Should I appeal a denied I-130 to the Board of Immigration Appeals?
Hi, I'm Jim Hacking, immigration lawyer, practicing law throughout the United States out of our office here in St. Louis, Missouri. Lawful permanent residents and US citizens are able to file a I-130 petition for an alien relative for family members. And depending if they're a citizen or a green card holder, there's different classes of family members that they can apply for.
Sometimes USCIS denies the I-130. This is actually pretty rare. Most I-130s get approved. I haven't seen the stats on it, but unless there's a fundamental defect with the relationship or the marriage, the I-130 should get approved.
But when your I-130 is denied, some people call us and they say, "Well, I already filed an appeal." And I'm like, "Well, maybe you shouldn't have." So you really need to look and analyze why did the I-130 get denied?
Was it because of some kind of procedural defect? Was it because you didn't submit a piece of paper? You can supplement with the I-130 appeal, but appeals to the Board of Immigration Appeals sort of go off into the ether and you never really get an answer.
So a lot of times we suggest filing a new I-130. If there's something that you can fix, it's going to be better to file a whole new I-130 than to appeal.
So filing an appeal of a denied I-130 to the Board of Immigration Appeals, you're probably not going to succeed, probably going to be a big headache, probably going to cause lots of delay. And you're going to want to think it through and see if you can fix the problem that was there in the first petition, and then submit a whole new application.
That might be a whole lot faster. It might provide better protection for your immigrant spouse, might get them here faster, might keep them here stronger. And so you're probably not going to want to appeal a denied I-130.
Of course, every case is different.
And you're going to want to talk to an immigration lawyer who knows what they're doing about this.
So if you have questions about denied I-130s, give us a call (314) 961-8200. You can email us at [email protected].
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