How can I get an immigration waiver?

If you are not already married, you should go ahead and marry your partner in Britain or in any other country that recognizes same sex marriage. Immediately after the marriage, he should file a Form I-130 Petition for Alien Relative to USCIS to accord you classification as an immediate relative of a US citizen. Because, both of you do not reside in the US, your petition will be filed with USCIS international office closest to where you reside ( in this case at USCIS office at 24 Grosvenor Sq. (inside the US Embassy) Average processing time of the stand alone I-130 petition is between 8-13 months. You will be wise to use this time to start collecting the various documentary evidence of hardship After approval of your I-130 , you will contact the National Visa Center NVC for consular processing. Because of your previous immigration law violations, you will file a Form I-601 waiver to cure the grounds of inadmissibility. It is at this point that you will provide all of the evidence of the hardship that your spouse is experiencing and will continue to undergo if you are not allowed to return to the US with him. Hardship to you if any, is of little or no moment in this consideration. Noting that your US spouse is already residing overseas with you, may undercut the claimed hardship. As is the fact that you are now both living in Britain, a country with comparable standard of living with the US unlike say Zimbabwe or some other third world African or Asian failed state without adequate medical services will also weigh against your case. In such cases, establishing extreme and unusual hardship to the satisfaction of DHS, though difficult is still possible. And I dare say, proving the hardship is an art and so, I strongly suggest that you hire an experienced immigration attorney who has a successful track record of preparing compelling waiver packages that often gets results. Good Luck

The first step in getting a waiver is that you need to get married. Thereafter, your U.S. citizen spouse will need to file a visa petition on your behalf. Once that is approved, there will be some additional fees and paperwork that will need to be filed with the National Visa Center. Once you have complied with all the requirements, the NVC will forward your file to the embassy for an interview. At that time, you will be scheduled for an interview, during which you will be found to be inadmissible to the U.S. for 10 years as a result of having overstayed for more than 1 year. At that time, you will be asked for a waiver. The waiver is based on the hardship to your U.S. Citizen spouse. It sounds like your partner/spouse has some existing mental health issues which would be exacerbated if you are not allowed to immigrate to the U.S., so a well prepared waiver should be granted. The time to complete this process is 1.5 to 2 years, if the waiver is approved.