Let's talk about the adult children of lawful permanent residents. Hi, I'm Jim Hacking, immigration lawyer practicing law throughout the United States out of office here in St. Louis, Missouri.
So there's been a lot of talk lately about the adult children of lawful permanent residents. So if you are a lawful permanent resident and not yet a citizen and you want to apply for your child to come to the United States, you can do that as long as the child is not married.
A lawful permanent resident is not eligible to sponsor their adult child to get a green card of their own if they are married. They can only sponsor people who are single.
So let's talk about a scenario. Let's say Arturo is a lawful permanent resident. He has a child who is 28 years old and that child was back home in Brazil. Arturo filed a I-130 for the child and the case has now been processed and that child can get an immigrant visa subject to some shenanigans by president Trump.
But in general, a adult child who is single of a lawful permanent resident can get a green card and an immigrant visa to come to United States to pick up that green card based on Arturo's being a lawful permanent resident. But if that child gets married after the application is filed, the application is dead.
It can't be converted to something else. It can't serve as the basis for an immigrant visa for that adult child. So it makes it tricky because these cases take years and years. And so sometimes the foreign national child wants to get married. If they marry a US citizen or lawful permanent resident, then those people can sponsor them.
But unless they do that, then getting married is going to put an end to their case.
So it's almost immediate upon the actual marriage. So it's not like the USAS knows that the child got married, but what happens is that when the case does become current, they're going to ask whether the child's ever been married and if they were married, even if it was for just one day, there's a significant chance that they're not going to be able to come and that the case is over. So that's sort of one big thing to think about with the adult children of lawful permanent residents.
Another thing to think about is that a lot of times the visa bulletin shows that there are more visas available for the adult children of lawful permanent residents than there are for the adult children of US citizens. And that's because of backlogs in the citizenship category.
And so when a lawful permanent resident sponsors their adult child and then that lawful permanent resident becomes a citizen, there's a way that you can notify the national visa center and the state department that you want to continue to have the child be treated as the adult child of a lawful permanent resident and not as the adult child of a citizen, that way they keep their priority date.
So the lawful permanent resident becoming a US citizen does not mean you lose your priority date, you just have to make sure that you contact the state department and ask them to convert the case or to maintain the case, I should say, as the child of a lawful permanent resident.
A lot of times they won't even figure out that the petitioner became a citizen, but sometimes they do and then you need to notify them.
So adult children of lawful permanent residents are a bit tricky. Under the law, there's different visa categories for them, different lines to get into and different rules and most notably that if they get married, they're out and because the lawful permanent residents cannot sponsor married children.
That's the latest on that. If you have any questions, give us a call, 314-961-8200.
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