kazmania

Hi People,
I am quite lost at what to do and hope I can get some quality advice on this great forum. I am a UK citizen and have been to the US about 18 times and canada once over the last 10years. Exactly 7yrs and 3months ago I got a police caution for "attempting to obtain property by deception" under section 15 of the theft act 1968. I always tick "no" on the I-94W because I was under the impression that moral turpitude crimes had to do with the big stuff like drugs, rape, murder, terrorism etc and also when I was arrested the police said it was just a slap on the wrist and will fall of my record in 3yrs as long as I din't re-offend. I had never had problems when going thru immigrations except once when I went thru shannon when my passport wasn't machine readable.
I recently discovered on this forum that such a caution made me inadmissible and I don't really know where to go from here?
Please help me?

crg

The arrest and caution may or may not lead to you being found to be inadmissible. A caution, by itself, is not always considered to be a conviction or admission of guilt by the consular officer. Even if they want to hold the caution against you, it may fall under the single petty offense exception.

You'll have to apply for a visa in order to have that determination made.

If the consular officer decides that the caution doesn't matter, then the false statement on the form doesn't matter either because the misrepresentation wasn't of a material fact.

kazmania

Thanks mate for quick response. So I should just go and apply for B2 visa and tell them I have ticked no previously. I also filled out esta last year.

crg

Tell them the truth. If didn't know what a CIMT was at the time, you can tell them that. Since then, you have found out that the arrest may have been for a CIMT and want to seek a visa to find out because you want to follow the law.

Here's a sample of the visa application:
http://www.immihelp.com/forms/ds156fill.pdf