If you are not comfortable speaking about important matters in English, you will need to bring a friend or hire an interpreter to attend your adjustment of status interview. Even if your U.S. petitioner—that is, the spouse, parent, or other party who is sponsoring you for U.S. lawful permanent residence—is capable of interpreting for you, the USCIS interviewing officer might not allow it. That's particularly true in a marriage-based case, because it reduces the officer's ability to compare both spouse's answers and detect marriage frauds.
The interpreter you bring to your USCIS interview does not have to be a trained or licensed professional. The only eligibility requirements are that they be over the age of 18 and fluent in both your language and in English.
Some USCIS officers also require that the interpreter be a legal resident or citizen of the United States. Of course, if they are here unlawfully, they would be foolish to walk into a USCIS office.
If you're using a non-professional, you should also advise them that they'll be entering a federal building and should be prepared to go through a metal detector and present a valid identity document. They should both dress and behave in a way that demonstrates respect for the process.
You and the interpreter will have to jointly submit a form called Form G-1256, Declaration for Interpreted USCIS Interview. This form advises you about the importance of using a competent interpreter. It also requires the interpreter to adhere to the principle that they must accurately, literally, and fully interpret what’s being said, and keep the information confidential.
Both you and the interpreter will be asked to sign this form at the start of your adjustment of status interview.
Interpreting is no easy task, even for someone fluent in two or more languages. Whoever you bring should practice with you beforehand, going over your application and getting familiar with the vocabulary used there.
You should also remember, during the interview, not to give any overly long answers. If you don't give the interpreter a chance to step in regularly, the interpreter is likely to forget your full answer, and some of it could get lost—leading to confusion or misunderstandings with the USCIS officer.
To make sure your immigration case goes smoothly, it is best to contact an experienced immigration attorney for help. The attorney can analyze your case, spot any trouble areas, recommend qualified interpreters, and appear with you at your adjustment of status interview.
We’ll explain the reversals here, the technical term for which is "visa retrogression."
Although some categories of would-be immigrants to the U.S. are eligible for an immigrant visa or green card as soon as their application is submitted and processed (most notably, immediate relatives of U.S. citizens), many other people only fit into categories within the “preference” system. They are subject to annual limits on “visa numbers,” and the numbers often run out over the course of the government's fiscal year.
The more people start the application process to immigrate to the U.S. in the various preference categories, the longer the waiting list gets. In some categories, the wait tends to be a modest two to five years, while in others (most notably for siblings of U.S. citizens) it's typically over 20 years. See Green Card Qualification for a list of categories of preference relatives and employees.
As explained in How Long Is the Wait for Your Priority Date to Become Current?, your place on the waiting list depends on your “priority date.” That's either the date that U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) received the I-130 petition that your family member filed for you or the date the U.S. Department of Labor received the labor certification (“PERM”) application that your employer filed for you.
For example, let’s say Manuel, an unmarried 24-year old from Mexico, has a U.S. lawful permanent resident father who filed a Form I-130 petition for him on February 1, 2023. USCIS approves the petition, thus making February 1, 2023 Manuel’s Priority Date. The first thing Manuel does next is to check the State Department’s Visa Bulletin, a list showing “cutoff dates,” or which Priority Dates are “current,” meaning that their holders are now entitled to visas.
If Manuel had checked the Bulletin for February of 2023, the cutoff date he would have seen in his category (F2B) was “01JUN01,” or June 15, 2001. That would have told him that people whose I-130 petitions were submitted around 22 years before his were only then receiving visas (green cards), and he could expect to wait around the same length of time.
As the months and years go by, and Manuel regularly checks the State Department's monthly Visa Bulletin, he sees the cutoff dates getting closer and closer to his Priority Date. Only when he sees a date that's at least one day later than his, however, can Manual proceed with his green card application, assuming he is still unmarried. (Priority Dates often move forward by seven days at a time.)
At that point, if Manuel were living overseas, he could expect to get notification from the U.S. National Visa Center (NVC) to proceed with processing for an immigrant visa through a U.S. consulate in Mexico. Or, if living in the U.S. lawfully (or otherwise eligible to use the procedure called “Adjustment of Status”), he could go ahead and mail the required paperwork to USCIS, and await a green card interview.
The above example describes the way the visa/green card application process normally works for people in the preference categories. But sometimes, so many people apply after a certain Priority Date is published that the State Department gets overwhelmed, and needs to put on the brakes. It does this by moving the Priority Date in that particular visa category backward. The case can go nowhere until the Priority Date moves forward again; the government will put it on hold. Fortunately, this situation should not last long.
If your Priority Date is current this month, but you see in the Visa Bulletin that it's due to go backward to a Priority Date before yours next month, you might, if you are in the United States legally, be able to move forward with your application nonetheless. If you are eligible to use the U.S.-based procedure known as adjustment of status, you can try to do everything possible to submit your adjustment application this month.
If you don't, you'll be back to watching the Visa Bulletin each month to see when your next window of opportunity opens up.
Even though the cutoff date for your category will retrogress next month, your adjustment application will remain pending. USCIS will simply wait until your priority date again is current before it moves ahead on or approves your application.
An experienced attorney will have plenty of experience dealing with the odd progress of priority dates, and can assist with the task of keeping your case on track.
]]>I have been waiting overseas for my U.S. immigrant visa for a long time, but I just checked this month’s Visa Bulletin, and my Priority Date is getting closer to the cutoff date listed. What do I do next? Do I need to wait to be notified by the U.S. government?
Yes, even with a current Priority Date, you will need to wait to be notified by the U.S. government before taking the next step toward applying for an immigrant visa and U.S. lawful permanent residence. (Note that the scenario is different than for people living in the U.S. and planning to apply for their residence using the procedure known as “Adjustment of Status.” They can and should submit their application to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) as soon as they have a current Priority Date.)
You and your petitioner (the U.S. employer or relative who is sponsoring you) will receive a welcome letter or email from the National Visa Center (NVC) when your Priority Date becomes current in the application filing chart, or is likely to become current within the next year. The welcome letter will give you your case identification number and invoice number, both of which you will need in order to go online to the Consular Electronic Application Center (CEAC) to pay your fees and fill out the visa application form. (After doing so, you will be scheduled for a consular interview, at which your visa application will be reviewed and hopefully approved.)
Just in case you do not receive this welcome letter, you should check the application date filing chart in the State Department's Visa Bulletin each month (or subscribe to monthly emails) to stay informed about whether the NVC is currently accepting applications for cases with your Priority Date.
If your date is current (the cut-off date in your preference category in the application filing date chart is a later date than your priority date or simply says “C” for “current”) but you have not yet received the welcome letter from the NVC, send a message through the public inquiry page.
You should also make sure that the NVC is aware of you and your family-member or employer petitioner’s current addresses and that NVC has an email address on file for you, as much of the process can be completed via email. If you need to add, update, or change your contact information, you can reach NVC at 1-603-334-0700 or fill out the NVC public inquiry form.
Once your Priority Date becomes current or you have received the welcome letter from the NVC, don’t let too much time go by before you take action. You will have one year in which to contact the NVC. If you wait longer than that, the U.S. government will assume you are no longer interested in getting a visa and move on to the next applications in line.
For more about the waitlist and checking the Visa Bulletin, see How Long Is the Wait for Your Priority Date to Become Current?
]]>This prospect for legalizing one's immigration status is less straightforward than it sounds, however. Let's unpack some of the myths around the so-called ten-year green card and look at how, realistically, someone who is legally eligible might actually apply for this remedy.
The first thing to realize is that, unlike some immigration benefits that one can apply to the U.S. government for upon meeting the eligibility requirements, cancellation of removal is meant only as a defense to deportation. So, literally speaking, you would need to have either been arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) or otherwise placed into removal proceedings before an immigration court judge.
There is no method for simply submitting an application for the cancellation of removal remedy outside of a courtroom setting (the details and risks of which are discussed below). Despite the risks, this possibility has led some undocumented persons to extreme actions in order to get into immigration court, as also discussed later in this article. It also leads to scams by fake attorneys who charge immigrants large sums of money for nothing.
Setting aside for now the issue of how to get into deportation proceedings, let's look at what you would need to show if you got before a judge. The requirements for cancellation of removal include that you:
In other words, proving ten years' presence is just the beginning. The harder part for most applicants is proving the degree of suffering that would be caused to close family members who have U.S. citizenship or a green card if they were removed from the United States. What's more, you'll need to convince the immigration judge that you are a good person who deserves this relief in general.
Family separation by itself is not considered to meet the required level of hardship, since it's presumably a problem for every applicant. You will need a more unique set of circumstances, such as a family member with medical or psychological problems that would be worsened by your departure.
See Green Card Through Cancellation of Removal (Non-LPR): Who Qualifies? for further discussion and details.
Getting into immigration court proceedings the trickiest part. After having spent a decade avoiding arrest by U.S. immigration authorities, you now would need to seek it out. This turns out to be harder than some people expect. U.S. immigration officials are overworked. Even when someone calls the tip line to report an undocumented person, follow-up is not guaranteed.
Another common way people land in removal proceedings (usually without wanting to) is by filing an application for some other immigration benefit.
For instance, someone who marries a U.S. citizen and then files to adjust status but fails to convince U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) that the marriage is not a fraud would likely be ordered to report for removal proceedings. Similarly, people who apply for asylum and fails to convince USCIS that they fear persecution based on one of the five recognized grounds would be referred to immigration court.
That has led some undocumented persons who've been in the U.S. for ten years to deliberately submit some such application, knowing that it will ultimately fail. In fact, unscrupulous immigration practitioners or notaries sometimes suggest this (and charge good money to prepare the application).
There's a huge problem with this strategy, though. The immigration judge might figure out what you did. This is the same judge whom you will need to convince that you are a moral, law-abiding person. Your submission of an application that's frivolous at best and fraudulent at worst could completely undermine that. In fact, the law says that someone who submits a frivolous asylum application becomes permanently eligible for any other immigration benefit.
Somewhat obviously, the point of removal proceedings is, from the U.S. government's view, to attempt to deport the immigrant. If you manage to place yourself into such proceedings and then lose your case, you might be able to appeal to the Board of Immigration Appeals, and then to federal court (with the help of a lawyer, which will be expensive), but eventually you could be ordered deported and given a date to show up for transport out of the United States.
What's more, many immigration judges see their role as that of enforcer. You can't choose your judge, and you might be assigned one who is entirely unsympathetic to your situation. The judge is allowed to deny your case for discretionary reasons, meaning because the judge simply didn't feel emotionally moved enough to grant it.
Talk to an experienced attorney for a full analysis of your case's potential to win, any reasonable strategies that might help you apply for cancellation of removal, and an assessment of the risks if you lose your case and are ordered deported from the United States. And if you are arrested and placed into immigration court proceedings, getting an attorney's help will be crucial.
]]>In most cases, the immigrant must wait until USCIS approves the U.S petitioner's Form I-130 submission to proceed with the green card application. Conveniently, however, in some situations, when the immigrant is already living in the United States, Form I-130 can be filed at the same time as an application for a green card, or "concurrently." This article will describe:
Keep in mind that not every family member qualifies for a green card: For example, siblings of U.S. citizens can qualify for immigrant visas, but siblings of permanent residents cannot. (See Green Cards for Your Family: Sponsorship Rules for more information on eligibility.)
Before someone's green card application can go further, the U.S. petitioner must provide enough evidence to convince U.S. immigration authorities of two things (according to 8 C.F.R. § 1245.2(a)(2)(B)):
Form I-130 is designed to do just that. If filled out and documented property, it makes clear that the beneficiary qualifies for an immigrant visa and green card based on a close family relationship with the petitioner.
In many cases, waiting for USCIS to acknowledge the immigrant's basic eligibility and relationship to the U.S. petitioner (which can take many months; delays are inevitable) doesn't slow things down anyway. Unless a visa is immediately available in the relevant family category, or the immigrant is an "immediate relative" (spouse, parent, or unmarried, minor child of a U.S. citizen) annual limits on the number of available visas, plus high demand for them, frequently create a waiting list. We'll explain that further below.
There are two main procedural ways in which somebody can receive a green card:
Only in the first instance, however, is it possible to submit applications concurrently. Only USCIS accepts I-130s, so if the immigrant will be processing though a U.S. consulate, they'll have to wait for USCIS to okay this initial petition.
But again, some applicants who are already in the United States can prepare Form I-130 together with Form I-485 and the rest of the USCIS application for “adjustment of status" and submit them all to USCIS. After USCIS approves this adjustment of status packet (normally after an in-person interview), the green card applicant receives lawful permanent resident status, or a green card. This is sometimes referred to as “one-step adjustment.”
One-step adjustment is an option when there is an immediately available immigrant "visa number" (an opening for someone to become a permanent resident) and the immigrant is both living in the U.S. and eligible to use adjustment of status as an application procedure. The latter usually requires that the person entered with permission and is living in the U.S. in lawful status. There are exceptions, though, most notably for immediate relatives of U.S. citizens who entered lawfully (without fraudulent intention at that time to stay permanently) but whose permitted stay ran out. See Who Can Apply for a Green Card Through Adjustment of Status for details.
One common scenario in which one-step adjustment of status is an option is when a U.S. citizen is petitioning for a husband or wife, and that person is living in or entered the U.S. with a visa, such as tourist (B-2) student (F-1) or specialty temporary worker (H-1B). In those cases, an immigrant visa number is immediately available because the spouse of a U.S. citizen is an immediate relative, for whom there is no limit on the number of green cards and thus no waiting period.
The immigrating spouse can, in such a case, submit a Form I-485 at the same time that the U.S. citizen husband or wife submits Form I-130. On Form I-485, the immigrating spouse would check the box that says: "I am applying for an adjustment of status to permanent resident status because . . . An immigrant petition giving me an immediately available immigrant visa number has been approved.”
Other immediate relatives for whom there is no limit in the number of available green cards include parents as well as children (under 21 and unmarried) of U.S. citizens. Assuming that there is a valid relationship for immigration purposes and the parent or child is in the U.S. and “admissible,” those immediate relatives would also be able to submit Form I-485 to USCIS at the same time as the petitioner submits Form I-130.
If you are filing Form I-360 as the victim of abuse by a U.S. citizen spouse or parent, you may also utilize one-step adjustment.
Religious workers filing an I-360, however, must wait for the I-360 to be approved, and cannot file it together with an I-485.
It's less common, but in some cases family members in the preference categories, such as spouses and children of U.S. lawful permanent residents, can use the concurrent, one-step filing procedure. This is typically because they are in the U.S. lawfully when their priority date becomes current, or they see a "C" in the Visa Bulletin in their category, meaning it's current for everyone.
One issue to keep in mind, though, is that if there's a "C" in your category now, but a waiting list later develops such that your priority date is no longer current, you might not be eligible for a green card by the time USCIS is ready to act on your application. See an attorney for a full analysis.
Though this article mainly discusses immigration categories that use an I-130 visa petition, it's worth adding that it's also a possibility in some employment-based cases, though we won't discuss the details here. See an attorney.
Notably, the 2022 EB-5 Reform and Integrity Act (RIA) has newly allowed EB-5 investors and their derivative family members to file Form I-485 at the same time as filing Form I-526E, Immigrant Petition by Regional Center Investor, or at any point prior to Form I-526 approval. This one-step filing is possible only when the applicant has a current priority date.
The mere fact that one-step adjustment is available as an option does not mean that you should use it, or that USCIS will approve the petition or adjustment of status application.
For one thing, to actually receive a green card, the immigrant must, among other things, be eligible for adjustment of status and be admissible to the United States. If the immigrating relative entered the U.S. unlawfully, or has committed criminal or immigration violations, neither of those are likely to be true—in which case applying for one-step adjustment could land the immigrant in removal proceedings and waste a lot of application fees. For more information, see Inadmissibility: When the U.S. Can Keep You Out, and Consequences of Unlawful Presence in the U.S.: Three- and Ten-Year Time Bars.
Another issue might arise if convincing USCIS that the basic relationship is valid will be an issue. If, for example, you lack the key birth certificate and will have to prove a parent-child relationship based on affidavits from friends, you might want to make sure you can get the I-130 approved before going through all the effort and expense of completing the rest of the adjustment application. The same analysis applies if your marriage is a common-law one, or otherwise difficult to prove.
To make sure of what your opportunities are when it comes to submitting a green card application, and strategizing the best approach, consult with an immigration attorney for a full evaluation. The attorney can also prepare the paperwork, monitor the case through the U.S. immigration bureaucracy, write convincing cover letters, and accompany you to a USCIS interview.
]]>