm are really good at what we do, that the right people will hire us, that the people who are smart and want to win their cases will hire us.

So, I don’t make these videos to scare people, and I don’t say all this stuff about criminal records to scare you.

I say it so that you go in there knowing what you’re up against, knowing what you’re going to be asked for, knowing how organized you have to be, and, and that you have that stuff at the time of filing. So, for all of those reasons, if you’re thinking about hiring us or working with our firm to represent you through the immigrant visa process, through green card, citizenship, whatever it is, and you’re worried about criminal stuff or you’re not worried about criminal stuff, give us a call 314-961-8200 or email us info at hackingimmigrationlaw.com. If you’re just looking for free resources, we have a ton of them, and again, not making money off them. We have our Immigrant Home Facebook group.

There’s 15,000 people in there talking about the immigration process, asking questions of each other. We have our YouTube channel that you can subscribe to, that we post new videos to every week. We have, uh, an Immigration Answers Live Show that goes live on Facebook and YouTube.

You can come and ask me a question for free. Again, not something that we’re making money off of.

And then finally, uh, you should subscribe to the channel so that you get updates whenever we go live. And if you’re not following us on TikTok, we have a little bit more fun with the immigration process @immigrationhacking. Thanks so much for watching, and we’ll see you on the next video.

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