Little Saigon Immigration Lawyer

A Garden Grove family brought their 82-year-old matriarch to Arlington Law Office after years of assuming she could never become a U.S. citizen. She had lived in the United States as a lawful permanent resident for over a decade, but her family believed the English language and civics test requirements were insurmountable — she had never learned to read or write in English, and her health had declined significantly in recent years.

Attorney Rose Bui reviewed her situation and identified a potential path: the N-648 Medical Disability Exception. Under this USCIS provision, applicants with qualifying physical or developmental disabilities or mental impairments may be exempt from both the English language test and the civics examination. The exception must be certified by a licensed U.S.-based medical professional and submitted with the N-400 naturalization application.

Our office coordinated with the family's physician, guided the medical documentation process, and prepared and filed the N-400 with the N-648 exemption request. The application was approved. The grandmother took her oath of citizenship — delivered in Vietnamese — surrounded by her family. Her children described it as the most important day of their family's life in America.

A Westminster woman — a naturalized U.S. citizen who had lived in Little Saigon for over thirty years — came to Arlington Law Office after a lifetime of waiting to bring her younger brother from Vietnam. She had filed a petition years earlier with another firm but the case had stalled without resolution. She did not know where it stood or what to do next.

Attorney Rose Bui reviewed the case history in its entirety. The original I-130 petition had been approved, but the case had never been properly transferred to the National Visa Center (NVC), and the required fees and documentation had not been submitted on time — causing the case to go dormant. Working with the client — entirely in Vietnamese — we reactivated the case, completed the NVC processing stage, and prepared her brother for his immigrant visa interview at the U.S. Embassy in Ho Chi Minh City.

Her brother arrived in the United States the following year. The siblings, now both in their sixties, reunited in Westminster for the first time in over thirty years.