Will a single marijuana conviction block my green card?

INA § 212(a)(2)(A)(i)(II) makes any noncitizen inadmissible if convicted of, or who admits committing, a violation of a controlled-substance law of the United States, a state, or a foreign country. The statute is uncompromising: one conviction is enough, even for simple possession, even for marijuana, even when the underlying conduct is now legal under the laws of the state where it occurred. Federal immigration law still treats marijuana as a Schedule I controlled substance under 21 U.S.C. § 812.

The one waiver — and how narrow it is

INA § 212(h) provides a discretionary waiver for a single offense of simple possession of 30 grams or less of marijuana if the applicant can show extreme hardship to a U.S. citizen or LPR spouse, parent, son, or daughter. Every other controlled-substance conviction — possession of any other drug, possession with intent to distribute, paraphernalia in some jurisdictions — is not waivable.

Why expungement does not save the case

Federal immigration law treats a state expungement, deferred judgment, or post-conviction relief as a conviction unless it was vacated for a substantive or procedural defect in the underlying proceeding (e.g., Padilla v. Kentucky ineffective-assistance grounds). A clean-record statute that erases the conviction "for all purposes" does not erase it for immigration. We see this misunderstood by clients and by some criminal-defense attorneys constantly.

What we actually do

Two paths run in parallel:

1. Post-conviction relief. Where the original plea was entered without the immigration warnings required by Padilla v. Kentucky, 559 U.S. 356 (2010), the conviction may be vacable. We coordinate with criminal counsel to file the motion in state court, because a vacatur on Padilla grounds does erase the conviction for immigration.
2. Waiver strategy. Where the offense is the narrow 30-grams-or-less marijuana possession, we build the 212(h) extreme-hardship record. Where it is any other drug offense, we audit whether the conviction even meets the federal definition — sometimes a divisible-statute analysis under Mathis v. United States, 579 U.S. 500 (2016) knocks the conviction out as an immigration trigger.

How we handle this

The audit starts with the certified court records, not the client's memory of the case. Charging documents, plea colloquy, judgment, and sentencing order. We assume nothing about whether the offense "counts" until we have applied the categorical and modified-categorical approaches to the actual statute of conviction. The work is unglamorous and decisive — most waivable cases were thought unwinnable before we did the records work.