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Hi,
I'm a US citizen and I've been married for 3 years to my wife. We are in the middle of AOS processing.
I know this may be a silly question but I was hoping some of you might have some insight on this. My wife has absolutely no criminal record whatsoever and she came to the US legally.
About 2 months ago she found an $80 gift card inside the restroom of a store she worked at and I convinced her to keep it. I understand this was a moral lapse but I don't want to make this post about the ethical status of using a gift card you find. The post is more about the legal and immigration ramifications. You see, the problem is the card was reported stolen.
I don't know the legal definition of petty theft but it doesn't seem to me that what my wife did was steal. Yes, she used a card that didn't belong to her originally but she just found the card, she didn't take it from anyone. So I'm not even sure if it counts as stealing. I know we should have made an effort to turn it in and neither of us have ever done anything illegal, we don't even have speeding tickets. We convinced ourselves it was like finding a $20 bill in a parking lot and had a temporary moral lapse. So, after almost 2 months of doing nothing with the card, we just decided to go ahead and use it. That's when we got caught using it.
Well, my wife lost her job as a result, which isn't really a big deal. However, her boss said that she would cooperate with the police and that she would tell them that the card had been reported "stolen" (i.e. not lost or missing, but stolen). She tried to make my wife sign a paper acknowledging that she had stolen the gift card from the original owner but my wife refused. I mean, my wife acknowledged that what she did was wrong and she felt very remorseful, but she didn't feel that she stole the card and I don't feel that's an accurate description of the events either.
Nevertheless, we are worried about what this could mean for our immigration proceedings. My wife wasn't arrested or charged with anything, at least not yet; but we are still worried. My questions are:
1) Is what my wife did considered stealing in any legally relevant sense?
2) Will this effect her AOS proceedings?
I'm a US citizen and I've been married for 3 years to my wife. We are in the middle of AOS processing.
I know this may be a silly question but I was hoping some of you might have some insight on this. My wife has absolutely no criminal record whatsoever and she came to the US legally.
About 2 months ago she found an $80 gift card inside the restroom of a store she worked at and I convinced her to keep it. I understand this was a moral lapse but I don't want to make this post about the ethical status of using a gift card you find. The post is more about the legal and immigration ramifications. You see, the problem is the card was reported stolen.
I don't know the legal definition of petty theft but it doesn't seem to me that what my wife did was steal. Yes, she used a card that didn't belong to her originally but she just found the card, she didn't take it from anyone. So I'm not even sure if it counts as stealing. I know we should have made an effort to turn it in and neither of us have ever done anything illegal, we don't even have speeding tickets. We convinced ourselves it was like finding a $20 bill in a parking lot and had a temporary moral lapse. So, after almost 2 months of doing nothing with the card, we just decided to go ahead and use it. That's when we got caught using it.
Well, my wife lost her job as a result, which isn't really a big deal. However, her boss said that she would cooperate with the police and that she would tell them that the card had been reported "stolen" (i.e. not lost or missing, but stolen). She tried to make my wife sign a paper acknowledging that she had stolen the gift card from the original owner but my wife refused. I mean, my wife acknowledged that what she did was wrong and she felt very remorseful, but she didn't feel that she stole the card and I don't feel that's an accurate description of the events either.
Nevertheless, we are worried about what this could mean for our immigration proceedings. My wife wasn't arrested or charged with anything, at least not yet; but we are still worried. My questions are:
1) Is what my wife did considered stealing in any legally relevant sense?
2) Will this effect her AOS proceedings?
