U.S. immigration law allows a United States citizen or lawful permanent resident (green card holder) to petition the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) to sponsor their relatives for a green card. At Minsky, McCormick & Hallagan, we have experienced family immigration lawyers who routinely help clients in Hinsdale to sponsor and help obtain green cards for their relatives.
Although U.S. citizens and green card holders are allowed to petition USCIS to approve green cards for their relatives, the process one goes through to accomplish this and how long it takes depends on who the relative is. Not all relatives qualify to obtain a green card, to begin with. Rather, the law limits qualifying relatives to those described below.
The first group of relatives who qualify for a green card are “immediate relatives,” who are defined to be relatives related to a United States citizen in any of the following family relationships:
A U.S. citizen can file a petition with USCIS and have a green card given to anyone who falls in any of those categories. However, those relatives must still meet other requirements and cannot have anything in their records that would render them ineligible to get a green card. In other words, a relative who is in any of these categories does not automatically get a green card approved just because that family relationship exists. An application for the relative can still be denied under any of the many grounds of “ineligibility,” which include things like having certain medical conditions, a conviction of certain crimes, and so on.
If your relative is affected by one or more of those grounds of ineligibility, an experienced family immigration lawyer such as we have at Minsky, McCormick & Hallagan can find a way to still have the relative approved for the green card.
A major benefit of being an immediate relative and pursuing a green card under that category is that your green card application is processed much faster than applications for green cards in all other categories.
Relatives of U.S. citizens who are not immediate relatives as described above or who are family members of green card holders are allowed to apply for a green card under what is known as the “preference” categories, which are as follows:
To avoid unnecessary delays or denial of your green card application due to mistakes, errors, and lack of proper presentation of your application, obtain the professional services of a competent and experienced family immigration lawyer from Minsky, McCormick & Hallagan to help you in navigating the complex immigration system.
If you are in the Hinsdale area, contact us today for a consultation.