Family-based immigration

Who you can petition for

Who you are decides what you can do. U.S. citizens can petition for more relatives than permanent residents can, and for some of them with no waiting at all.

Immediate relatives of U.S. citizens

Spouses, unmarried children under 21, and parents where the citizen is 21 or older. This group has no annual cap, which means no queue for a visa number. The case moves at the speed of the paperwork and the agency, and nothing else.

Everyone else, in the preference categories

• F1: unmarried sons and daughters, 21 or older, of U.S. citizens
• F2A: spouses and unmarried children under 21 of permanent residents
• F2B: unmarried sons and daughters, 21 or older, of permanent residents
• F3: married sons and daughters of U.S. citizens
• F4: brothers and sisters of U.S. citizens, where the citizen is 21 or older

These categories are capped each year and each one has its own queue. A permanent resident cannot petition for a parent or a sibling at all, which is the limitation people most often discover late.

What the wait looks like

For immediate relatives, there is no visa queue and the timeline is processing time. For everyone else, the day the I-130 is filed becomes your priority date, and you wait until a visa number reaches it. The State Department publishes where each category stands, by country, every month in the Visa Bulletin.

The waits are not small and we will not soften them. Sibling cases from high-demand countries have run well over a decade. Some F3 and F4 categories move in years rather than months. Mexico and the Philippines carry longer queues than most countries in several categories.

Two things follow from that. File early, because the priority date is the only part of the queue you control. And tell us about every birthday and every marriage, because turning 21 or getting married can move a case between categories, sometimes helpfully and sometimes not. The Child Status Protection Act can hold a child's age in place in some situations, and whether it applies to yours is worth checking rather than assuming.

The two routes to the green card

Once a visa number is available, there are two ways to finish.

• Adjustment of status. Form I-485, filed inside the United States, for people who are here and eligible. You stay put, and you can usually apply for work and travel authorization while it is pending.
• Consular processing. The case goes through the National Visa Center to a U.S. consulate abroad, with the interview there. This is the route for anyone outside the United States, and for some people inside it who are not eligible to adjust.

Which one applies is not a preference. It turns on how you entered, your current status, and your immigration history, and getting it wrong is expensive.

One thing to know before anyone books a flight

Time spent in the United States without status creates bars that bite on departure. Leaving after more than 180 days of unlawful presence triggers a three-year bar on return. Leaving after a year or more triggers ten. The bar is triggered by the departure, which is why a consular interview abroad can be the most dangerous step in a case that otherwise looks straightforward.

We do not handle waivers. Where a case needs one, you need a firm that does that work, and we will tell you so at the strategy session rather than halfway through. Knowing early is worth more than a referral late.

This is also why the first conversation covers how you entered and every absence since. Those two facts decide more family cases than anything else, and they are checkable before a form is filed.

Two things every petitioner should plan for

• The affidavit of support. As the petitioner you take on a legally enforceable obligation to support the immigrant, shown on Form I-864 and measured against the federal poverty guidelines. If your income does not reach the threshold, a joint sponsor can be used, and finding one takes longer than people expect.
• Conditional residence. If your marriage is less than two years old when the green card is approved, it is granted for two years rather than ten. Form I-751 removes the condition, filed in the 90 days before it expires. Missing that window causes serious problems, so put the date somewhere you will see it.

What it costs

Government filing fees are set by USCIS and the State Department and change over time. The total depends on how many people are on the case and whether you adjust status here or process at a consulate. Legal fees are a flat fee quoted after your strategy session. Payment plans are available.

Two situations we see often

The spouse already here, eligible to adjust

Married to a U.S. citizen, entered on a visa, and eligible to file the I-130 and the I-485 together without leaving the country. The most common family case we run, and the one where the work is doing it cleanly and on time rather than solving a problem.

The sibling petition filed years ago

An I-130 approved long ago with a priority date finally approaching. What matters now is whether anyone's circumstances changed in the interim: marriages, children turning 21, a petitioner who naturalized. Those changes move cases between categories and the file needs reading before the interview is scheduled.

These are patterns, not case results. Every case turns on its own facts and its own history.

Questions people ask first