Married to US Citizen but on J1 Visa

[topple]

What is the name of your state?What is the name of your state? Virginia
We are kind of in a dire strait here. Me and my wife got engaged before she got accepted a traineeship in the United States. We figured she could come over and work on her traineeship and then get married which we did. We were unfamiliar with the law of a J1 visa w/2 year residency as NO ONE explicitly warns about it. It's basically a poison pill IMHO. So if we knew about that, we would simply of gotten a fiancee visa and married. Then she could of started working after all the paperwork went through. But she is on this J1 now for 18 months, and then afterwards I'm suppose to suffer and live in the States while she goes back to Singapore for 2 years. As a natural born US citizen this appears extremely unfair. What can we do? What are the likelihood of getting a "no obligation" from the Singaporean government or AISEC which is who is she is affiliated with at her job here in the States. This is painful since she is in NY on this job and I am in Virginia. PLEASE HELP!!!

 

[ImmigAttyLana]

You need to find out from the Embassy of Singapore about their procedure for applying for the no objection letter. As for the 2 year home residency requirement, first of all, it is not applicable to all J-1s but only to certain ones depending on the program or the source of funding. Secondly, it is up to you to understand the process before you apply and no one has to explain it to you if you do not take the initiative to understand it.

If she is unable to get the no objection letter and there is no extreme hardship that can be proven to get a waiver of that 2-year home residency requirement, she will have to go back to Singapore to satisfy that requirement, but there is nothing that says you cannot accompany her when she does that.