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Sponsor Bro or Sis for Green Card

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Can my brother sponsor me for a green card? Hi, I'm Jim Hacking, Immigration Lawyer practicing law throughout the United States at our office here in St. Louis, Missouri. We had a question from Syyid the other day, and I thought it would make a good video. I am home for the next week or so on quarantine. I think I might have Coronavirus and I'm quarantining in the basement. So some of you long-time viewers might remember that I had pneumonia a couple of months ago, and I thought it had Corona then, but this time I'm pretty sure that I do.

But in any event, today we're talking about brothers and sisters and how they can sponsor their siblings for a green card. Now, the traditional way would be for a brother or sister to file an I-130 Petition for each of their brothers and sisters. Now, there is a cap on the number of visas available for the brothers and sisters of US citizens. So whenever you have a cap, you have a backlog. So right now the backlog is 14 years, probably even longer than that for the brothers and sisters of US citizens to come to the United States. So there is one way that some people have tried to get around it, and it's a perfectly legal way to try to get around it, but it's a little bit complicated. So let me walk you through it.

So let's say the typical situation that we're talking about here is a foreign national comes to the United States, marries a US citizen, gets their green card, gets their citizenship, and then they decide they want to sponsor their mom or dad. But let's say that mom and dad have a bunch of little kids. So perhaps this foreign national who came to the United States and eventually got their citizenship is the oldest of a group of let's say six. And let's say all the other kids are ranging in age between 10 and 15. Well, once the foreign national becomes a citizen, they can sponsor their parents. And then the way around this to try to make it go a little bit faster is, you sponsor mom and dad for green cards of their own.

So the son has now become a US citizen, he sponsors his mom and dad for a green card, and what you do is when those green cards get approved, you can't include your brothers and sisters on that application. They're not eligible or able to come. There's no visa that's set up for them to come. So what you do is you have mom and dad come to the United States and get their actual green cards. Now sometimes we'll have mom and dad come separately. And what they do is they come and they actually receive their green cards, and then they immediately apply for a reentry permit and they go back home to live with the kids until ...

And they also file an I-1430 not as the brother or sister of a US citizen, but rather as the son or daughter, the unmarried under 21-year-old son or daughter of a lawful permanent resident. That backlog is shorter and many times lately it's been current. So if the kids are under 21, that's how you would do it. Then mom and dad would file that reentry permit so that they can leave and be outside the United States for two years and they also file I-130s for each child so that they can bring them to the United States. That's the fastest way to do it. Then you're looking at a delay of about two years instead of about seven, eight, or nine years, or even longer if they went through the parents or if they went through the sibling.

So it's tricky as evidenced by my fumbling over myself, but it's doable. And with the visas being current for the children of lawful permanent residents, it's actually a much faster way. So if you have questions about this, or if you want to sponsor your brother, or sister, or your parents for a green card, give us a call at 314-961-8200. You can email us at [email protected]. Be sure to join us in our Facebook group, which is called Immigrant Home. And if you liked this video, we ask you please share that on social and you subscribe to our YouTube channel so that you get updates whenever we make videos just like this one.

Thanks a lot. Have a great day.

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