Finance Professional Secures U.S. Career and Fiancée After Drug Caution Deleted

The Situation:

What Our Client Was Facing

Our client, a young professional working in finance, received a police caution for possession of small amounts of Class A drugs, specifically cocaine and MDMA. Although a caution is not a conviction, it remains a formal record on the Police National Computer (PNC).

While cautions are considered “spent” for certain purposes in the UK, they stay recorded on the PNC until the individual reaches 100 years of age. As a result, they can appear for decades on an ACRO Police Certificate, the document required for visa and immigration applications.

For this client, the impact was particularly severe. He had secured a position in the United States and was engaged to an American citizen. Under U.S. immigration law, drug-related offences are treated with extreme seriousness. Even a simple caution for possession can lead to a permanent bar on both work visas and citizenship.

There were two critical risks: a direct disclosure of the caution on his Police Certificate would result in visa refusal, and even a “No Live Trace” entry would trigger further inquiries by U.S. authorities, leading to the same outcome in practice.

Because his employer would handle the visa process, the caution would inevitably have been revealed to them. This caused immense anxiety. He feared losing his career opportunity, damaging his professional reputation, and facing the stigma that such a record can carry in a competitive field.