Pleas for visa holders
A student, a worker or a visitor who entered on a visa was admitted, so the deportability grounds in INA 237(a)(2) are the list that applies to the conviction, and the five-year clock on a single crime involving moral turpitude runs from that admission. But a temporary status is also the start of a path, and every step down it toward a green card is an application that tests you against the inadmissibility grounds in INA 212(a)(2), where the burden is yours and a drug conviction has no marijuana exception. The plea that does not make you deportable today can still close the green card later.
Current as of October 2026. We re-check this page regularly and after any rule change.
A visa holder is on the deportability list now and on the inadmissibility list later. The first list decides whether a conviction lets DHS start a removal case against you while you are in status. The second decides whether you can ever adjust to a green card, and it is the harsher of the two: no marijuana exception on the drug ground, the burden on you, and a waiver that reaches only some of the grounds. This page goes through both lists, then the drug ground, which is where the two lists differ most, and then what to ask us about the visa itself. The categories are explained on the crimes and removal page, and the pleas that avoid them on the plea strategy pages.
Now: the deportability list
You were admitted, so INA 237(a)(2) is the list that applies to the conviction itself, and DHS must prove the ground by clear and convincing evidence. INA 240(c)(3)(A); 8 C.F.R. 1240.8(a); Woodby v. INS, 385 U.S. 276 (1966).
| Ground | What it takes | Authority |
|---|---|---|
| One crime involving moral turpitude | Committed within five years after the date of admission, and a sentence of one year or longer may be imposed | INA 237(a)(2)(A)(i) |
| Two or more CIMTs | Any time after admission, not arising out of a single scheme; separate crimes on separate occasions are not a single scheme | INA 237(a)(2)(A)(ii); Matter of Adetiba, 20 I&N Dec. 506 (BIA 1992) |
| Aggravated felony | Any entry on the INA 101(a)(43) list, any time after admission | INA 237(a)(2)(A)(iii) |
| Controlled substance | Any law relating to a federally controlled substance, except a single offense of possession for your own use of 30 grams or less of marijuana | INA 237(a)(2)(B)(i) |
| Drug abuser or addict | No conviction required | INA 237(a)(2)(B)(ii) |
| Firearms | Buying, selling, using, owning, possessing or carrying a firearm or destructive device, or attempting or conspiring to | INA 237(a)(2)(C) |
| Domestic violence, stalking, child abuse, neglect or abandonment | A conviction of one of the listed crimes | INA 237(a)(2)(E)(i) |
| Protection order | A court finding that you violated the protective part of an order; no conviction required | INA 237(a)(2)(E)(ii); Matter of Obshatko, 27 I&N Dec. 173 (BIA 2017) |
| Document fraud, false claim to citizenship, unlawful voting | Separate grounds outside 237(a)(2) | INA 237(a)(3)(B)(iii), 237(a)(3)(D), 237(a)(6) |
The five-year clock on the one-CIMT ground runs from the admission by virtue of which you were present when the crime was committed. Matter of Alyazji, 25 I&N Dec. 397 (BIA 2011). For a person who entered on a visa and never left, that is the entry, and a single CIMT committed inside the five years makes you deportable if the offense carries a possible sentence of a year or more. The possible sentence is the statutory maximum, not what the judge gave you. A single CIMT committed after the five years is off this list. It is not off the next one.
Several of these grounds also take away the bond hearing. Under INA 236(c)(1)(B), a person deportable for two CIMTs, an aggravated felony, a drug offense or a firearms offense is detained without bond, and under 236(c)(1)(C) so is a person deportable for a single CIMT with a sentence of at least one year. See the mandatory detention page.
Later: every application tests admissibility
Adjustment of status requires that you be admissible. INA 245(a)(2). A person inadmissible under 212(a)(2) needs a 212(h) waiver, and the drug ground can be waived only for a single offense of simple possession of 30 grams or less of marijuana. The grounds below are the ones a plea can trigger, and they are read on the day the application is decided, against the record as it stands then.
| Ground | What it takes | Authority |
|---|---|---|
| Crime involving moral turpitude | A conviction, or an admission of the essential elements; one offense excepted under the petty offense exception if the maximum possible penalty did not exceed one year and any sentence imposed did not exceed six months | INA 212(a)(2)(A)(i)(I), (ii)(II) |
| Controlled substance | A conviction of, or an admission of, a violation of any law relating to a federally controlled substance. No marijuana exception | INA 212(a)(2)(A)(i)(II) |
| Multiple convictions | Two or more convictions with aggregate sentences to confinement of five years or more, whatever the offenses were | INA 212(a)(2)(B) |
| Reason to believe drug trafficker | No conviction required | INA 212(a)(2)(C) |
| Prostitution and commercialized vice | Within ten years of the application | INA 212(a)(2)(D) |
| False claim to citizenship | For any purpose or benefit under federal or state law; no 212(h) waiver | INA 212(a)(6)(C)(ii) |
Two things on this list have no counterpart on the first. A CIMT counts here regardless of when it was committed and regardless of the possible sentence, subject only to the petty offense exception, which is explained on the petty offense page. And an admission counts without a conviction, which is why what you say in a plea colloquy or an allocution matters even when the disposition is later dismissed. The deportability versus inadmissibility page sets the two lists side by side.
The burden is yours. An applicant for admission must show clearly and beyond doubt that they are entitled to be admitted, INA 240(c)(2), and an applicant for relief must show that a conviction is not disqualifying and loses if the record is inconclusive. 8 C.F.R. 1240.8(d); Pereida v. Wilkinson, 592 U.S. 224 (2021). A record of conviction that does not say which subsection you pleaded to helps DHS when it carries the burden and hurts you when you carry it. The record of conviction page explains what to ask the criminal court to write down.
The drug ground, and how little 212(h) reaches
Three rules, three different sizes of exception
On the deportability list, INA 237(a)(2)(B)(i) excepts a single offense involving possession for your own use of 30 grams or less of marijuana. On the inadmissibility list, INA 212(a)(2)(A)(i)(II) excepts nothing. And the 212(h) waiver reaches the inadmissibility drug ground only for a single offense of simple possession of 30 grams or less of marijuana. A visa holder who takes a plea to possession of any other controlled substance, or to any drug offense other than simple possession, may not be deportable if it is the only conviction and it fits the 237 exception, and will still be inadmissible for adjustment with no waiver available. That is the single most common way a plea that looked harmless on the day closes the green card.
The substance has to be on the federal schedules. Under Mellouli v. Lynch, 575 U.S. 798 (2015), a state conviction supports the controlled-substance ground only if the substance is federally controlled, and a paraphernalia conviction that does not tie the paraphernalia to a federally controlled substance does not. Marijuana remains a controlled substance under federal law; state legalization does not change the analysis. 21 U.S.C. 812. Under Matter of Davey, 26 I&N Dec. 37 (BIA 2012), two convictions from the same incident involving the same small amount of marijuana can still be a single offense for the 237 exception, and whether a paraphernalia conviction tied to 30 grams or less for personal use falls within it turns on a separate Board decision. We would want to read it against your record before telling you how it applies, so treat that question as open. The drug offenses page goes through the categories.
Two more drug rules have no conviction requirement at all. A drug abuser or addict is deportable under INA 237(a)(2)(B)(ii), and a person the government has reason to believe is or has been a trafficker is inadmissible under INA 212(a)(2)(C). A plea agreement that describes sales, or an allocution that admits them, can feed both.
Students, workers, and the visa itself
The two lists are the same for every nonimmigrant. A student on an F-1, a worker on an H-1B, a visitor on a B-2: each was admitted, each is on the deportability list now, and each will be on the inadmissibility list at the first application for a green card. What differs is what is at stake between those two points. A student who is removed loses the degree. A worker who becomes inadmissible loses an employer's petition that may have been years in the making. A person with a pending family petition loses the path that petition opened. The pending application page goes through the timing for each.
The visa itself is a different question: whether a conviction voids the visa in your passport, what a consular officer will do at the next visa interview, and what a Customs and Border Protection officer will do at the port when you return on it. Those are consular and CBP questions, governed by other authorities, so ask us. What we can say is that a nonimmigrant who leaves after a plea and returns is seeking admission, and the inadmissibility list above, with its burden and its absence of a marijuana exception, is the list that applies at the port. The travel page says the same thing at greater length. Do not travel on the visa after a plea until the record has been read against both lists.
One more form of relief belongs on this page. A nonimmigrant who has been in the country for ten years may one day be eligible for cancellation of removal under INA 240A(b)(1), which requires ten years of continuous physical presence, good moral character for that period, hardship to a citizen or resident spouse, parent or child, and no conviction of an offense under 212(a)(2), 237(a)(2) or 237(a)(3). Any one of the convictions on either list above bars it, and under INA 240A(d)(1) and Matter of Perez, 22 I&N Dec. 689 (BIA 1999), the ten years stop on the day a 212(a)(2) offense is committed. The no lawful status page covers that relief in full, because it is the relief a visa holder who falls out of status ends up needing.
At the plea, the questions for the criminal lawyer are the same ones the tool asks: is the offense a CIMT, is the substance federally controlled, is there a possible sentence of a year or more, can the sentence be kept to six months or less so the petty offense exception applies, and what will the record of conviction say. Each of those is on the immigration-safer pleas page.
Read next: pleas with a pending application, TPS and DACA, drug offenses, or the petty offense exception.
Common questions
I am on a student visa. Which list applies to me?
Both, at different times. You were admitted, so the deportability grounds in INA 237(a)(2) apply to the conviction now, and the government has to prove them by clear and convincing evidence. The moment you apply for adjustment of status, INA 245(a)(2) requires you to be admissible, which puts the inadmissibility grounds in INA 212(a)(2) on the table with the burden on you. A single CIMT that is outside the five-year deportability clock is still a 212(a)(2) offense for that application.
Is a marijuana possession plea a problem on a visa?
On the deportability list, a single offense of possession for your own use of 30 grams or less of marijuana is excepted. On the inadmissibility list there is no exception at all, and the 212(h) waiver reaches the drug ground only for a single offense of simple possession of 30 grams or less. Any other drug conviction, including possession of a larger amount or of any other federally controlled substance, cannot be waived under 212(h) for adjustment.
Will the conviction cancel my visa or stop me from coming back?
That is a consular and Customs and Border Protection question with its own rules, so ask us. What we can walk you through is the two lists: whether the conviction makes you deportable, and whether it makes you inadmissible when you next seek admission or apply for a benefit. Do not travel on the visa after a plea until an immigration lawyer has read the record against both lists.
Does the five-year CIMT clock start when I got the visa?
It starts at the admission by virtue of which you were present when the crime was committed. Under Matter of Alyazji that is the admission that put you here, and an adjustment of status inside the country can be that admission. For a person who entered once on a visa and never left, the entry date is the natural candidate, but the question has to be answered on your travel and status history, not assumed.
Tell us about the charge before you take the plea. Not after.
You get a free conversation with an immigration attorney, in your language. We speak English, Russian, Spanish and Uzbek in-house, and we bring in a live interpreter for anything else. We will read the charge against the immigration statute, tell you what the offered plea does to your status and to every form of relief, and tell you what to ask your criminal lawyer to negotiate instead. If the plea has already been entered, we will tell you what can still be done.