US entry waiver help

Just a reminder about this free and indispensable US entry waiver resource. Held each Wednesday at 12pm eastern, immigration legal expert Laurel Scott hosts a live chat. I took advantage of the most recent session and asked the following with regards to a question I had about my inadmissibility:

canadianwithwaiver: First, thanks in advance for your support. Canadian with 2 criminal convictions (both theft under $1K) who travels to the US with an I-194 waiver. I found the following on state.gov about how ARO accesses admissibility. Specifically: "if you have more than one conviction, CIMT or otherwise for which the aggregate sentence was more than 5 yrs, you are inadmissible.” The combined for my summary convictions is 1 year although as stated, I have 2 convictions. So my question is: is the determination of inadmissibility based on more than 1 CIMT or is it based on the aggregate of those sentences? I am trying to determine if I might be eligible for something called a September letter.

And her response to my question:

Laurel: There are several grounds of inadmissibility for criminal history.  Sometimes different grounds look very similar or seem to be covered under a different section, but the reason there may be more than one is that the waivers are different.  So there is a separate ground of inadmissibility for multiple convictions with an aggregate sentence of more than five years, but that doesn't apply to you.  What does apply to you is the single conviction ground of inadmissibility.  You see, if you only have one conviction for something that qualifies for the petty offense exception, you wouldn't be inadmissible at all.  But because there are two, you don't get to take advantage of the petty offense exception.  So you are inadmissible for having "at least one" conviction for a CIMT.

Scott Immigration's live chat can be found here. If you've missed the live chat, you can also view the transcript archives here.