Who can file for a family petition?

Hi this is Kaushik Ranchod from The Ranchod Law Group and I’m here with Brian for our weekly immigration update show and today we’re going to talk about who can file for an I-130 petition and why the USCIS processing times are taking so long. So first I’m gonna start off with the USCIS processing times: they have almost doubled in the last five years in the amount of time that it’s taking. You know every case is different but that’s the average – that’s just what’s happening you know right now with this agency and it’s unacceptable: you can contact your Congress person to let them know or look up the USCIS processing times crisis levels to take action because number of applications have gone down, but the times have gone up.

So for an application that was taking five months as of five years ago, now it’s taking ten months – you can call us if you have a question (916) 613-3553 or post your question below. This is very frustrating for everyone involved, for families, for businesses who need to hire key employees, it’s hurting a lot of employees businesses and families as a whole, but you can take action – you can contact your Congressman, you can contact your senator and you can also go to the aila.org website to find out what else you can do.

Alright so now we’re gonna move on to: who can file an I-130 family based petitions. United States citizens and permanent residents can file for different types of family members. So first we’ll start off with United States citizens:

• they can file for their spouse;
• they can file for their child both married and unmarried;
• they can also file for their parents and also for their siblings.

Now depending upon each relationship, some of the processing times are going to take longer than others. Now lawful permanent residents, they can file for their spouse and they can also file for their children – that’s different than United States citizens because lawful permanent residents cannot file for their parents and they cannot file for their brothers or sisters. United States citizens and permanent residents cannot file for aunts and uncles or cousins or second cousins. So we get that question like “oh well I’m a U.S. citizen can I file for my cousin or my uncle?” Unfortunately you’re not able to, but you know there are those different options and then also look at the employment based options as well – that’s beyond the scope of this video but give us a call (916) 613-3553 – we are happy to answer questions, or post your question below and if you would like to have a topic discussed you could post it below and we may choose your topic for the next weekly show. I want to thank you for tuning in and have an awesome day.