Legal Question in Immigration Law in Virginia

Re: Should apply for Green Card extension or citizenship?

If you pled nolo contendere to the assault and battery charges, they could not have been dismissed, even after you sucessfully completed your probation. What likely occurred is that you received the disposition known as Suspended Imposition of Sentence (SIS) whereby you agreed to enter a guilty plea to the charges and sentencing was then deferred. If you then successsfully completed the conditions of your probation(which apparently you did), the court would simply have closed your case and there would have been no official record of your conviction since you had never been formally sentenced.(Conviction = guilty plea or finding

+ sentencing)

However, these are Virginia's rules that allow for this particular type of disposition under the facts and law which applied to your case. Unfortunately for you, however, they are not the rules which the immigration folks use to determine when precisley a lawful permanent resident (LPR)such as yourself (green card holder)has committed a deportable crime or offense of sufficient gravity to deny such person's application for citizenship. A plea of guilty to a disqualifying offense such as a crime involving moral turpitude or an aggravated felony or even an admission by the subject person to facts that would be sufficient for a finding of such guilt is all the Bureau of Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) needs to deny an application for citizenship.

It would appear that your lawyer dispensed faulty advice regarding the possible immigration consequences of your plea of nolo contendere.

If your appeal of the denial of citizenship is upheld, there would be little point in attempting to reapply as undoubtedly the same result would ensue as long as the applicable law and regulations which govern these particular issues remain unchanged.