Can I have two I-130s on file for me?
Hi, I'm Jim Hacking immigration lawyer practicing law throughout the United States at our office here in St. Louis, Missouri.
Today, I was doing a counsel with a really smart young man from Bangladesh. He's a US citizen and he has a I-130 that was approved by USCIS for his mother.
His father is a US citizen but his mother is not. And so he filed an I-130 many months back. It's been approved, it's at the National Visa Center, and he's heard about President Trump trying to stop the parents of US citizens from getting a visa and green card to the United States.
He very cleverly came up with a possible other solution and that is that the president hasn't banned the spouses of US citizens, and so why not have his dad file an I-130 for the mom as well.
So the interesting thing is he was surprised to know that you could have two I-130s on file. A US citizen spouse can file an I-130 for their husband or wife and a US citizen child, who's over 21, can sponsor an I-130 for his parents, either one.
Ordinarily, you wouldn't want to do this. Mostly, you just don't want to pay the filing fee and sometimes I think if you file them contemporaneously or at the same time, you can confuse USCIS.
So in most instances, you're not going to file two I-130s. But in this particular situation where it appears that the president's going to try to stop immigration by the parents of US citizens, in this unique scenario, this fellow has a father who is a US citizen.
So the father can file his own I-130, and as of now, the president's ban doesn't apply to them.
We think that our person Edel, that we spoke to might go ahead and do that. I told him he might want to wait to see a few things. One is there are judicial challenges to the enforceability of the president's proclamation. The other is there's an election coming up in November.
So he might want to wait and save the money. But if he has the money and the time, filing the I-130 for mom based on dad's application wouldn't be the worst thing in the world.
It might confuse them. We've seen situations where it does confuse them. But for the most part, there's certainly no rule that says you can't have multiple I-130s on file for you.
So we hope this answers the question. If you have any questions about filing an I-130 for your parents or your spouse, give us a call at 314-961-8200.
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